This publication provides a collection of papers, commentaries, expert opinions and reflections on state-of-the-art innovation systems thinking and approaches in agriculture. It is the direct output of a CTA and WUR/CoS-SIS collaboration which had its genesis in an expert consultation on ‘Innovation Systems: Towards Effective Strategies in support of Smallholder Farmers’. Practitioners and scholars involved in academic, research, training and development programmes came together to map the diversities and commonalities in applying the concept in agriculture and chart the way forward for informing policy and practice.
Agricultural innovation in low-income tropical countries contributes to a more effective and sustainable use of natural resources and reduces hunger and poverty through economic development in rural areas. Yet, despite numerous recent public and private initiatives to develop capacities for agricultural innovation, such initiatives are often not well aligned with national efforts to revive existing Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS). In an effort to improve coordination and responsiveness of Capacity Development (CD) initiatives, the G20 Agriculture Ministers requested the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to lead the development of a Tropical Agricultural Platform (TAP), which is designed to improve coherence and coordination of CD for agricultural innovation in the tropics. This paper presents a summary of the results obtained from three regional needs assessments undertaken by TAP and its partners. The findings reveal a mismatch in all three regions between the external supply of primarily individual CD and the actual demand for institutional CD. The misalignment might be addressed by strengthening south-south and triangular collaboration and by improving the institutional capacities that would render national AIS more demand-oriented and responsive to the needs of smallholders in domestic agriculture.
Food is a human right. Yet hundreds of millions are still going to bed hungry. FAO´s Right to Food Guidelines recommend how to take action, so that everyone has access to sufficient, safe, nutritious and affordable food every day. The Guidelines are a powerful policy tool to end hunger and malnutrition in all its forms. Many countries are taking steps in line with these guidelines. Only when everyone enjoys the human right to adequate food, will we be on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
The increased recognition of the multiplicity of roles played by women in, and their crucial contributions to, the fisheries sector exists in stark contrast with the low presence of women in fisherfolk organizations around the globe, and the lack of access to decision-making positions in many formal fisheries-related organizations. This paper summarizes analyses of a global literature review on women in fisherfolk organizations. The aim of the study was to identify positive examples and lessons learned by pointing to the drivers – as well as the enablers and entities identified in the literature – that have a key role in fostering increased women’s participation and leadership in collective action in fisheries. State institutions, social movements and civil society organizations, development and conservation projects, religious movements, academia, endogenous mobilization, charismatic individuals and coincidences have been identified as the key enablers of women’s participation in collective action. Dwindling resources and the need to secure management roles, modernization, the allocation of fishing rights, economic changes, family welfare and women’s rights, are the main drivers identified by the authors as catalysers of women’s engagement in collective action. Finally, the paper identifies some of the barriers faced by women to gain equal access to organizations and decision-making. Although more research on the topic is required, there seems to be consensus on the positive effects for women arising from their engagement in modes of collective action.
This publication “School feeding and possibilities for direct purchases from family farming in Latin American countries” contributes to the articulation of the sectors involved with school feeding, in the search for alternatives for the institutionalization and strengthening of school feeding policies in the countries; it is also hoped that in the medium and long term SFPs can contribute to the human right to food (HRF) and to sustainable human development.
These initiatives generated transformative and lasting results and contributed to the strengthening of local public policies and economic growth. Using very few resources and focusing on agroecological and inclusive production methods, these women have become role models in their communities and beyond. Empowered women can participate more actively in their communities and foster inclusive local policies that will ultimately drive more sustainable and just rural development. The South-South and Triangular Cooperation and Knowledge Centre of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, located in Brasilia, in collaboration with partner institutions, conducts studies on relevant rural development issues to Latin America and the Caribbean context, with special attention to the poor and vulnerable people. As a global organization, with a unique mandate to promote the development of small-scale rural producers, IFAD seeks to encourage the sharing of knowledge, innovation, and a commitment to invest in the rural population.
Breeding programs for local breeds kept by small farmers in developing countries are a major challenge. Animal recording of pedigree and performance under conditions of subsistence livestock farming is remain difficult or next to impossible. This means that standard genetic evaluations, as well as selection and planning of mating based on estimates of the animals' genotypes, cannot be done at any level in the population of the target breed or genetic group. However, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) partnering with the National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) has been implemented sheep and goat community-based breeding programs (CBBPs) in Ethiopia since 2010. A total of about 40 CBBPs each with average of 80 household and 1000 flock size in four sheep (Menz, Bonga, Doyogena and Horro) and three goat (Abergelle, konso and Borena) breeds are involved in Ethiopian CBBPs (Haile et al., 2019). Apart from the above mentioned, many CBBPs has been established throughout the countries by different institutions (Research centers, Universities, and Biodiversity Institute); and, many other African (e.g. Tanzania, Sudan, Uganda, Malawi) and Asian countries (e.g Brazil,Iran, Mongolia) are implementing sheep and goat CBBPs (Haile et al., 2019). It means pedigree and performance data recording is being accumulated and an integral component in all the breeding programs.
Genetic improvement on local breeds kept by small farmers in developing countries is challenging. Even though good pedigree and performance recording is crucial and an important component of breeding programs, it remain difficult or next to impossible under conditions of subsistence livestock farming. This means that standard genetic evaluations, as well as selection and planning of mating based on estimates of the animals' genotypes, cannot be done at any level in the population of the target breed or genetic group. However, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) partnering with the National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) has been implemented sheep and goat community-based breeding programs (CBBPs) in Ethiopia since 2010. Currently, a total of about 40 CBBPs each with average of 80 household and 1000 flock size in four sheep (Menz, Bonga, Doyogena and Horro) and three goat (Abergelle, konso and Borena) breeds are available. Many other CBBPs has also been established throughout the countries by different institutions (Research Centers, Universities, and Biodiversity Institute); and African (e.g. Tanzania, Sudan, Uganda, Malawi) and Asian (e.g Brazil,Iran, Mongolia) countries are implementing sheep and goat CBBPs. It means pedigree and performance data recording is being accumulated and getting larger and larger. Though selection of best sires has been a routine practice in the CBBPs, retaining best animal for breeding challenged by many factors. Sale of animals by owners before selection event for pressing cash need tied with delay in data capture, analysis and giving on time feedback to the community is appeared as main challenge. With the recent advances in computer science, ICT and mobile technology, ICARDA is therefore developed a digital database system called AniCloud which can accelerate the data capture, analysis and feedback system which is crucial to assist the small ruminant breeding program at lower cost, high storage capacity, high fidelity and fast computing speed. Thus, the aim of this paper is to explain the current
Many countries are facing growing levels of food insecurity, reversing years of development gains, and threatening the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Even before COVID-19 reduced incomes and disrupted supply chains, chronic and acute hunger were on the rise due to various factors, including conflict, socio-economic conditions, natural hazards, climate change and pests. The impact of the war in Ukraine adds risk to global food security, with food prices likely to remain high for the foreseeable future and expected to push millions of additional people into acute food insecurity. This brief looks at rising food insecurity and World Bank responses to date.
The world’s population is likely to reach 9 billion by the middle of this century. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) believes that 60 per cent more food will be needed by 2050 to sustain all these people. Where possible, this food should be produced where it is needed – in developing countries. These countries will have to increase their production substantially to reach this goal, and this will have implications for the limited natural resources on which farming depends, particularly water for irrigation and livestock farming, land for growing crops and grazing, and limited nutrients, such as phosphate. In many places, soil has already suffered lasting damage while water resources are often overused or polluted by fertilisers and pesticides. Agricultural biodiversity has dwindled as farming has become industrialised. These negative effects have heightened global awareness of the fact that agriculture does more than simply produce food, animal feed and energy. It also has impacts on the climate, human health, and global ecosystems. Against this backdrop, how can we shape future agricultural production so that we guarantee food security for the world’s population without destroying the resource base? The answer is that we need productive yet sustainable agriculture that conserves resources. Growth cannot be at the cost of natural resources and must be made as independent as possible of consumption of resources.
Gender integration focuses on applying a gender lens to look at how social relations of gender and underlying power dynamics affect men’s and women’s participation in and benefit from development programmes. In Plantwise, gender mainstreaming aimed to (1) understand gender relations and how they affected access to agricultural advisory services and adoption of plant health management practices, and (2) remove gender related barriers to access and adoption and improve gender equity. This study used desk reviews and key informant interviews to understand how the different measures taken by Plantwise countries helped improve women’s participation, as well as, the overall constraints women faced in participating and benefitting from the programme interventions. Findings showed that while efforts were made to mainstream gender in Plantwise, the efforts were not consistent and systematically designed, and there were limits in ensuring that services were delivered equally to women and men farmers. However, innovations and adaptations within the studied countries (Ghana, Uganda, Bolivia, Afghanistan and India) did increase women’s participation and benefit from Plantwise, even if more can be done.
The CDAIS project has been an accelerator of processes, with results that have spread from community to governmental levels. Those who have been involved consider that CDAIS was a key reason for these changes, having arrived as a springboard in 2015. Of the four partnerships in Honduras, these conversations explore the experiences of potato producers in La Esperanza, Intibucá, home to almost 70% of national potato production. Since 2015, much has changed for them: from a small group of growers, eight associations have become consolidated organisations. Supported by the government’s Agriculture and Livestock Secretariat (Secretaría de Agricultura y Ganadería, SAG) and accompanied by CDAIS, the process has shown the relevance of multi-stakeholder partnerships, farmer-to-farmer communication, organisation, and participatory monitoring and evaluation. And from this, there have been organisational and national-level changes, with a new ministerial agreement that guarantees future government support to the innovation niche partnership, providing space for the producers to engage in strategic and political processes.
There have been clear changes in Guatemala and, according to those involved, outcomes exceeded expectations. These have resulted from the strengthening of functional capacities across individual, partnership, organisational and national levels, using processes that have evolved since the CDAIS project began in 2015. Of the four selected innovation niche partnerships in the country, the conversations here explore the experiences of avocado producers in Sololá, led by AIDA, the Association for the Integral Development of the Altiplano. And much has changed since CDAIS supported their progression from being a small group of growers from San Andrés Semetabaj alone, to become a consolidated and registered association representing groups encompassing seven municipalities. Supported by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, CDAIS approaches showed the relevance of partnering with actors from different sectors, farmer-to-farmer communication, organisation and evaluation. And from this, links were also made from the grass roots to the national system level.
The ‘dry corridor’ is a region of guatemala that covers part of the departments of Baja Verapaz, Zacapa, El Progreso, Jalapa, Chiquimula, Jutiapa and Santa Rosa. It is vulnerable to drought and, in some parts, communities lack food security, with a high level of extreme poverty. Malnutrition is a significant problem, especially among young children and their mothers. The traditional diet in guatemala and throughout much of Central America is based on maize and beans and, as diversifying this has proved problematic, increasing the nutritive value and yields of these crops is seen as a key approach.
Introducing and promoting new crop varieties is notoriously problematic without the involvement of a wide range of stakeholders. For this reason, in 2016, this initiative was selected to be one of the country’s CDAIS innovation partnerships, continuing the work that FAo (the Food and Agriculture organization of the united nations) had started with the ‘Seeds for development’ programme, strengthening the ability of smallholder associations to produce certified seeds. The partnership is also complementary to other initiatives that are working towards the same goals, such as the ‘Biofort’ platform that aims to create permanent collaborative links between the public and private sectors, civil society and farmers, to improve the nutritional quality of food production in guatemala, in order to increase the food and nutritional security of the most vulnerable populations in a sustainable, efficient and participatory manner.
Climate change is threatening development gains and intensifying global inequities—putting peace and important gains in human well-being at risk.
The climate crisis affects every sector and geography, yet its impacts are not felt equally. People in developing countries are more vulnerable to climate change because they often lack the resources to effectively respond and adapt. Climate change is a crisis multiplier, exacerbating existing challenges in developing countries like food and water insecurity, natural resource degradation, income inequality, malnutrition, market volatility and compounding injustices.
Rising temperatures
The agriculture sectors are the most vulnerable to climate change and climate variability. Through the Integrating Agriculture in National Adaptation plans (NAP-Ag) programme, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) are supporting eleven countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to plan for adaptation in the agriculture sectors. This video shows what three of these countries, Uganda, Thailand and Colombia, are doing to tackle climate change and integrate agriculture in their planning and budgeting processes.
The availability of an efficient PRRS virus monitoring information system for a large scale project remains a major issue. The purpose of this paper is to present the system developed by CDPQ (Quebec Swine Development Center) to support Quebec’s province-wide PRRS monitoring effort (3000 sites).
This brochure gives an overview of the work of of the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS). It illustrates history, main objectives and medium to long-term plan of JIRCAS for the period 2021-2025. The three main programs of JIRCAS - focused, respectively on Food, Environment and Information - are also presented.
As climate change continues to drive food insecurity, addressing the risks of climate change across the value chain – especially agricultural products that are important to food and nutrition security – will yield significant adaptation benefits to vulnerable small producers and rural communities at large. This will support global efforts to end hunger and poverty, build more effective farming practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and accelerate the ambition of Nationally Determined Contributions to the Paris Agreement.
As the world gets hotter and rainfall more erratic, the type and availability of ingredients for daily meals are changing. With support from the Government of Canada and the Global Environment Facility’s Least Developed Countries Fund, the Canada-UNDP Climate Change Adaptation Facility (CCAF) has been supporting six least developed countries and small island developing states (Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Haiti, Mali, Niger and Sudan) to strengthen climate resilience and enhance food security. To better understand and share the experiences from these six countries, and to celebrate some of the successes of the projects in enhancing food security and water access, the CCAF team has worked together to create a cookbook. This 'Appe-teaser' version of the cookbook, a short teaser, offers a recipe from each country. The full cookbook was launched in New York in April 2017. It showcases more delicious recipes and more information on how climate change is impacting specific ingredients and recipes, and how each country's adaptation efforts are making traditional ingredients and cooking methods more sustainable.
This article extends social science research on big data and data platforms through a focus on agriculture, which has received relatively less attention than other sectors like health. In this paper, I use a responsible innovation framework to move attention to the social and ethical dimensions of big data “upstream,” to decision-making in the very selection of agricultural data and the building of its infrastructures. I draw on original empirical material from qualitative interviews with North American designers and engineers to make visible and analyze the normative aspects of their technical decisions. Social actors shaping innovation hold a narrow set of values about good farming and good technology and their data selection choices privilege large-scale and commodity crop farmers by focusing on agronomic crop data and data mapping unusable to organic growers. Enabling engagement among a wide variety of food system actors, not just already powerful ones, and attending to a greater diversity of values would be essential to underpin a responsible digital agricultural transition.
We present a model for research and development (R&D) investment in food innovations based on new plant engineering techniques (NPETs) and traditional hybridization methods. The framework combines uncertain and costly food innovation with consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for the new food. The framework is applied with elicited WTP of French and US consumers for new improved apples. NPETs may be socially beneficial under full information and when the probability of success under NPETs is relatively high. Otherwise, the traditional hybridization is socially optimal. A probable collapse of conventional apples raises the social desirability of new apples generated by NPETs and traditional hybridization.
Visible and near-infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (VIS-NIR) has shown levels of accuracy comparable to conventional laboratory methods for estimating soil properties. Soil chemical and physical properties have been predicted by reflectance spectroscopy successfully on subtropical and temperate soils, whereas soils from tropical agro-forest regions have received less attention, especially those from tropical rainforests. A spectral characterization provides a proficient pathway for soil characterization. The first step in this process is to develop a comprehensive VIS-NIR soil library of multiple key soil properties to be used in future soil surveys. This paper presents the first VIS-NIR soil library for a remote region in the Central Amazon. We evaluated the performance of VIS-NIR for the prediction of soil properties in the Central Amazon, Brazil. Soil properties measured and predicted were: pH, Ca, Mg, Al, H, H+Al, P, organic C (SOC), sum of bases, cation exchange capacity (CEC), percentage of base saturation (V), Al saturation (m), clay, sand, silt, silt/clay (S/C), and degree of flocculation. Soil samples were scanned in the laboratory in the VIS-NIR range (350–2500 nm), and forty-one pre-processing methods were tested to improve predictions. Clay content was predicted with the highest accuracy, followed by SOC. Sand, S/C, H, Al, H+Al, CEC, m and V predictions were reasonably good. The other soil properties were poorly predicted. Among the soil properties predicted well, SOC is one of the critical soil indicators in the global carbon cycle. Besides the soil property of interest, the landscape position, soil order and depth influenced in the model performance. For silt content, pH and S/C, the model performed better in well-drained soils, whereas for SOC best predictions were obtained in poorly drained soils. The association of VIS-NIR spectral data to landforms, vegetation classes, and soil types demonstrate potential for soil characterization.
This study draws on social-psychology in an attempt to identify the various motivations for technology adoption (TA), including both economic and non-economic, and to gain insights into how and why Brazilian innovative beef farmers make decisions about whether or not to adopt particular technologies. Three major research questions are addressed: (1) is there diversity of major goals and values amongst Brazilian innovative beef farmers, and if so, how can this diversity be characterised?; (2) how does diversity within innovative beef farmers‘ goals and values affect adoption and non-adoption of technologies?; and (3) do innovative beef farmers use a different set of constructs when assessing different types of technologies? If so, why? Innovative farmers were targeted given their openness to new ideas, including innovations, and their social role in importing innovations from institutions onto farms.
In the past 50 years, the application of synthetic nitrogen (N) fertilizer to farmland resulted in a dramatic increase in crop yields but with considerable negative impacts on the environment. New solutions are therefore needed to simultaneously increase yields while maintaining, or preferably decreasing, applied N to maximize the nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) of crops. In this review, we outline the definition of NUE, the selection and development of NUE crops, and the factors that interact with NUE. In particular, we emphasize the challenges of developing crop plants with enhanced NUE, using more classical genetic approaches based on utilizing existing allelic variation for NUE traits. The challenges of phenotyping, mapping quantitative trait loci (QTLs), and selecting candidate genes for NUE improvement are described. In addition, we highlight the importance of different factors that lead to changes in the NUE components of nitrogen uptake efficiency (NUpE) and nitrogen utilization efficiency (NUtE).
This brochure presents FAO ’s work on agricultural innovation. FAO advocates a shift from interventions focusing on single components of agricultural innovation towards a system-approach aimed at strengthening institutions and stakeholders’ networks that better respond to the needs of smallholder farmers. Agricultural innovation is the process whereby individuals or organizations bring new or existing products, processes or ways of organization into use for the first time in a specific context in order to increase effectiveness, competitiveness, resilience to shocks or environmental sustainability and thereby contribute to food security and nutrition, economic development or sustainable natural resource management. Innovation is central to lifting family farmers out of poverty, tackling unemployment for youth and rural women, and helping the world to achieve food security and the Sustainable Development Goals.
To keep yield advances, farmers in Mato Grosso (MT) have been adopting several technological innovations. Therefore, agricultural production systems in MT have become complex and dynamic since farmers have to consider the increase of decision variables when planning and implementing their farming practices. These variables are widely spread across many distinct topics, bringing them together and summarizing information from diverse fields of research has become a difficult task in farmers’ decision-making process. Therefore, we performed an Integrated Assessment simulation experiment with a region-specific bio-economic component to assess trade-offs between different agricultural practices in a double cropping system. The simulation experiment was carried out with MPMAS, a multi-agent software package developed for simulating farm-based economic behavior and human-environment interactions in agriculture. Crop yields were simulated with the Model of Nitrogen and Carbon dynamics in Agro-ecosystems (MONICA). Our simulation results show a trade-off between lower soybean yields with the flexibility of double cropping when soybean with shorter maturity cycle is introduced. Results also captured regional differences in terms of land use share of different crops and farm configurations of double cropping. These results provide key insights into a farmer’s decision-making process depending on a multitude of decision variables.
Global adoption of transgenic crops reached 67.7 million hectares in 2003 from 2.8 million in 1996. Delivery has occurred almost entirely through the private sector and adoption has been rapid in areas where the crops addressed serious production constraints and where farmers had access to the new technologies. Three countries (USA, Argentina and Canada), three crops (soybean, cotton and maize) and two traits (insect resistance and herbicide tolerance) account for the vast majority of global transgenic area. While some farmers in some developing countries are benefiting, most do not have access to transgenic crops and traits that address their needs. This paper surveys the level and distribution of the economic impacts of transgenic cotton and soybeans to date and reviews the impacts of these crops on chemical pesticide and herbicide use. It concludes with some considerations of ways to address the development and delivery of technological innovations to small farmers in developing countries.
This document is part of the project “Strengthening the adaptive capacity to climate change in the fisheries and aquaculture sector of Chile”, executed by the Undersecretariat of Fisheries and Aquaculture and the Ministry of the Environment, and implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, with funding from the Global Environment Facility. The work was implemented in four pilot coves: Caleta Riquelme (Tarapacá); Caleta Tongoy (Coquimbo); Caleta Coliumo (Biobío); and Caleta El Manzano-Hualaihué (Los Lagos). This document presents the primary results and innovative aspects of the project, in keeping with its three main components: strengthening of public and private institutional capacities; improvement of the adaptive capacity of artisanal fisheries and small-scale aquaculture; and strengthening knowledge and awareness about climate change in fishing and aquaculture communities. It also details the lessons learned during the project, with the goal of providing the authorities and communities involved in the fisheries and aquaculture sector with the capacity and tools required to adapt to future climate scenarios. Recommendations are made for scaling-up adaptation actions in the pilot coves and making this initiative sustainable beyond the end of the project. Finally, public policy recommendations are presented according to five main subjects: plans and programmes in artisanal fishing and small-scale aquaculture; training at the national and local level; climatic and oceanographic information; productive diversification; and gender mainstreaming. This document is aimed at the beneficiary partners and the sectoral institutions and its objective is to serve as a guide and/or model for other coastal communities in Chile.
The 2021 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC 2021) highlights the remarkably high severity and numbers of people in Crisis or worse (IPC/CH Phase 3 or above) or equivalent in 55 countries/territories, driven by persistent conflict, pre-existing and COVID-19-related economic shocks, and weather extremes. The number identified in the 2021 edition is the highest in the report’s five-year existence. The report is produced by the Global Network against Food Crises (which includes WFP), an international alliance working to address the root causes of extreme hunger.
Women in agriculture are far from the end of poverty, zero hunger, quality education, and gender equality — some of the sustainable development goals that can be significantly improved if we achieve greater participation and better working conditions for women in agriculture. Innovation in agriculture is of even greater importance for the sustainability of families in developing regions, such as Latin America and the Caribbean, especially in the current context of Covid-19, according to multilateral organizations and their experts, such as the World Bank, as women are very often the only economic providers of the households.
Despite the rapid international development of biotechnology, we still lack knowledge and information about how low- and middle-income countries can best access this promising technology. Nor are the socioeconomic repercussions of applying biotechnology in these countries’ agricultural sectors well understood. This study seeks to fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge by analyzing a biotechnology transfer project that provided proprietary recombinant potato technology to Mexico.
In 1991, the government of Mexico and the private US corporation Monsanto entered into a North-South biotechnology transfer agreement in which Monsanto agreed to donate non-conventional virus resistance technology for potatoes. ISAAA developed and brokered the agreement, and the Rockefeller Foundation provided funding for the project. Two public Mexican research institutes, CINVESTAV and INIFAP, carried out product development and adapted the technology to local potato varieties. In 1993, the first transgenic potato field trials in Mexico took place. The release of three transformed varieties (Alpha, Norteña and the red variety Rosita) with resistance to the potato viruses PVX and PVY is expected in 1999. After seed multiplication by national seed producers, farmers’ technology adoption could start from the year 2000 onwards, under optimistic assumptions. In addition, a new project phase began in 1997, when Monsanto donated technology that confers resistance to PLRV, an economically more important virus in Mexico than PVX or PVY, but for which non-conventional resistance had not previously been available. The release to seed growers for multiplication of Norteña and Rosita varieties resistant to all three viruses is scheduled for 2001. The use, however, of the PLRV technology in Alpha¾the country’s most popular and widely used potato variety¾is prohibited in the current licensing agreement. Since none of these technologies have yet reached farmers’ fields, the socioeconomic effects of these innovations are quantitatively analyzed within an ex ante framework by means of an equilibrium displacement model of the Mexican potato market.
The most pressing phytosanitary problem in Mexican potato production does not have biotechnological nor conventional solutions. Virus resistance nevertheless is the priority need for which proven technologies are available. The limited use of pathogen-free seed material¾only 23 percent of the land devoted to growing potatoes is cultivated with certified seeds¾leads to virus-induced yield losses that are much higher than in countries with better developed potato seed industries. Genetic resistance is therefore likely to considerably increase potato yields, even without additional inputs. On average, the potential net yield gain of the transgenic varieties is projected to be 5 percent with resistance to PVX and PVY only, with an increase to 22 percent when resistance to PLRV is added. These productivity increases will raise income levels for Mexican potato farmers and will also benefit domestic consumers, who will pay lower prices as long as the international potato trade remains limited. In a closed potato economy, consumers would capture about half of the total economic benefits created by these biotechnology applications. Increased international potato trade¾a possible outcome of the NAFTA trade agreement¾would slightly reduce the overall advantage of the technology, though with an increased benefit share for domestic producers.
This study includes an analysis of hypothetical scenarios in which the Alpha variety also possesses resistance to PLRV. The results show that if Monsanto were to donate PLRV resistance for the Alpha variety, then the project’s Internal Rate of Return (IRR) would increase from 50 to 64 percent, and, even more impressively, the aggregate benefits of the biotechnology transfer could triple. The additional cost of including this resistance would be low because of Mexico’s previous experience in related technology development. Furthermore, because Alpha is not widely grown in countries other than Mexico, Monsanto’s own commercial interest in transforming the variety would not be more than moderate.
The use of technology in agriculture plays an important role in the production chain cycle, as well as in the improvement of processes and productivity. To develop a model for measuring the technological capacity of family agriculture systems, it is necessary to assess the gaps related to indicators and the technological potentialities of these farmer groups, which are often not considered when they require financial support and do not get enough. Thus, the aim of this study is to identify the indicators used to evaluate the technological capacity of farm systems and agriculture. A bibliometric analysis between 2005 and 2017 was carried out on five scientific databases, identifying a first set of 233 scientific articles, which, after an in-depth reading, led to outlining an article portfolio of 33 studies. The H-index results estimated over databases verified that Springer is the most important regarding the topic Technological Capability in Agriculture Systems. The Technological Capacity Systems evolution is important in that technologies are in constant development and the use of indicators provides a quantitative evaluation to compare different agricultural properties.
The Guyana School of Agriculture (GSA) was established in the year 1963 by former President Dr. Cheddi Jagan. It became a state corporation in 1964 offering the Diploma in Agriculture and the Certificate in Agriculture Programmes, and graduated the first batch of 15 students in 1966. Agricultural diversification has become an important mechanism for economic growth by providing opportunities that facilitate technological advancement and demand driven government policy. In recognition of this and the consequences of the external environment that influence the process of agricultural diversification, the Guyana School of Agriculture generated a desire to build resilience into its academic programmes. In the year 1994 the Certificate in Forestry Programme was introduced, followed by the introduction of the Animal Health and Veterinary Public Health Programme in 2007 and the Certificate in Fisheries Programme was offered in 2008. The school over the years has graduated 2935 persons in different fields of agriculture and forestry celebrating 50 years of existence. This paper outlines the role of the Guyana School of Agriculture in addressing technical capacity building for agricultural diversification through the development of skills and capacities, as well as enhanced knowledge and information exchange between, the actors involved in innovation, including farmers and their organizations, agricultural research, education and training institutions, extension and advisory services institutions, and the researchers and professionals working in the agricultural sector of Guyana and the Caribbean. The School's programmes has not only allowed graduates to matriculate to local and international Universities and Collages but also their contribution to the sector has been remarkable with a geographic spread of 21 countries in the Caribbean and even in the African continent. This has been seen as a vital role in achieving robust and sustained growth in agriculture and therefore, GSA will continue to build on its strengths while seeking new opportunities for partnering and collaboration. This legacy would allow young people the opportunity to be involved in Agriculture and Forestry to realize their full potential and create wealth and at the same time preserve and conserve the environment for future generation.
This paper addresses how co-producing knowledge can assist local farmers in reshaping their territories into sustainable farming systems. We describe the emergence and consolidation of an agroforestry system in an Eastern Amazon forest frontier, unpacking the co-production of a new farming system over recent decades. Instead of assuming pre-defined categories (e.g., traditional/technical, local/external), the analysis focuses on interactions among knowledge holders and how multiple knowledge sources are intercalated. The analysis is based on long-term ethnographic research, comprising of over 70 interviews, visits to 40 farm fields, and participation in several local meetings and four annual seminars. The agroforestry system – locally called SAFTA – has emerged from a farming crisis experienced by mid-scale farmers of Japanese descent. Grounded in traditional Amazonian farming practices, SAFTA has been enriched by scientific and organizational knowledge from various sources to become a local solution that reconciles economic, social and environmental demands. Built on a few basic principles, this new farm system enables flexibility in crop field designs according to each farmer’s preferences and available resources. SAFTA knowledge has spilled over to other farmer groups and has helped develop an innovative agroforestry system for oil-palm cultivation. The SAFTA model has been consolidated, legitimized by a range of national and international actors, and gradually institutionalized in policy and commercial circles. This case sheds light on the potential of knowledge co-production to transform complex rural landscapes featuring cultural diversity, asymmetrical relationships and history of land-use change. Analysis of social interactions and knowledge integration mechanisms give insight into how co-production under local cultural diversity and asymmetrical relations may yield mutual benefits among local farmer groups.
This paper examines reconfigurations of household economies and agrobiodiversity through the experiences and responses of rural households to local manifestations of globalisation and environmental change in the Central Valley of Tarija, Bolivia, from the 1950s to the present. Research participant narratives from seven study communities document a widely experienced regional shift from rain-fed agriculture and pastured livestock production for household consumption to market-oriented production of regionally-specialised commodities. Particularly important to this reconfiguration are changing land access and use regimes, household responses to changing opportunities, discourses and social requirements related with ‘modernising lifestyles’, market integration and dependence, changing environmental and ecological conditions, and greater availability of consumer goods and technologies. We analyse how these processes have combined to reconfigure the range of livelihood possibilities available to rural households, or their ‘landscapes of possibility’, in ways that favour transition to specialised commodity production. Patterns of change in household agrobiodiversity use, however, are entwined with threads of persistence, underscoring the contingent nature of rural transitions and the role of local agency and creativity in responding to and sometimes shaping how globalisation unfolds. Examining rural transition through the experiences of households in particular contexts over time offers insights for development policy and practice to support producers’ ability to respond to globalisation and environmental change in ways they see as desirable and beneficial to their livelihoods and wellbeing.
The experiences shared in this book of Conversations of Change capture the outcomes of three years’ work conducted by the eight CDAIS country teams from Angola, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Laos and Rwanda. Collected between January and March 2019, they provide insights and perspectives of different actors engaged in the different capacity strengthening processes, within individuals and innovation niche partnerships, and at organisational and national level. These conversation stories highlight the complementary and cumulative benefits from combining work in all levels concurrently, and present a picture of the increased impacts from an integrated approach to strengthening capacities to innovate in agriculture. Introduction This builds on an earlier collection of Stories of Change from 2018 that showcased three different innovation partnerships in each country, and introduced different CDAIS approaches.
This study provides a model that supports systematic stakeholder inclusion in agricultural technology. Building on the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) literature and attempting to add precision to the conversation around inclusion in technology design and governance, this study develops a framework for determining which stakeholder groups to engage in RRI processes. We developed the model using a specific industry case study: identifying the relevant stakeholders in the Canadian digital agriculture ecosystem. The study uses literature and news article analysis to map stakeholders in the Canadian digital agricultural sector as a test case for the model. The study proposes a systematic framework which categorises stakeholders into individuals, industrial and societal groups with both direct engagement and supportive roles in digital agriculture. These groups are then plotted against three levels of impact or power in the agri-food system: micro, meso and macro.
This report summarizes studies conducted in a framework of TAP-AIS project implemented by FAO’s Research and Extension Unit, and funded by the European Union as a component of the European Union initiative on “Development Smart Innovation through Research in Agriculture” (DeSIRA).
During the last quarter of 2020, Regional Agricultural Research and Extension Organisations (RREO) in Africa, Asia and Latin America jointly carried out rapid appraisals to map the innovation environment and identify and document initiatives aimed at strengthening Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS). The focus was on functional capacity development with a view to exploring ways in which RREO can support the development of these capacities and integrate them with technical capacities. A combination of literature reviews, case studies and stakeholder surveys was used to gather information. The results were documented in three separate reports which are available from the RREO. In the present document, key findings from the regional reports are presented and discussed. There were considerable differences between regions and among countries within the regions with regard to the institutional environment in which innovation takes place. In many countries, in each of the regions, agricultural innovation is framed within structures and institutions which are largely driven by the public sector. Government support to agricultural research and extension agencies continues to be based on linear transfer of technology approaches. However, in some countries AIS thinking is being incorporated into policies and programmes.
The case studies in the reports from the regions illustrate different ways in which multi-actor collaboration is being supported in order to enhance innovation capacity. Innovation platforms and networks have been established to provide spaces for different organisations to interact, share information and knowledge and develop partnerships. Some of these platforms and networks are continuing to operate when external support is withdrawn but the sustainability of these mechanisms is a challenge and further efforts are needed to promote local ownership and resourcing. The case studies highlighted the importance of participatory capacity needs assessments to identify priority capacity needs and design appropriate interventions to address them. There are several initiatives which provide examples of good practice in this area, including the European Union-funded Capacity Development for Agricultural Innovation Systems (CDAIS) project which operated in eight countries across the three regions. Findings from this project and others showed the value of having suitably qualified persons as facilitators in innovation processes. However, there are few people with the skills and expertise required to provide effective support and this was viewed as a major constraint to capacity strengthening efforts in all the three regions. More resources are needed to train facilitators and public agencies should give higher priority to in-house training for staff in functional capacities. viii In addition to capacity needs assessments and effective facilitation, several other success factors for effective capacity strengthening are described. These include adaptive management approaches, strong information and knowledge management processes, and the incorporation of measures to enhance sustainability during programme design. Building on emerging trends and current initiatives, opportunities for strengthening agricultural innovation systems are discussed. Suggestions are made on how RREO can help to address these opportunities; for example, by making use of new information and communication technologies to share knowledge and contribute to training. Based on the findings from the individual and synthesis reports, the RREO are preparing joint action plans to guide their future activities in enhancing innovation capacities in their regions.
This brochure presents the five-year TAP-AIS project (2019-2024) funded by the European Union under the DeSIRA Initiative and implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. The project has the main objective to strengthen capacities to innovate in national agricultural innovation systems (AIS) in the context of climate-relevant, productive, and sustainable transformation of agriculture and food systems in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific.
Sustainable food systems are fundamental to ensuring that future generations are food secure and eat healthy diets. To transition towards sustainability, many food system activities must be reconstructed, and myriad actors around the world are starting to act locally. While some changes are easier than others, knowing how to navigate through them to promote sustainable consumption and production practices requires complex skill sets.
This handbook is written for “sustainable food systems innovators” by a group of innovators from Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe who are leading initiatives to grow, share, sell and consume more sustainable foods in their local contexts. It includes experiences that are changing the organizational structures of local food systems to make them more sustainable. The handbook is organized as a “choose your own adventure” story where each reader – individually or in a facilitated group – can develop their own personalized learning and action journeys according to their priorities. The topics included in this handbook are arranged into four categories of innovations: engaging consumers, producing sustainably, getting products to market and getting organized.
This paper provides a chronology and overview of events and policy initiatives aimed at addressing irrigation sustainability issues in the San Joaquin River Basin (SJRB) of California. Although the SJRB was selected in this case study, many of the same resource management issues are being played out in arid, agricultural regions around the world. The first part of this paper provides an introduction to some of the early issues impacting the expansion of irrigated agriculture primarily on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and the policy and capital investments that were used to address salinity impairments to the use of the San Joaquin River (SJR) as an irrigation water supply. Irrigated agriculture requires large quantities of water if it is to be sustained, as well as supply water of adequate quality for the crop being grown. The second part of the paper addresses these supply issues and a period of excessive groundwater pumping that resulted in widespread land subsidence. A joint federal and state policy response that resulted in the facilities to import Delta water provided a remedy that lasted almost 50 years until the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014 was passed in the legislature to address a recurrence of the same issue. The paper describes the current state of basin-scale simulation modeling that many areas, including California, are using to craft a future sustainable groundwater resource management policy. The third section of the paper deals with unique water quality issues that arose in connection with the selenium crisis at Kesterson Reservoir and the significant threats to irrigation sustainability on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley that followed. The eventual policy response to this crisis was incremental, spanning two decades of University of California-led research programs focused on finding permanent solutions to the salt and selenium contamination problems constraining irrigated agriculture, primarily on the west side. Arid-zone agricultural drainage-induced water quality problems are becoming more ubiquitous worldwide
Local gender norms constitute a critical component of the enabling (ordisabling) environment for improved agricultural livelihoods–alongsidepolicies, markets, and other institutional dimensions. Yet, they havebeen largely ignored in agricultural research for development. Thisviewpoint is based on many years of experience, including a recentmajor comparative research initiative, GENNOVATE, on how gendernorms and agency interact to shape agricultural change at local levels.The evidence suggests that approaches which engage with normativedimensions of agricultural development and challenge underlyingstructures of inequality, are required to generate lasting gender-equitable development in agriculture and natural resource management
Participatory Research (PR) at the International Potato Center (CIP) included seven major experiences. (1) Farmer-back-to-farmer in the 1970s pioneered the idea of working with farmers to identify their needs, propose solutions, and explain the underlying scientific concepts. The ideas were of great influence at CIP and beyond. (2) With integrated pest management (IPM) pilot areas in the early 1990s, entomologists and social scientists developed technologies with farmers in Peru and other countries to control insect pests. Households that adopted just some of the techniques enjoyed high economic returns, and this showed the importance of IPM specialists, social scientists, and farmers working together. (3) Farmer field school (FFS) was adapted for participatory research in the 2000s. Farmers learned that late blight was caused by a microorganism, while testing resistant varieties and fungicides, and researchers took into account more specifically farmer knowledge for training and PR purposes. (4) CIP used participatory varietal selection (PVS) after 2004 to form consortia of farmers, local government, NGOs, and research. Farmers’ preferences were disaggregated by gender. Selection criteria of other market actors were included, and new varieties were released, showing the importance of combining farmer and researcher knowledge in this process. (5) Participatory approaches to develop native potato variety value chains. After 2000, CIP used the PMCA (participatory market chain analysis) and stakeholder platforms to improve smallholders’ access to markets. PMCA brought farmers and other market actors together to form stakeholder platforms which created market innovations, including new potato-based products, expanding the inclusion of diverse actors in the PR processes. (6) Advocacy for PR and policy change with the Andean Change Alliance tested PR methods including PVS and PMCA from 2007 to 2010, providing evidence to influence policies to include smallholders in research and development. (7) After 2010, nutrition-related PR documented anemia among children in the high Andes, which could be mitigated by eating native potatoes rich in zinc and iron. CIP partnered with 20 organizations to improve household incomes and nutrition. Over four decades, CIP continues evolving in using PR, showing that combining social and biological scientists’ input and keeping farmers’ views upfront was key for PR. The experience also showed that the participation of other actors related to the value chains was needed in order to create successful agronomic, market, and social innovations. Future participatory research at CIP may be improved by using ICT to enrich diversity and richness of information sharing among PR actors
The adoption of adequate technologies is essential to improve the performance of different kinds of companies. Although there is literature related to the adoption of technology in dairy agribusiness in developed countries, information about it is scarce in developing countries. The objective of this study was to explore the factors associated with the adoption of technology by dairy agribusiness. A structural analysis was conducted to evaluate the relationships between the internal variables of Antioquia province farms, Colombia, and their technology adoption process. This process was explained by two factors: production-related variables and management-dependent traits. The variables resulting in the greatest impact were pasture improvement, genetics, administration, and technical procedures
The progress of the country and the welfare of the people depends on productivity, as an indicator of efficiency in the use of natural resources, capital and human talent. Ecuador is going through a deep crisis in the production of coffee where demand is much greater than supply with 1,560,000 bags of deficit, mainly of robusta coffee. In this scenario, eleven universities have formed the University Network of Coffee Research and Development (REDUCAFÉ), the cooperation agreements of the universities with the National Association of Coffee Exporters (ANECAFÉ) and the company Solubles Instantáneos C.A., collaborative agreements between companies, producer organizations, universities and the National Institute of Agricultural Research (INIAP) are managed to build sustainable coffee production. The university proposes to implement a knowledge management and organizational innovation model based on the "Government + Company + Academy + Producers" (GEAP) alliance, with the objective of taking advantage of the present and future value of the knowledge assets of the coffee chain and increase efficiency in the production, transformation and commercialization of coffee, in order to improve the living conditions of coffee farmers and contribute to the economic growth of Ecuador
The objective of the article is to show how quality tools help the management of the supply chain in the agricultural sector, in this way quality management of the supply chain will improve operating results in companies that produce asparagus. The company is located in Trujillo, Peru; where the managers of each area were interviewed to determine the practices that will be used in the agribusiness sector. Through the review of the literature, the practices that will be used are supplier relationship management, operations management, and human resources management, the right design and application of these practices will achieve improvements in operational results. The proposed model, Supply Chain Quality Management, is an innovative method that will have a positive impact on the agribusiness supply chain. In addition, quality management in the supply chain is an unusual topic to find in research. Finally, asparagus is a high consumption vegetable and this study provides a great value in increasing economic indicators and competitiveness within the industry
The sustainability of milpa agriculture, a traditional Mayan farming system in southern Belize, is uncertain. For centuries, the milpa has been a sustainable agriculture system. The slash-and-burn aspect of milpa farming, however, has become less reliable and less sustainable over the last 50 years due to several factors, including forest loss, climate change, population growth, and other factors. The traditional milpa practices of slash-and-mulch and soil nutrient enrichment (nutrient cycling) are agroecological practices that produce food in a more sustainable way. Agriculture extension, a government service in Belize, can promote additional agroecological practices to address food and livelihood insecurities in milpa communities. This study examines perceptions of these practices from milpa farmers and agricultural extension officers in Belize using a socio-ecological systems (SES) framework. SES considers multidisciplinary linkages, including social, economic, environmental, cultural, and other factors in the agroecological system. The study finds several of these SES linkages between agroecological practices—specifically slash-and-mulch and soil nutrient enrichment—and the sustainability of the milpa farming system in southern Belize. Milpa communities are part of the broader SES and therefore are affected by changes to it. Milpa communities can also be enabled and participate in solution-finding. The findings imply that increasing the use of agroecology practices in milpa communities is needed and that government involvement and action, particularly from agriculture extension services, can facilitate a more sustainable milpa farming system and therefore more food and livelihood security in milpa communities in Belize
Although Colombia has the potential to be a cocoa producer for fine flavor and high value markets, it is not greatly recognized as such. In spite of the government’s interest to position the country as a major specialty cocoa producer, no strategic actions have been taken to develop and strengthen this aspect of the value chain. This study structured a technology roadmap for the sector that identifies major research and development investment opportunities by examining the current challenges and weaknesses in key dimensions of the sector (e.g., postharvest technology, quality, capacity, and markets) that impinge on quality and add value to the product. These challenges are identified through a multidimensional and region-specific gap analysis that integrates the advances and technological trends developed worldwide as ideal practice scenarios. The findings of this study should help in prioritizing the investment of public and private resources in the sector in order to better position Colombia in the global specialty cocoa market
In recent years, the international status of agriculture in the BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—has been continuously improved. In 2018, the gross agricultural production of the BRICS countries accounted for more than 50% of the world’s total. Further strengthening the developing cooperation of the BRICS countries is of great significance for ensuring global food security. Based on the data from FAOSTAT and UN Comtrade Database, this study builds a food self-sufficiency rate and food security cooperation potential index to quantitatively analyze the food security status, cooperation effectiveness, and future trends of the BRICS countries. The study finds that the overall food security of the BRICS countries is generally showing a trend of volatility and growth, with high rates for cereals and relatively low rates for fresh products. In the future, BRICS food security cooperation should be based on their own resource endowment and socioeconomic characteristics. The BRICS countries need to constantly improve the awareness of joint cooperation and action in the future, focusing on scientific and technological cooperation, information sharing, complementary advantages in trade, and improving the global competitiveness of products. With the help of agricultural science and technology, Brazil is growing as a strong export country of food products. Russia needs to increase the introduction of agricultural science and technology and foreign capital to give full play to its resource advantages. India can improve its food self-sufficiency faster by the construction of a BRICS Agricultural Research Platform. China makes full use of BRICS resources, actively promotes agricultural enterprises to go global, and constantly optimizes the food supply structure. South Africa maintains the advantages of fruit and vegetable industry and increases the introduction and promotion of agricultural science and technology to improve the domestic food production capacity
This case study demonstrates how change agents can utilize networked learning communities (NLCs) with shared leadership to provide the structural supports for learning and influence the implementation of innovations within a social system. Our focus is the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA), a large school system operating 164 accredited schools domestically and internationally. As part of their systemic priority of implementing innovations for educational improvement, DoDEA worked with extension specialists to create NLCs for instructional leaders using the Engelbart’s Organizational Learning and Improvement Schema. The schema is a three-tiered approach to non-formal learning that facilitates leader capacity building at the individual, team, and systemwide levels. To support these learning communities, DoDEA also created regional support teams or opinion leaders to assist with the implementation of systemwide educational technologies through non-formal professional learning. Focus group discussions provided insights on the impact of this model as a mechanism for diffusing educational innovations throughout the system. Findings suggest that implementation of this approach in other international training and development settings can yield positive impacts on the innovation-decision process
The last decade has seen an increasing advancement and interest in the integration of agroecology and participatory action research (PAR). This article aims to: (1) analyze the key characteristics and principles of two case studies that integrated PAR and agroecology in Central America; and (2) learn from the lessons offered by these case studies, as well as others from the literature, on how to better integrate PAR and agroecology. Key principles identified for effective PAR agroecological processes include a shared interest in research by partners, a belief in collective power/action, a commitment to participation, practicing humility and establishing trust and accountability. Important lessons to consider for future work include: (1) research processes that did not start as PAR, can evolve into it; (2) farmer/stakeholder participation in setting the research agenda, from the outset, results in higher engagement and enhanced outcomes; (3) having the right partners for the desired outcomes is key; (4) intentional and explicit reflection is an essential component of PAR processes; and (5) cross-generational collaborations are crucial to long-term benefits. Key challenges that confront PAR processes include the need for time and resources over longer periods; the complexity of multi-actor process facilitation; and institutional barriers within the academy and development organizations, which prevent shifting investment towards integrated PAR agroecological processes
This paper analyses intermediary organisations in developing economy agricultural clusters. The paper critically engages with a growing narrative in studies of intermediaries that have stressed the ownership structure of intermediaries as a key driver for enabling knowledge transfer, inter-firm learning and upgrading of small producers in clusters. Two case studies of Latin American clusters are presented and discussed. The study suggests that in addition to ownership structure, cluster governance and the embeddedness of intermediaries in clusters are critical factors that need to be taken into account in understanding the influence of intermediaries in the upgrading of small producers in clusters
International centres of excellence (ICE) in which foreign research organizations are attracted to developing and emerging countries via dedicated funding schemes to support technological catching-up and strengthening of innovation systems, can have benefits for both host countries and their international research partners through knowledge spill-overs and business opportunities. As analysis of the process of setting up such ICEs is limited, the contribution of this study is assessing the enactment of such innovation policies aimed at inducing cross-border collaboration for R&D and innovation. This is done by investigating stakeholders' perceptions on the establishment and early functioning of Chile's ICE programme. The principal finding is that setting up and operating an ICE requires absorptive capacity of different kinds: not only to embed research and innovations ensuing from an ICE in the host country innovation system, but also to build capacities for operationalizing cross-border collaboration in an ICE and dealing with the dual embeddedness of ICE in both the host country and the home countries of the foreign research organizations. The latter type of absorptive capacity needs to be built both in the research organizations involved, and in the funding agencies enacting the innovation policy instruments that induce ICEs. Dedicated brokers facilitating such cross-border collaboration by bridging institutional and cultural gaps and supporting learning between partners, could be useful in this regard
In this paper it is reviewed the literature on how transitions to sustainable food systems may play out and present a framework based on the Multi-Level Perspective on Socio-Technical Transitions, which builds upon conceptual developments from social and natural science disciplines. The objectives of the framework are to (i) characterize the diversity of existing food systems at a certain geographical scale based on a set of structural characteristics and (ii) classify the food systems in terms of their support by mainstream practices, i.e., dominant food systems connected to regimes; deviate radically from them, niche food systems such as those based on grassroots innovation; or share elements of dominant and niche food systems, i.e., hybrid food systems. An example is given of application of our framework to vegetable food systems with a focus on production, distribution, and consumption of low-or-no pesticide vegetables in Chile. Drawing on this illustrative example the authors reflect on usefulness, shortcomings, and further development and use of the diagnostic framework
This research aims to add to the literature new insights about the interaction processes, which are implemented in different interactive extension approaches, by analysing how farmers attending different extension events shape a network of indirect interactions
Ecological intensification has been proposed as a promising lever for a transition towards more sustainable food systems. Various food systems exist that are based on ecological intensification and may have potential for a sustainability transition. Little is known, however, about their diversity and about how they perform against dominant systems in terms of the multiple societal goals. The aim of this study is to contribute to knowledge about sustainability transitions in food systems through an empirical analysis of vegetable food systems in Chile. The study (i) characterizes the diversity of vegetable food systems in Chile (ii) evaluates the food systems in terms of multiple societal goals, and (iii) assesses their potential for supporting sustainability transition pathways from the perspective of ecological intensification
The Tropical Agriculture Platform (TAP) is a G20 initiative to improve efficiency and effectiveness of capacity development programmes and of knowledge sharing in order to strengthen agricultural innovation systems in the tropics and sub-tropics.
To achieve these goals, TAP has embraced the Agricultural Innovation Systems perspective, acting as a multilateral dynamic facilitation mechanism that enables better coherence and greater impact of capacity development interventions for agricultural innovation.
TAP was officially launched at the first G20 Meeting of Agriculture Chief Scientists (MACS) in September 2012 in Mexico and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) was requested to lead its development.
TAP now comprises more than 40 global, regional and national partners representing agricultural research, education and extension, international development and funding agencies.
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Our repository is composed of relevant resources from our TAP partners and from other organizations/individuals. Resources are also collected by the TAPipedia team from recognized sources including international organizations, research institutes and peer-reviewed journals indexed in scientific databases.
Before being published, the uploaded content is subject to a quality and relevance check done by the TAPipedia team. All the uploaded content is verified by a group of specialists.
Mapping the resources with our taxonomy terms
The TAPipedia repository is focused on Capacity Development (CD) for Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS) and related topics. We have developed a taxonomy of 54 topics which represent relevant aspects and dimensions of CD for AIS. These topics are used as tags for the TAPipedia resources, in order to allow an efficient filtering when searching for resources. Discover our taxonomy here!
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TAPipedia makes available resources in three languages: English, Spanish and French. In the TAPipedia repository you will find a variety of resources, such as manuals, capacity development tools, presentations, project documents, general articles, peer reviewed papers and many others.
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This paper asks: What have been the impacts of farmer- or community-led (informal) processes of research and development in agriculture and natural resource management in terms of food security, ecological sustainability, economic empowerment, gender relations, local capacity to innovate and influence on formal agricultural research and development institutions? An innovative conceptual framework was applied to a diverse set of farmer-led research initiatives in countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to explore approaches, outcomes and impacts of informal agricultural research and development (ARD) facilitated by civil society organisations
The present study aims to characterize a new type of business ventures-agtech companies. Researchers conducted 3 interviews with the owners of agtechs located in Agtech valley and then by using a quantitative approach, collected secondary data of 74 firms from the Brazilian largest agricultural technology Science Park. This article contributes to the literature by characterizing the emerging type of new technology-based ventures within the agribusiness context. The results show that agricultural technology new ventures are involved in virtually all high technology agricultural activities and are among the key solutions for the changes the agribusiness sector needs to go through to face productivity and sustainability pressures. In addition, the findings suggest agribusiness can be a source of high technology innovations. This brings considerable implications for the agribusiness studies
Rapid climatic and socio-economic changes challenge current agricultural R&D capacity. The necessary quantum leap in knowledge generation should build on the innovation capacity of farmers themselves. A novel citizen science methodology, triadic comparisons of technologies or tricot, was implemented in pilot studies in India, East Africa, and Central America. The methodology involves distributing a pool of agricultural technologies in different combinations of three to individual farmers who observe these technologies under farm conditions and compare their performance. Since the combinations of three technologies overlap, statistical methods can piece together the overall performance ranking of the complete pool of technologies. The tricot approach affords wide scaling, as the distribution of trial packages and instruction sessions is relatively easy to execute, farmers do not need to be organized in collaborative groups, and feedback is easy to collect, even by phone
Research on next generation agricultural systems models shows that the most important current limitation is data, both for on-farm decision support and for research investment and policy decision making. One of the greatest data challenges is to obtain reliable data on farm management decision making, both for current conditions and under scenarios of changed bio-physical and socio-economic conditions. This paper presents a framework for the use of farm-level and landscape-scale models and data to provide analysis that could be used in NextGen knowledge products, such as mobile applications or personal computer data analysis and visualization software
Brazil’s influence in agricultural development in Africa has become noticeable in recent years. South–South cooperation is one of the instruments for engagement, and affinities between Brazil and African countries are invoked to justify the transfer of technology and public policies. In this article, examines the case of one of Brazil’s development cooperation programs, More Food International (MFI), to illustrate why policy concepts and ideas that emerge in particular settings, such as family farming in Brazil, do not travel easily across space and socio-political realities. Taking a discourse-analytical perspective, we consider actors’ narratives of family farming and the MFI program, and how these narratives navigate between Brazil and three African countries – Ghana, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe
So far, numerous studies have exhibited Silicon Valley and other thriving innovation ecosystems by distinguishing special characteristics in which their survival rely on sustaining activities that convert them to specific regions. These regions provide ready-made grounds for networking to be innovative. Meantime, it is struggling for innovations to be transformed into measurable economic results if players encounter a weak network of collaborative relationships in the ecosystem. Besides, flowing back the created value in the same region could be another problem with the actual innovation ecosystems to be utilized by all players created this. It is interesting that successful innovation ecosystems share many characteristics with coral reefs in which the process of economic growth and the renewal of an evergreen region is credible in specific collaborative relationships. Hence, the I-Reef model suggests a particular ecosystem where All-Win contribution relationships of the regional innovation networks return the results into the whole region
The rural production in Brazil has experienced a significant competitive impact with the stabilization of the economy promoted by the Real Plan in 1994. Indeed, the Brazilian agriculture has achieved efficiency gains in terms of technology, economies of scale and general modernization of the activity in the field. In this context, the professional management of rural production evolved. However, the governance process does not evolve in the same dimension, and the “governance risk” is still poorly addressed in the rural environment, which often limits the potential of operations. In this study, we sought to deepen the understanding of the factors that impact the implementation of governance practices in rural properties in Brazil. Based on a convenience and non-probability sample, this study seeks to understand the evolution of the governance process on farms and its correlation with the management practices
In the context of an exponential rise in access to information in the last two decades, this special issue explores when and how information might be harnessed to improve governance and public service delivery in rural areas. Information is a critical component of government and citizens’ decision-making; therefore, improvements in its availability and reliability stand to benefit many dimensions of governance, including service delivery. Service delivery is especially difficult in rural areas which contain the majority of the world’s poor but face unique logistical challenges due to their remoteness. This paper reviews the features of the recent information revolution, including increased access to information due to both technological and institutional innovations. The authors then raise the question of why information often fails to support the goals of improved governance and service delivery
There has been an increasing interest in science, technology and innovation policy studies in the topic of policy mixes. While earlier studies conceptualised policy mixes mainly in terms of combinations of instruments to support innovation, more recent literature extends the focus to how policy mixes can foster sustainability transitions. For this, broader policy mix conceptualisations have emerged which also include considerations of policy goals and policy strategies; policy mix characteristics such as consistency, coherence, credibility and comprehensiveness; as well as policy making and implementation processes. It is these broader conceptualisations of policy mixes which are the subject of the special issue introduced in this article. This paper aims at supporting the emergence of a new strand of interdisciplinary social science research on policy mixes which combines approaches, methods and insights from innovation and policy studies to further such broader policy mix research with a specific focus on fostering sustainability transitions. In this article we introduce this topic and present a bibliometric analysis of the literature on policy mixes in both fields as well as their emerging connections
This publication contains twelve modules which cover a selection of major reform measures in agricultural extension being promulgated and implemented internationally, such as linking farmers to markets, making advisory services more demand-driven, promoting pluralistic advisory systems, and enhancing the role of advisory services within agricultural innovation systems. The reform issues consider the changing roles of the various public, private and non-governmental providers, and highlights the collaboration required to create synergies for more efficient and effective high quality services responding to the needs and demands of smallholder farmers. This is a substantially updated version of the 2009 publication of the same title, but with only nine modules. These nine modules were restructured and up-dated, and three modules were added. The layout of the modules changed to allow a better overview for the reader
There is great untapped potential for farm mechanization to support rural development initiatives in low- and middle-income countries. As technology transfer of large machinery from high-income countries was ineffective during the 1980s and 90s, mechanization options were developed appropriate to resource poor farmers cultivating small and scattered plots. More recently, projects that aim to increase the adoption of farm machinery have tended to target service providers rather than individual farmers. This paper uses the Scaling Scan tool to assess three project case studies designed to scale different Mechanization Service Provider Models (MSPMs) in Mexico, Zimbabwe, and Bangladesh. It provides a useful framework to assess the gap between international lessons learned on scaling captured in forty tactical questions over ten “scaling ingredients” as perceived by stakeholders involved in the projects, as well as private sector actors and government employees. Although at first sight the case studies seem to successfully reach high numbers of end users, the assessment exposes issues around the sustainable and transformative nature of the interventions
The need for domestic smallholder farming systems to better support food and nutrition security in the Caribbean is a pressing challenge. The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) faces complex socio-ecological challenges related to historical legacies of plantation agriculture, small population sizes, geographic isolation, jurisdictional diversity, and proneness to natural disasters, all of which underscore the importance of fostering system-wide innovation potential. This paper explores the factors that are impacting the innovation potential of smallholder farming households in four CARICOM small island developing states (St. Lucia, St. Kitts-Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana) using data collected through producer household surveys, focus groups, and key informant interviews
A range of institutions and individuals are engaging in the provision, translation, and application of scientific climate information, with the aim of supporting agricultural decision-making in the context of climate variability and change. This article contributes to understanding political and ethical dimensions of climate services by focusing on how expertise is articulated by those who deliver anticipatory information to potential users. The article draws on interviews and observations with forecasters, advisors, and decision-makers in Belize—a low-lying, coastal country recognised to be particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change
The authors engaged in iterative cycles of mixed methods research around particular questions, actions relevant to stakeholders, new proposal formulation and implementation followed by evaluation of impacts. Capacity building occurred among farmers, technical personnel, and students from multiple disciplines. Involvement of research users occurred throughout: women and men farmers, non-governmental development organizations, Ministries of Health and Agriculture, and, in Ecuador, the National Council on Social Participation
The Mesoamerican Agroenvironmental Program (MAP-Norway) is a multi-dimensional rural development program implemented in Central America since 2009, working with smallholder families, producer organizations, governmental organizations, and regional governance platforms. To monitor, assess, and evaluate the effects of the program on its beneficiaries, MAP-Norway uses a series of indicators that allow project managers and donors to adapt and follow-up on the interventions. Because gender is a cross-cutting theme in the program, gender indicators are used at all levels: families, producer organizations, and governmental organizations and governance platforms. In this document, it is used the experience of MAP-Norway to critically assess these indicators, considering their potential usability in the monitoring and evaluation of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) initiatives
Participatory action research (PAR) is an approach for fully co-creating research into environmental problems with the public. The paper argues this is mostly done for manifest environmental problems that clearly threaten livelihoods and have highly predictable impacts. But the conventional PAR approach is not suitable when the impacts are poorly understood and pose a low threat to livelihoods. Such latent environmental problems do not have a clear conflict to be resolved; instead, the community’s inertia should be overcome. In this article, it is developed what was called the PAR-L approach, for which we present a step-by-step guide and an evaluation framework. The paper then demonstrate this approach on the latent problem of the invasive alien Coralita vine (Antigonon leptopus) on Saba (Caribbean Netherlands) and find that it results in thorough understanding of the community inertia
This chapter presents an innovation system approach for urban agriculture. It argues that urban agriculture is a systemic concept – agriculture intertwined with urban dynamic – but that a systemic approach is often missing. Such an approach allows identifying strengths and weaknesses of urban agriculture for a particular city, region or country, in a comprehensive way. Based on these insights, more precise and targeted policies can be designed to stimulate urban agriculture and innovations needed in its context. The chapter illustrates this through the presentation of urban agriculture in Mexico City, presented in a number of elements of an innovation system, such as system boundaries, dynamics, institutions, knowledge, and learning cultures. Cultural dimensions are as yet only rarely recognized. The chapter describes how the cultural dimensions of urban agriculture are very important in understanding the case of Mexico City, and probably in much more cities
To link agriculture and nutrition with a participatory research approach, was developed a two-stage research programme. In the first stage, was developed an agricultural innovation consisting of three yellow potato cultivars with better nutritional contents, higher yield and better resistance to late blight. Was studied the Colombian germplasm belonging to S. tuberosum Group Phureja, adjusted the methodologies for its nutritional characterization and studied the social and nutritional status of the communities involved in this programme. In the second stage, the study focused on the scaling-up of new potato cultivars to reach many potato producers and consumers in Colombia
The objectives of this study were to (1) develop a participatory method to delineate distinct agricultural landscapes and map the adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers in data-limited contexts, (2) apply the method systematically to understand the adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers in three Central American countries (Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras), and (3) use the information generated to understand the variation in adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers across farming systems and regions
The 2016–2018National Invasive Species Council (NISC) Management Plan and Executive Order 13751 call for US federal agencies to foster technology development and application to address invasive species and their impacts. This paper complements and draws on an Innovation Summit, review of advanced biotechnologies applicable to invasive species management, and a survey of federal agencies that respond to these high-level directives. This study provides an assessment of federal government capacities for the early detection of and rapid response to invasive species (EDRR) through advances in technology application; examples of emerging technologies for the detection, identification, reporting, and response to invasive species; and guidance for fostering further advancements in applicable technologies. Throughout the paper, it is provided examples of how federal agencies are applying technologies to improve programmatic effectiveness and cost-efficiencies. It is also highlighted the outstanding technology-related needs identified by federal agencies to overcome barriers to enacting EDRR. Examples include improvements in research facility infrastructure, data mobilization across a wide range of invasive species parameters (from genetic to landscape scales), promotion of and support for filling key gaps in technological capacity (e.g., portable, field-ready devices with automated capacities), and greater investments in technology prizes and challenge competitions
Public institutions involved in research that aims to strengthen the productivity, profitability and adaptiveness of industries face a multiplicity of challenges when managing for the emergence of cost effective solutions to problems. We reflect upon the learnings of a Government sponsored Visiting Fellow’s programme that we describe as a knowledge management (KM) intervention within Australia’s primary industries Research, Development and Extension (R, D and E) system. Our central concern is to draw upon the learnings of an internet-based initiative in the United States called eXtension to show how ‘traditional’ D and E activities can be transformed
Regional agroecological systems are examples of complex adaptive systems, where sustainability is promoted by social networks that facilitate information sharing, cooperation, and connectivity among specialized components of the system. Much of the existing literature on social capital fails to recognize how networks support multiple social processes. This paper overcomes this problem by analyzing how the social networks of wine grape growers exhibit structural features related to multiple social processes: ties to central actors that build bridging social capital and facilitate the diffusion of innovations, ties that close triangles and build bonding social capital to solve cooperation dilemmas, and ties to individuals that span community boundaries to connect specialized components of the system. It is applied survey data to measure the communication networks of growers in three viticulture regions in California. A combination of descriptive statistics, conditional uniform random graph tests, and exponential random graph models provides empirical support for our hypotheses
The development community has shown increasing interest in the potential of innovation systems and value chain development approaches for reducing poverty and stimulating greater gender equity in rural areas. Nevertheless, there is a shortage of systematic knowledge on how such approaches have been implemented in different contexts, the main challenges in their application, and how they can be scaled to enable large numbers of poor people to benefit from participation in value chains. This chapter provides an overview of value chain development and focuses on the International Potato Center’s experiences with the Participatory Market Chain Approach (PMCA), a flexible approach that brings together smallholder farmers, traders, processors, researchers, and other service providers in a collective process to explore potential business opportunities and develop innovations to exploit them. The PMCA is an exemplary case of South–South knowledge exchange: it was first developed and implemented in the Andes, but has since been introduced, adapted, and applied to different market chains in Africa and Asia, where it has contributed to improved rural livelihoods. The experiences of adjusting and implementing the approach in these different contexts and the outcomes of those interventions, and complementary approaches, are examined in this chapter. Lessons learned from these experiences are shared with a goal of informing the promotion, improvement, and scaling of value chain approaches in the future
The number of theories of innovation systems has grown considerably over the past two decades and several innovation system approaches have been developed. The focus of most has been on the development of technological innovations which create economic value.However, addressing macro-level societal problems – sociotechnical and environmental challengesin which the production, dissemination and use of social and technical knowledge and technology can potentially resolve the problem – has been overlooked. The present study argues that in order to resolve such problems, a combination of technical innovations (covering the technological aspects of the problem) and social innovations (covering the social aspects of the problem) are required.Instead of focusing on the development of a particular technology or industry, an innovation system must focus on solving problems; it must utilize technical innovations alongside economic and social innovations to do so.To this end, the present study highlights the need for a framework for the analysis of macro-level societal problems by reviewing innovation systems literature and proposes a new approach named “Problem-oriented innovation systems”
A model is proposed for the management of innovation in marginalized or depressed areas in three different countries, following the methodology of the Field Schools and taking advantage of the resources available in the region, work began with producers of areas with high marginalization and speakers of its original language, based on the fact that producers are subjects and not only beneficiaries, to say that, based on their decisions, they are the ones who cause the changes in their way of acting and producing, in such a way that in addition to the technological offer that allows access to better productive levels, as well as training in their own contexts, they can: have a third component more; Access to the market through the added value of its primary products and the culmination of the model: agribusiness or agribusiness creation. The work was carried out in Nicaragua, Paraguay following the model proposed and developed in Mexico taking advantage of existing agreements between these countries, the results indicate significant progress in Mexico, Nicaragua, in Paraguay part of the suggested model is still being implemented, thus It will be in the coming years when progress can be reported
The Walmart Initiative was designed to provide technical support to train at least 200 farmers on best practices in marketing produce to larger companies and corporations like Walmart. This support was provided through specialized training, workshops, informational group meetings, and overall awareness of market opportunities. The specialized training included Food Safety Standards and Food Safety Certification requirements, effective production techniques, harvesting, grading, packaging, refrigeration/cold chain requirements, transportation, fiscal responsibility, financial management, record-keeping, and insurance and product liability. As part of a five state initiative, Tuskegee University identified and assisted in the formation of the Small Farmers Agricultural Cooperative comprised of members from several regions throughout the State of Alabama. The Cooperative received training necessary to understand the importance of farmers working together, internal management and controls, sharing of knowledge, resources and experience, doing business at higher volumes/quantities, and operating at a higher level of quality assurance; thus, improving marketing opportunities
Although many smallholder communities are yet to embark on their journey towards gender empowerment, this report presents best practice examples which demonstrate that significant strides can be achieved in relatively short time periods. Women’s Coffee initiatives are engaging consumers about the role of women in coffee production, and providing additional premiums that fund projects targeted at women, such as the projects implemented by UNICAFEC in Peru and Soppexcca in Nicaragua. Women’s committees are providing a platform for women to receive training, access funding, engage in development of micro-enterprises and have a greater say within producer organisations, such as the CODEMU women’s committee in Pangoa in Peru, which is integrated to the cooperative’s management structure. Quotas for women are also rapidly increasing women’s representation on cooperative boards, as seen in PRODECOOP in Nicaragua
Complex problems are being approached through collaborations that cross sectors including businesses, nonprofits, public institutions, and academia. Social Network Analysis (SNA) methods have been adopted to help manage these large collaborations, and it is useful not only for exploring the network dynamics of the collaboration as a whole, but also for exploring where an individual organization lies within the network. Universities can benefit from understanding their position and ties within a network and utilize that information to strengthen their position within these collaborations while fostering collaborations within the network. This study applied SNA to determine the influential position of an urban university within a multi-stakeholder collaborative network (MSCN). The university in this study holds more formal intra-sector relationships and more informal inter-sector relationships with the organization types in the MSCN. The findings also show that the university does hold a prominent position within the informal network of the MSCN; however, it does not hold a position of prominence within the formal network of the MSCN. Fostering these formal and informal relationships would allow the university to strategically promote beneficial collaborations for the university and the network as a whole
This paper uses the Mexican Sustainable Modernisation of Traditional Agriculture (Ma-sAgro) programme as a case study to analyse the challenges to operationalizing agricultural innovation systems. The authors outline the relationship between Mexico ́s extension approaches and global trends in technological change. They then analyse how MasAgro ́s innovatio nnetworks are operationalized. Thirdly, is identified ways to efficiently target in innovation networks, using a case-study from the state of Chiapas. Finally, the paper draw lessons from MasAgro ́s innovation systems. This research is based on a comprehensive literature review, three years field observations, and 648 interviews with farmers and key stakeholders
he article describes the institutionalization of farmer participatory research and plant breeding that has occurred in Honduras over the past 22 years and demonstrates how this approach can offer a positive response to climate change and sustainable agricultural development. In Honduras, participatory plant breeding (PPB) involves the collaboration of farmer researchers organized in local agricultural research committees (CIALs), plant breeders, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). While earlier debates often questioned the role of farmers in agricul-tural research, particularly the synergistic effect of this role with regard to scientific research, little empirical evidence was provided to settle this debate. Nor was the contextualization of farmer research adequately addressed. The article responds to calls for studies that detail what actually happens in development practice
Mixed family farms produce almost half of the world food. Increasing food supply in developing countries requires increasing productivity of both land and farmers’ labour as key to increase household income, food security and reduce poverty. A research project developed into Uruguayan vegetable family farms (2006–2010) revealed that the main life quality problems were low family income, high work overload, lack of leisure time, and health problems associated with work. In many of these farms, labour productivity was lower than the opportunity cost of labour. Understanding labour productivity determinants would help to guide co-innovation processes of family farm systems. The objective of this study was to develop and apply a method to analyze labour productivity (LP) at farm level, identifying the main causes of low LP, to use its results in a co-innovation process. We selected 14 vegetable-beef cattle farms with different resource endowment. The method developed involved characterization and quantification of labour allocation to farm activities, calculation of technical coefficients that explained LP and quantification of improvement scenarios
The interactions between bottom-up initiatives and top-down structures in the implementation of regional development policies and projects are complex in theoretical and practical terms. Using concepts such as transformative social innovation, adaptive governance, and bridging institutions, we developed an analytical framework to enhance understanding of the processes by which local top-down and bottom-up forces enhance sustainable rural development by co-developing bottom-linked governance. Bottom-linked governance is a multi-level middle ground where actors from various political levels, geographical scales and industry sectors come together to share decision-making. Social innovation has the potential to be transformative, but to do this, it has to be able to scale-up and provoke changes in the governance system. Using a rural social innovation initiative in Costa Rica, the authors tested our framework and considered the enabling factors of bottom-linked governance. They comprise the various bridging roles the initiative must play: network enabler; knowledge broker; resource broker; transparency and conflict resolution agent; and shared vision champion. This paper also considered the critical success factors of bottom-linked governance. Bottom-linked governance and social innovation together comprise how planning practice contributes to social-ecological regional development. Sharing of power and participatory decision-making facilitate more flexible, inclusive and effective planning. Our analytical framework was helpful in understanding how a social innovation initiative fostered transformation and contributed to sustainable rural development
Low and slow adoption of improved agricultural technologies among smallholders often frustrate technology development and promotion efforts in the developing world. That is especially true for technologies requiring high initial investment. This study investigates how increasing farmers' awareness and exposure to new agricultural technologies through the creation of systematic linkages in the research-to-development continuum affect adoption. The double hurdle and duration analysis models were applied to a sample of 820 smallholder households producing wheat and barley in Syria. The results show that increasing exposure and awareness of the zero tillage technology through organized field days and demonstration trials, complemented with providing free access to costly zero tillage seeders for first-time users, increases the propensity, speed, and intensity of adoption. The intensity of adoption is also positively influenced by wheat acreage and farmers' access to credit
Dairy foods provide a significant portion of the recommended daily nutrition for much of the US population. Improving the availability of safe and nutritious dairy products and decreasing the environmental impact of the dairy community continue to be high priorities for both industry and the public sector. In recognition of these shared priorities, scientists and other specialists from the USDA, National Dairy Council, industry, academia, and nongovernmental organizations participated in the “Elevating Dairy Research and Extension Through Partnership” meeting on June 19, 2018. The purpose of the meeting was to strengthen partnerships and identify dairy-related research and extension needs in human nutrition, environmental sustainability, food safety, and product innovation that would benefit from enhanced coordination and collaboration across the dairy community, academia, and government. To catalyze further progress on these topics, the meeting organizers agreed to leverage the content and expertise that emerged from the meeting to develop a dairy research and extension coordination roadmap. The roadmap will establish and articulate a vision for coordinated collaboration between USDA researchers, the National Dairy Council, university researchers, extension specialists, and other dairy community stakeholders in the private and public sectors. This article represents the proceedings of the meeting and is intended to broadly communicate the dairy research and extension discussion and next steps to the dairy research and extension communities and other stakeholders in industry, academic, and government sectors
The Colombian Ministry of Agriculture Colombia, an international research center and a national farmers’ organization developed a data-driven agricultural program that: (i) compiles information from multiple sources; (ii) interprets that data; and (iii) presents the knowledge to farmers through the local advisory services. Data was collected from multiple sources, including small-scale farmers. Machine learning algorithms combined with expert opinion defined how variation in weather, soils and management practices interact and affect maize yield of small-scale farmers. This knowledge was then used to provide guidelines on management practices likely to produce high, stable yields. The effectiveness of the practices was confirmed in on-farm trials. The principles established can be applied to rainfed crops produced by small-scale farmers to better manage their crops with less risk of failure.
Small trading activities are a prevalent form of self-employment in developing countries, but their integration into supply value chains is not efficient, especially when it comes to perishable produce. This study tests a novel approach to improve their efficiency by reducing the time and cost of sourcing produce by aggregating purchases through the use of an app and centralized distribution system. Fruit and vegetable vendors in Bogotá currently travel most days to a central market to purchase produce, incurring substantial time and monetary costs. A social enterprise attempted to shorten the supply chain between farmers and vendors by aggregating orders from many small stores, sourcing directly from farmers, and delivering them to the stores
This paper collects and examines the experiences of the leaders of the U.S. North Central Region’s entire set of farm link services, including both active and closed programs. The research question explored is, what do farm link program leaders view as best practices in serving the needs of farm seekers and farm owners who do not have a family successor, and what do their recommendations suggest for investment and policy going forward?
This paper draws from interviews with (1) US farmers who have adopted automated systems; (2) individuals employed by North American firms that engineer, manufacture, and/or repair these technologies; and (3) US farm laborers (immigrant and domestic) and representatives from farm labor organizations. The argument draws from the literature interrogating the fictional expectations that underlie capitalist reproduction, reading it through a distributed (ontological) lens. The framework questions whether concepts like ‘automation’ and ‘skill’ provide sufficient analytic and conceptual clarity to critically engage these platforms and suggests that we think about what these technologies do rather than fixate on what each is
Many indigenous vegetables are generally underutilized across different cultures, but they remain alternatives to exotic vegetables that often are expensive. This study investigated effects of participation in indigenous vegetable production on livelihood of farmers. Multistaged sampling was used to collect data from 222 vegetable farmers sampled from using a semi-structured questionnaire. Principal component analysis and endogenous switching regression (ESR) were employed for analysis
Latin America has historically been a vanguard of agroecology. In Nicaragua, an agroecological transition is occurring, with three decades of building a groundswell based on the farmer-to-farmer movement and the recent institutionalization of agroecology in national law. Yet, problems remain with agroecology’s diffusion. We introduce the Technological Innovation Systems approach to examine systemic barriers to the agroecological transition and cycles of blockages caused by barriers’ interactions. Based on qualitative data from north-central Nicaragua, this paper finds the main barriers hindering the agroecological transition include weak guidance of the search for agroecology, insufficient capacities and quantities of resources, and lacking market development. Beyond the Nicaragua case, the analysis points at the importance of using socio-technical systems analysis to better understand and address the root causes behind issues blocking national agroecological transitions
The rise of new powers in development has generated much debate on the extent to which South–South Cooperation (SSC) constitutes a new paradigm of development more relevant to African needs or a disguise for a new form of imperialism. This paper critically examines the rise of Chinese and Brazilian technical and economic cooperation in African agriculture with two cases drawn from Ghana and Mozambique. Using a historical framework, policy documents, case studies, and an analysis of the political economy of agrarian development, this paper trace the role of agricultural development in the relations of China and Brazil in Africa, and the extents to which recent developments in agribusiness and structural neoliberal reforms of African economies have influenced Brazilian and Chinese contemporary engagements with African agriculture. We examine the extent to which the different policy frameworks, political interests in agriculture, and institutional frameworks influence and impede the outcomes of Chinese and Brazilian development intents
Social learning processes can be the basis of a method of agricultural innovation that involves expert and empirical knowledge. In this sense, the objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness and sustainability of an innovation process, understood as social learning, in a group of small farmers in the southern highlands of Peru. Innovative proposals and its permanence three years after the process finished were evaluated. It was observed that innovation processes generated are maintained over time; however, new innovations are not subsequently generated
As social and ecological problems escalate, the role of collective capacity and knowledge is becoming more critical in reaching solutions. This capacity and knowledge are dispersed among diverse stakeholder organizations. Thus, organizations in the private, public and civil society sectors are experiencing pressure to address these complex challenges through collaborative action in the form of multi-stakeholder partnerships. One major challenge to securing and maintaining partner engagement in these voluntary collaborative initiatives is defining the value proposition for prospective and existing partner organizations. Understanding the relationship between different forms of partner involvement and the subsequent resources that partners stand to gain is necessary to articulate the value proposition of the partnership to partners. This study conducts a survey of partner organizations from 15 different sustainability-focused multi-stakeholder partnerships in Canada. The study compares three partner strategies for implementation and value capture and discover that each strategy is associated with different partner-level resource outcomes. The findings indicate that product stewardship strategies are associated with financial and organizational capital, marketing and promotion with human capital, and internal implementation structures with shared capital. This study has implications for multi-stakeholder partnership researchers and practitioners because it suggests the possibility that certain partner-level outcomes could rely on the partner, as well as partnership implementation strategies
Addressing complex environmental problems requires the collaboration of stakeholders with divergent perspectives, a goal that is challenged by diverse factors. Challenges hindering multi-stakeholder collaboration (MSC) for sustainability have previously been addressed in the context of transnational partnerships. However, less is known regarding how place-based MSC operates, especially in the context of the Global South. To contribute to addressing the factors that hinder place-based MSC for sustainability in the Global South, this paper analyzed 38 MSC projects spanning diverse ecological and social contexts across Mexico. In a series of participatory workshops, 128 stakeholders from academia, government, business, local communities, and civil society organizations discussed factors that hinder place-based MSC and co-constructed strategies to strengthen collaboration. Some challenges coincided with those identified in previous studies (e.g., divergent visions, inadequate project planning), whereas other concerns that have not been commonly regarded as important emerged as crucial obstacles for MSC. This paper discuss these challenges in the context of areas of limited statehood and point to the traditions of popular education and participatory action research as a source of valuable tools for place-based MSC. We identify strategies capable of addressing diverse challenges, a result that could aid prioritizing resource allocation to strengthen MSC
Collaborative approaches are being promoted as inclusive forums for bringing state and non-state interests together to solve complex environmental problems. Networks have been recognized through previous research as important ways to involve stakeholders in such forums with members participating in knowledge creation and sharing as part of deliberative processes. Less well understood is the effectiveness of network creation and promotion by external actors, especially in relation to knowledge creation and sharing. A case study approach was used to evaluate the efforts of a farm organization to organize a provincially-cohesive network of locally-elected agricultural representatives in Ontario, Canada. In this paper, the Province of Ontario, Canada provides an empirical setting for evaluating the structure and function of a deliberately created network of locally elected farmers whose development was supported by a key provincial farm organization involved in collaborative processes for protecting drinking water sources
The IFAD-NUS project, implemented over the course of a decade in two phases, represents the first UN-supported global effort on neglected and underutilized species (NUS). This initiative, deployed and tested a holistic and innovative value chain framework using multi-stakeholder, participatory, inter-disciplinary, pro-poor gender- and nutrition-sensitive approaches. The project has been linking aspects often dealt with separately by R&D, such as genetic diversity, selection, cultivation, harvest, value addition, marketing, and final use, with the goal to contribute to conservation, better incomes, and improved nutrition and strengthened livelihood resilience. The project contributed to the greater conservation of Andean grains and their associated indigenous knowledge, through promoting wider use of their diversity by value chain actors, adoption of best cultivation practices, development of improved varieties, dissemination of high quality seed, and capacity development. Reduced drudgery in harvest and postharvest operations, and increased food safety were achieved through technological innovations. Development of innovative food products and inclusion of Andean grains in school meal programs is projected to have had a positive nutrition outcome for targeted communities. Increased income was recorded for all value chain actors, along with strengthened networking skills and self-reliance in marketing. The holistic approach taken in this study is advocated as an effective strategy to enhance the use of other neglected and underutilized species for conservation and livelihood benefits
The purpose of this study is to explore the factors that drive producers to market their products through Community Support Agriculture (CSA) by using a county-level data set from the US. Results using a Tobit model indicate that specific operator characteristics, such as young and female operators and those engaged in farming as primary occupation, play a strongly positive role in the likelihood of marketing through CSA; farms with small size, rented land, and engagement in growing vegetables, melons, fruits and tree nut crops are more interested in marketing via CSA; households with higher income and females significantly increase the share of farms marketing through CSA; presence of children and seniors and being married are negatively related to the demand for CSA foods. Moreover, counties with higher density of population, establishments-supermarket and other grocery stores, and legislation or active programs that encourage local food consumption tend to encourage more farms marketing through CSA
The purpose of this study is to develop a robust, rigorous and replicable methodology that is flexible to data limitations and spatially prioritizes the vulnerability of agriculture and rural livelihoods to climate change. The methodology was applied in Vietnam, Uganda and Nicaragua, three contrasting developing countries that are particularly threatened by climate change. We conceptualize vulnerability to climate change following the widely adopted combination of sensitivity, exposure and adaptive capacity. We used Ecocrop and Maxent ecological models under a high emission climate scenario to assess the sensitivity of the main food security and cash crops to climate change. Using a participatory approach, we identified exposure to natural hazards and the main indicators of adaptive capacity, which were modelled and analysed using geographic information systems. We finally combined the components of vulnerability using equal-weighting to produce a crop specific vulnerability index and a final accumulative score. We have mapped the hotspots of climate change vulnerability and identified the underlying driving indicators
What are key characteristics of rural innovators? How are their experiences similar for women and men, and how are they different? To examine these questions, this study draw on individual interviews with 336 rural women and men known in their communities for trying out new things in agriculture. The data form part of 84 GENNOVATE community case studies from 19 countries. Building on study participants’ own reflections and experiences with innovation in their agricultural livelihoods, we combine variable-oriented analysis and analysis of specific individuals’ lived experience. Results indicate that factors related to personality and agency are
what most drive women’s and men’s capacity to innovate. Access to resources is not a prerequisite but rather an important enabling aspect. Different types of women have great potential for local innovation, but structural inequalities make men better positioned to access resources and leverage support. Men’s support is important when women challenge the status quo
This study aims to describe and characterize the state of understanding about RSBs, and to fill knowledge gaps about their role and potential impact. The article will explore the historic and possible future trajectories of the RSBs at the country- and global-levels, by responding to three closely-related research questions: 1. What are the governance structures of the roundtables for sustainable beef? 2. What actions have been taken by, or are planned or likely to be taken by, the roundtables for sustainable beef, that are intended to enhance the sustainability of beef supply chains? 3. What are the reported a) perceived sustainability impacts, b) future impact pathways and anticipated impacts, and c) potential limitations of the roundtables for sustainable beef?
Situate within new institutionalism literature, this paper builds a complex system model of institutional analysis for adaptive governance. This model combines Young’s institutional environmental analysis method, elements of subsequent environmental governance projects models, and ideas of multiple institutional levels and drivers. By applying the model, policy instruments are identified that build agricultural producer livelihoods improving their adaptive capacity to respond to climate change and drought. In relation to three case studies in Canada, Chile, and Argentina, policy instruments that deliver co benefits to improve agricultural producer technological, social, human, economic, and natural capital include crop insurance, income stabilization instruments, farm water infrastructure grants, environmental farm planning (improving soil management), drought predictions and alerts, and watershed management plans. Missing instruments included international instruments of mitigation and adaptation through disaster risk reduction, climate change mitigation instruments, and involvement of people in review and assessment of instruments in the context of climate change (iterative anticipatory governance). The model allows for instrument redesign through interdisciplinary interaction with the agricultural and policy community, reviewing climate change scenarios, identifying missing and weak instruments and dimensions of adaptive governance
This article analyzes the politics of localizing food systems at play in the FPCs of Ghent (Belgium) and Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, USA). The focus is on the development of urban agriculture in both cities, and includes an analysis of the politics of scale through three scalar practices of scale framing, scale negotiating, and scale matching. This analysis reveals that differences in the way in which the politics of scale are played out in both FPCs resulted in the creation of different opportunities and constraints for urban agriculture development
Developing regions' food system has transformed rapidly in the past several decades. The food system is the dendritic cluster of R&D value chains, and the value chains linking input suppliers to farmers, and farmers upstream to wholesalers and processors midstream, to retailers then consumers downstream. This study analyze the transformation in terms of these value chains' structure and conduct, and the effects of changes in those on its performance in terms of impacts on consumers and farmers, as well as the efficiency of and waste in the overall chain. We highlight the role of, and implications for agricultural research, viewed broadly as farm technology as well as research pertaining to all aspects of input and output value chain
This paper presents the results of an exploratory case-study analysis of a corn stover value-chain development process in two regions: Ontario (Canada) and Flanders (Belgium). Applying an integrated analytical framework and comparing the results with literature, we identified a number of barriers for novel value-chain development and state seven concrete actions that value-chain actors can take to overcome these barriers. These recommendations can be used by policy makers wishing to facilitate the development of novel biomass value chains in their region; by farmers and industrial actors working to establish new avenues to valorize currently underutilized biomass sources and create additional revenues; and by researchers seeking to disseminate and implement their knowledge about novel technologies as well as socio-economic insights
Relatively little information is known about research and extension within peri-urban environments concerning soil health and management. Ethnopedological work has contributed to ethno-scientific knowledge by bridging the communication gap between scientists and locals concerning soil taxonomies, soil health, and soil fertility management. This study explores mental models of farmers and experts, examining the communication gap concerning soil health and food security. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from farmers (n = 19) and experts (n = 13). All stakeholders perceived pressures from urbanization as the main barrier to farmers' ability to continue to produce food, maintain their soil health, and contribute to national food security
In this paper, is introduced an integrated supply chain planning tool for fresh vegetables that takes into consideration the characteristics and resources of three specific states in Mexico, to make recommendations in terms of the crops to be planted, the timing of planting and harvesting, and what markets to target such that the farmers’ profits are maximized. Also relevant is the selection of the appropriate agriculture technology level (e.g. open field, shade structures, or greenhouse) within each region analyzed. A case study based on fresh produce exporting regions of Mexico is presented. The results of the case study show that the judicious use of protected agriculture technology can render significant additional profits for farmers.
Dairy extension specialists must adapt to meet the challenges of a dairy industry that is increasingly adopting technology to assist with daily management activities as well as to make long-term decisions. Specialists typically work with youth programs to provide educational opportunities for young people that will attract new people into the dairy industry. Although many traditional methods used to transfer information to our clientele are still useful, there are a variety of new technologies available for providing information and engaging producers, youth, and consumers.The objective of this review is to provide an overview of the changes that have occurred in the southeastern dairy industry and to discuss the opportunities for dairy extension in the United States Southeast to provide programs to meet the needs of dairy producers in the future.
This article presents programmatic lessons on scaling up research for development innovations that were implemented through the Canadian International Food Security Research Fund (CIFSRF). Co-funded by the International Development Research Center (IDRC) and Global Affairs Canada (GAC), CIFSRF was a nine-year, two-phased program (2009–2018) that supported applied research to develop, test and scale proven food and nutrition security innovations. The outline of this paper is as follows. The next (2nd) section provides an overview of CIFSRF program design as it relates to scaling and outlines the methodological approach used to analyse project results. CIFSRF's program objectives seemingly recognized the utility of a systems perspective and sought to support projects that engaged with relevant socio-ecological dynamics and complexities in project intervention areas as a way to support innovations (at scale) that could contribute to more sustainable system outcomes
In this paper, is first described the design and development process of a modular ICT application system called GeoFarmer. Geofarmer was designed to provide a means by which farmers can communicate their experiences, both positive and negative, with each other and with experts and consequently better manage their crops and farms. We designed GeoFarmer in a collaborative, incremental and iterative process in which user needs and preferences were paramount. The aim was to get a customizable system for near real-time data flows between system users, i.e., experts to farmers, which could support processes of co-innovation and usage of GeoFarmer for citizen (farmer) science projects. Was described the iterative development process based on our experiences with GeoFarmer in five projects within four geographical domains in Tanzania, Uganda, Colombia, and Ghana
On-farm agricultural innovation through incorporation of new technologies and practices requires access to resources such as knowledge, financial resources, training, and even emotional support, all of which require the support of different actors such as peers, advisors, and researchers. The literature has explored the support networks that farmers use and the overall importance ranking of different support actors, but it has not looked in detail at how these networks may differ for different farmers. This study fills this gap by looking at farmer support network configurations through the lens of the social capital available to them in such configurations. Using a Chilean fruit-farmer case, was examined how different types of social capital (bonding, bridging, and linking) are used to achieve what has been called ‘ambidexterity’. Ambidexterity implies both that open networks (based on linking and bridging social capital) are used to explore and access new knowledge and resources, and that closed networks (based on bonding social capital) are used to successfully implement and exploit new technologies and practices
The aim of this study was to analyze the value chain of lupine bean across the stages, agents, flows and activities (primary and support), considering socioeconomic and productive aspects, allowing the expansion of knowledge of the same one and contributing with the planning of competitive strategies. A systemic methodology was applied which involves socioeconomic, integration, production, performance and linkage aspects among the agents, reflecting the economic process of the value chain of lupine bean
This paper presents a qualitative case study of a US based beef co-operative integrated to a VBSC. Was used an analytical framework of viability, sustainability and resilience to analyse impacts at farm-level. Our analysis highlights a number of positive effects on farm-level viability, sustainability and resilience including improvements to market orientation and price stability, among others which provide crucial insights for beef PO development in Ireland. Furthermore, this paper outlines current Irish stakeholder views towards beef POs and highlights some potential caveats of such an approach in the Irish context
This paper presents the common framework on CD for AIS developed by TAP and points to the relevance of meta-learning and the importance of “functional capacities”, if higher education institutions and their graduates are to become active players in the agricultural innovation system. The Framework was developed through an inclusive, participatory and multi-stakeholders approach with contributions by TAP Partners, including FARA and the Global Conference on Higher Education and Research in Agriculture. The Common Framework consists of a conceptual background document, a synthesis paper and a guidance note on operationalization of the Framework. In January 2016, TAP partners approved this Common Framework which is now being applied in eight countries in Africa (4), Asia (2) and Central America (2) with support of the EU-funded Capacity Development for Agricultural Innovation Systems (CDAIS) project, jointly implemented by AGRINATURA and FAO in collaboration with local partners from 2015 to 2018
The study focuses on how levels of innovation, measured by complexity and investments requirements of the adopted technologies, relates to innovative behavior and complying with social responsibility practices, as two indicators of the farmer's behavior towards innovation. A typology of farmers with different technological
levels was constructed based on multivariate techniques, according to the adoption of seven technologies. The main objective of the study was to relate SR and innovative behavior to the technology clusters
The aim of the study was to strengthen the capacities of the farmers in a participatory process to adapt to climate change. It was assumed that an innovation platform could support generation and exchange of knowledge on climate change, exchange and identification and implementation of options for adaptation tailored to local needs by the participating farmers
This paper reportson the implementation of a conceptual framework to carry out an impact evaluation of multi-stakeholder innovation systems using the NLA as the object of study. The assessment focused on the business relationship constructs of trust and capacity development. Survey interviews, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions collected data from agribusiness stakeholders linked with the NLA and from a control group of stakeholders involved with other networks. The quantitative data were analysed through factor and regression analyses
Este documento presenta los resultados de la primera parte de la consultoría realizada para el RIMISP-Centro Latinoamericano para el Desarrollo Rural. El objetivo de la consultoría es: “contar con un análisis sobre productividad de la ganadería de carne de la Costa del Ecuador, tanto por hectárea, como por persona empleada, diferenciando por niveles tecnológicos y tipos de productores. La finalidad última es poder comparar la productividad de la producción de carne en la Costa ecuatoriana con la de sus principales competidores.” Los puntos a cumplir según los términos de referencia de esta primera parte son los siguientes (aquí reordenados para mayor fluidez de la información), los mismos que se desarrollan a lo largo de este documento: 1. Determinar el área de tierra dedicada a la ganadería y la producción nacional y localizada de carne. 2. Determinar la importancia de la ganadería de carne de la Costa en la generación del PIB y en el aporte a la generación de empleo. 3. Analizar la evolución de la balanza comercial (exportaciones e importaciones) de carne bovina. 4. Realizar un balance general oferta – demanda de carne bovina 5. Describir las principales políticas aplicadas en los últimos años a la ganadería de carne, así como los programas y proyectos existentes a nivel del gobierno central, los gobiernos autónomos descentralizados y la cooperación para apoyar el fomento de la producción, el faenamiento y la industrialización de la carne. 6. Determinar los rendimientos en ganadería de carne de la Costa, teniendo en cuenta las categorías de productores de ganado de carne. 7. Establecer los costos de producción para categorías de productores y un costo de producción promedio para la región. 8. Analizar la estructura del costo de producción, determinando los componentes más importantes de ese costo. 9. Hacer un mapa de la cadena de la carne a la que están vinculados los productores: intermediarios, transportistas, faenadores y los sistemas de introducción a los camales y la posterior venta al detalle, incluido un análisis de la industria. 10. Analizar la institucionalidad de la cadena. 11. Determinar el acceso a servicios relevantes para la cadena. 12. Realizar un resumen de la problemática estructural.
El Programa Territorios Productivos (PTP) se diseñó para potenciar la productividad, la producción y los ingresos de los hogares en condición de pobreza, que habitan en municipios y localidades en donde los pequeños productores y campesinos tienen un peso social y económico preponderante. La estrategia consiste en fortalecer la organización de los participantes a nivel local y territorial, para que a través de ella puedan realizar un conjunto de inversiones dirigidas a resolver cuellos de botella de los principales ejes de la economía del territorio en que ellos participan. Los bienes y servicios requeridos para ello se obtendrán a través de un mayor y mejor acceso a la oferta programática gubernamental, organizando la demanda desde abajo y orientada por planes de desarrollo de mediano plazo. Estas notas describen las aprendizajes obtenidas con el programa
Esta nota de aprendizaje sintetiza la metodología utilizada durante el proceso de selección y capacitación de los equipos técnicos del programa piloto TP, es decir, a los promotores comunitarios y promotores de territorios funcionales, quienes serán responsables de la implementación del programa en las localidades seleccionadas. La idea esencial de este proceso es que debía de tratarse de un proceso absolutamente meritocrático, sin barreras de entrada ni preferencias de acceso para nadie, y donde la selección final fuera el resultado de las características y capacidades de los candidatos
El presente manual está dirigido a todos los productores y organizaciones campesinas que quieren comercializar sus productos en Circuitos Cortos, así como a los equipos técnicos que los acompañan en este desafío. Se entrega información práctica sobre los distintos tipos de CC existentes, los aspectos y técnicas de venta más apropiadas, los requisitos sanitarios, legales y tributarios a los cuales están sujetos, y las certificaciones y sellos que pueden distinguirlos
En este documento, encontraremos una explicación de cómo funcionó la alianza público privada como modelo de gestión en el Plan Semillas, complementado por una herramienta financiera, el fideicomiso, para habilitar un componente de financiamiento a pequeños productores. El Plan Semillas como APP ha sido un modelo no solamente exitoso, sino innovador. Ha producido beneficios económicos y sociales sostenibles para todos los actores del proyecto, contribuyendo a una sociedad ecuatoriana más inclusiva y más productiva. Es un modelo de APP que debe ser visto para su réplica en otros sectores y compartir la experiencia a otros países de la región. II Objetivos de la Consultoría El objetivo de la consultoría y del presente documento es de sistematizar la experiencia de articulación pública privada en los proyectos “Plan Semilla” y “FICA” dentro del alcance de los cuatro objetivos específicos: Caracterizar el modelo de gestión de articulación público-privada en el Plan Semillas y FICA, su funcionamiento, con identificación de actores y roles en cada uno; Establecer los principales logros del Plan Semillas y FICA en términos de proceso, resultados e impactos preliminares, de acuerdo a la documentación del MAGAP y percepción de los actores privados; Sistematizar las ventajas y desventajas de la articulación público-privada en el Plan Semillas y en el FICA desde la perspectiva de los actores estatales y privados, identificar los principales obstáculos; Extraer las lecciones aprendidas y formular recomendaciones para un mejor desempeño del Plan Semillas y para la política pública de financiamiento en base a la experiencia del FICA.
El PMC Maíz amarillo duro tuvo como objetivo principal que el país llegue a la autosuficiencia de manera competitiva, es decir que ya no dependa de las importaciones y que la demanda sea cubierta por la producción nacional con precios adecuados en relación a la oferta internacional, logrando al mismo tiempo mejorar la calidad de vida del agricultor y la rentabilidad para todos los actores de la cadena. Para lograr esto se plantearon seis objetivos: Incrementar la productividad, mejorar la comercialización, disponer de capacidad de acopio y secado, implementar riego a nivel de parcelas, fortalecer la asociatividad, la capacidad de diálogo y gestión de las organizaciones; y, establecer mecanismos alternativos de financiamiento. Este estudio determina que todos los objetivos, a excepción del riego y el financiamiento, han tenido un avance significativo. La productividad ha llegado a 5.8 Ton/Ha muy cerca de la meta planteada, se han creado e implementado mecanismos de comercialización de gran impacto y muy ágiles como son las ruedas de negocio, apoyadas por un reglamento de comercialización y fijación de un precio de comercialización que motive al agricultor, las asociaciones de productores agrupadas alrededor de la Corporación Nacional de Maiceros, de reciente creación, participa en las reuniones de fijación de precios y llega a acuerdos con la industria de manera directa. Adicionalmente, se han realizado avances importantes para proveer a las asociaciones de centros de acopio, secado y almacenamiento
Este libro recoge los principales aportes y contribuciones a las innovaciones rurales. Los trabajos proceden de una decena de países diferentes, y presentan diversos acercamientos teóricos y prácticos. La multiplicidad de casos analizados es una muestra de la creciente riqueza conceptual y analítica sobre el desarrollo rural en nuestro continente, a la vez que ponen en cuestión muchos de los paradigmas imperantes. El objetivo es aportar a una discusión que actualmente está abierta y que debe permitir el avance en el diseño de estrategias de desarrollo más sólidas y consistentes
En síntesis, el presente documento tiene un carácter marcadamente exploratorio. Por lo tanto, el objetivo es modesto pues no se pretende medir o evaluar los efectos, sino identificarlos y describirlos en la medida que los actores del proceso los signifiquen como tales. Esto permitirá, a futuro, estudios más profundos sobre la base de una mejor compresión de las lógicas intrínsecas de los procesos de innovación. El documento está organizado en cuatro apartados. El primero resume las aproximaciones conceptuales relevantes sobre el tema. El segundo, presenta los casos estudiados y trabaja sobre los efectos recopilados en cada experiencia. La tercera parte se centra en los desafíos vinculados al escalamiento
El presente documento realiza un análisis del proceso de instalación del Grupo de Diálogo Rural (GDR) Perú, desplegado durante el año 2017 en el marco del proyecto Jóvenes rurales, territorios y oportunidades: una estrategia de diálogo de políticas (Rimisp-FIDA 2017-2019). Para el análisis se toman como referencia los aprendizajes obtenidos del proceso de conformación de los primeros GDR a comienzos de la década (Ecuador, Colombia, México y El Salvador), orientando el foco de aproximación en las siguientes dimensiones: (i) Proceso de conformación (selección de actores y convocatoria); (ii) Composición del GDR; (iii) Método de trabajo; (iv) Rol del Secretario Técnico; (v) Área de comunicaciones; (vi) Contribución o nivel de incidencia esperado; y (vii) Objetivos, estrategia de acción, proyecciones y desafíos
Este documento busca obtenern un mejor conocimiento sobre los mencionados mecanismos de articulación a mercados que sirvan de insumos para un diálogo informado entre los actores públicos y privados, así como para el intercambio de aprendizajes entre los miembros del Grupo de Diálogo Andino, por lo que se ha decidido la realización de un estudio de identificación y caracterización inicial de los mismos, cuyos resultados sean presentados ante el Grupo y sirvan además como experiencias de referencia en análisis posteriores de mayor profundidad
Este documento describe experiencias exitosas de organización económica de pequeños y medianos productores (denominados también campesinos, rancheros, pequeños agricultores o milperos, quienes en su mayoría enfrentan condiciones de pobreza y marginación) y se inscribe en esfuerzos que grupos sociales en México realizan para reivindicar la importancia de estos productores y para inducir una política pública que reoriente a favor de ellos los apoyos destinados al sector agropecuario con fórmulas de asistencia técnica eficaz, favorables al medio ambiente, equitativas socialmente y que fomenten los mercados locales. Las experiencias descritas, de varias regiones del país, corresponden a un abanico amplio de figuras asociativas, las cuales se definieron a partir de sendos productos ligados con el interés de ingresos económicos –como el café, los granos básicos, la leche, recursos forestales, agaves, entre otros– pero luego escalaron en la cadena productiva, de tal forma que ahora varias de ellas venden sus productos de forma directa
Este estudio examina el gasto público dedicado al fomento productivo agrícola en México. Para el estudio se utiliza el Programa Especial Concurrente para el Desarrollo Rural Sustentable (PEC), que conforme a la Ley de Desarrollo Rural Sustentable (LDRS), “comprende las políticas públicas orientadas a la generación y diversificación de empleo y a garantizar a la población campesina el bienestar y su participación e incorporación al desarrollo nacional, dando prioridad a las zonas de alta y muy alta marginación y a las poblaciones económica y socialmente débiles
Este trabajo busca generar conocimiento sobre el efecto de la Assesoria Técnica subsidiada por el INDAP en la propensión a innovar y en la productividad agrícola de pequeños productores. Se utilizan datos recientes de una encuesta realizada a usuarios de INDAP en el 2016 y se proponen métodos analíticos adecuados a la naturaleza de los datos. El artículo contiene seis secciones. La introducción, seguida de un capítulo de revisión de la bibliografía. Luego un capítulo donde se discute el enfoque metodológico de análisis a utilizar. Un cuarto capítulo de análisis descriptivo de los datos disponibles, seguido de un quinto capítulo de resultados para finalizar con las conclusiones y recomendaciones
Este documento tiene como propósito avanzar en un análisis de la agricultura colombiana desde una perspectiva territorial. La base de este análisis es el reconocimiento expreso de la heterogeneidad territorial presente en Colombia y la necesidad de contribuir con insumos técnicos que permitan reconocer las diferencias y así poder identificar de manera más precisa oportunidades para un sector que tiene potencial de desarrollo y que en un contexto de construcción de paz, puede ser fundamental para un crecimiento sostenible e inclusivo. Este documento corresponde a la Nota de Lineamientos Estratégicos para la Agricultura Colombiana desde una perspectiva territorial. Comprende siete capítulos, el primero de ellos es la introducción en donde se expone el alcance del ejercicio en su conjunto y las preguntas que se van a poder responder al final del ejercicio. El capítulo 2 expone la justificación y la pertinencia de este análisis de la agricultura desde la perspectiva territorial. Seguidamente, viene un capítulo de antecedentes en el que se hace una revisión de las políticas sectoriales de las últimas décadas, un análisis particular de las principales recomendaciones de la Misión para la Transformación del Campo, así como de los resultados esperados de la Misión de Crecimiento Verde. El capítulo 4 recoge un breve análisis de los principales indicadores del sector agropecuario entre 2000 y 2016. En el capítulo 5 se presenta el marco de análisis y la descripción de la metodología que sigue este documento. El capítulo 6 presenta la situación actual del sector agropecuario en Colombia desde una perspectiva territorial, concentrando el análisis en los factores que inciden en que un territorio tenga alta productividad del trabajo y en las brechas en el rendimiento físico entre los territorios y al interior de ellos. El capítulo 7 presenta los principales hallazgos e identificación de oportunidades para el sector agropecuario. Finalmente, los últimos capítulos corresponden a la bibliografía y a la sección de los anexos
Este documento tiene como propósito avanzar en un análisis del sector agropecuario en Colombia desde una perspectiva territorial. La base de este análisis es el reconocimiento expreso de la heterogeneidad territorial presente en Colombia y de la necesidad de contribuir con insumos técnicos que permitan reconocer las diferencias para así poder identificar de manera más precisa oportunidades para un sector que tiene potencial de desarrollo y que en un contexto de construcción de paz, puede ser fundamental para un crecimiento sostenible e inclusivo. En particular, este análisis del sector agropecuario avanza en la determinación de los factores que mejor describen las características particulares de los distintos territorios en cuanto a su capacidad de contribuir a la transformación y modernización del sector agropecuario de Colombia, identifica las oportunidades de cierre de brechas territoriales y de mejoramiento de la competitividad sectorial, y realiza una revisión de las políticas públicas que abordan estos ámbitos. Por lo tanto, con este documento se busca avanzar en los insumos necesarios para dar respuesta a las siguientes preguntas las cuales definen el alcance del proyecto: ¿Cuál es la situación actual de la agricultura en Colombia desde una perspectiva territorial? ¿Cuáles son las características territoriales que contribuyen al dinamismo del sector agropecuario? ¿Cuáles son las oportunidades de mejora del desempeño del sector (de manera diferenciada por los distintos tipos de territorios)? ¿Cuáles son las oportunidades que se derivan para la política pública de este análisis?
La Política de Agricultura Familiar campesina, indígena y afrodescendiente PAFCIA descrita en este documento, es un instrumento estratégico, con visión de futuro para la toma de decisiones y para dar marco a los procesos de dialogo e incidencia política y técnica, así como para desarrollar y consolidar un modelo productivo diversificado, incluyente y territorializado. La PAFCIA se propone durante el período 2018 - 2030, transitar hacia ese modelo y fortalecer las organizaciones de la agricultura familiar a escala nacional y regional. Ha sido un ejercicio de definición colectiva de las más de 22 organizaciones y casi un millón de miembros de la agricultura familiar en Centroamérica y República Dominicana de la agricultura familiar de la región del Sistema de Integración de Centroamérica y República Dominicana, SICA, ejercicio que especifica el ámbito donde se realizarán las actuaciones de productores y productoras, conscientes de la importancia estratégica que la agricultura familiar tiene en el contexto de los países de Centroamérica y República Dominicana para enfrentar los grandes retos que enfrenta esta región y sus países
El objetivo del presente documento es analizar el comportamiento del gasto público del Gobierno Central dirigido a la juventud rural, con especial énfasis en los esfuerzos de inclusión económica (financiera, productiva y laboral), en Colombia, Ecuador, México y Perú. Lo primero que resalta es la dificultad para identificar el gasto dirigido a juventud rural, la limitación más habitual es que en los programas públicos no es posible identificar el componente que representa la juventud rural dentro de los mismos, por lo que no se puede estimar cuánto del gasto del programa va dirigido a ese segmento
El presente documento contiene la propuesta conceptual y metodológica para la elaboración y puesta y en marcha de una herramienta que permita verificar el grado de modernidad de la segunda generación de planes de ordenamiento territorial (POT) y la primera generación de planes de ordenamiento departamental (POD), a partir de la revisión de los contenidos de los documentos asociados a los Planes y de los procesos desarrollados para su construcción. En este orden, la Herramienta de verificación busca cuantificar el grado de incorporación de los estándares de calidad y modernidad de los Planes de Ordenamiento Territorial (POT) y Planes de Ordenamiento Departamental (POD), a partir de los estándares definidos por el programa “POT Modernos”
El Programa Piloto Territorios Productivos (PPTP) es una iniciativa del gobierno federal que lleva a cabo PROSPERA, y está orientada a generar experiencias y aprendizajes sobre cómo implementar la estrategia de inclusión productiva que forma parte de la política social de nueva generación. En particular, el programa busca generar experiencias y aprendizajes sobre cómo potenciar la productividad, la producción y los ingresos de los hogares en condición de pobreza que son beneficiarios de PROSPERA y que habitan en municipios y localidades en que los pequeños productores campesinos tienen un peso social y económico preponderante. El propósito del programa es que dichos hogares: Aumenten los ingresos que obtienen de sus actividades económicas agrícolas y no agrícolas. Aumenten su producción de alimentos. Aumenten la productividad de los factores de producción de que disponen. Accedan efectivamente a las políticas y programas públicos para los cuales califican
Con base en las limitaciones analizadas en el extensionismo tradicional, este documento propone un Sistema Integral de Organizadores Comunitarios (SICOMUN) en el que los Organizadores sean seleccionados por procedimientos meritocráticos, se encuentren vinculados a un proceso de capacitación permanente que les permita escalar en posiciones e incentivos a la manera del Servicio Nacional de Investigación y sean apoyados por un arreglo institucional de acompañamiento.
En el Capítulo 1 se presenta el contexto en que se realiza esta propuesta; en el Capítulo 2 se analiza la situación actual de las organizaciones rurales en México con especial énfasis en el rol del ejido; en el Capítulo 3 se presenta la propuesta de un Sistema Integral de Organizadores Comunitarios que trascienda la lógica del extensionismo y avance hacia el fortalecimiento de las comunidades. Por otro lado, en el Anexo 1 se expone una historia analítica del extensionismo en el país a través de tres grandes etapas y se señalan sus avances y sus limitaciones a manera de lecciones para el futuro; en el Anexo 2 se exploran sistemas de extensionismo de América Latina, Estados Unidos, China e India y se extraen lecciones potenciales para un sistema en México; en el Anexo 3 se profundiza sobre el perfil, actividades y habilidades de los guías y tutores; finalmente, en el Anexo 4 se presenta una guía base para el trabajo de los guías y tutores dentro del SICOMUN
El presente documento se enmarca en el Proyecto “Estrategia de Extensionismo, red de instituciones nacionales e internacionales para proveer el sustento científico y tecnológico para el desarrollo de capacidades y extensionismo rural” y corresponde al entregable del Objetivo Específico 2.1, Documento con lineamientos a nivel político, estratégico y operativo que permitan avanzar en la incorporación de la perspectiva de género en las estrategias de extensionismo de la SAGARPA. Su propósito es definir un conjunto de lineamientos a nivel político, estratégico y operativo para avanzar en la incorporación de la perspectiva de género para la SAGARPA, en particular para el Modelo de Intervención del Extensionismo y Desarrollo de Capacidades y Asociatividad para Pequeños Productores y el Modelo de Intervención para Atender a Pequeños Productores previstos en el Objetivo Específico 2, que consiste en “diseñar una estrategia y un modelo de intervención para proveer a pequeños y medianos productores de servicios de asesoría, asistencia técnica y capacitación en apoyo a procesos de formación, desarrollo y fortalecimiento de organizaciones económicas integradas por la población objetivo y la atendida a través de los distintos componentes o programas de la SAGARPA, de escala local y territorial”
Ante los inmensos retos institucionales que plantea la construcción de un nuevo sistema de extensionismo en México, el proceso de diseño de políticas públicas correspondiente requiere de esfuerzos multidisciplinarios, combinados con ejercicios de reflexión que rebasen el ámbito nacional para nutrirse de las experiencias, aprendizajes y propuestas creativas provenientes de otros horizontes. Esta Red tiene como propósito organizar debates e intercambios de información que coadyuven en el diseño de un modelo de intervención para proveer a pequeños y medianos productores de servicios de asesoría, asistencia técnica y capacitación enfocados en tres estrategias complementarias para el crecimiento del sector: asociatividad, innovación tecnológica y planeación territorial
This brief draws on three cases to show how the private sector contributes to the conceptualisation, design, delivery and evaluation of climate-smart agricultural interventions and can help bring them to scale. Engaging the private sector in CSA interventions enhances the applicability – and thus the sustainability of interventions, increases uptake and delivers a triple win for donors, beneficiaries and the private sector. They emphasise that private-sector players will be more likely to engage in scaling-up of CSA when they can see a compelling business case to justify their investments.
This is one of the briefs produced by 30 digital agribusiness practitioners from CTA, its networks and partners to document and assess ways that digital solutions improve the performance, competitiveness and profitability of agribusinesses in ACP countries. Drawing on experiences and cases shared by participants during the workshop zoomed in on real cases to draw out critical insights and lessons – actionable knowledge – that can be used more widely ‘digital solutions improve the performance, competitiveness and profitability of agribusinesses in ACP countries
Understanding spatial patterns of land use and land cover is essential for studies addressing biodiversity, climate change and environmental modeling as well as for the design and monitoring of land use policies. The aim of this study was to create a detailed map of land use land cover of the deforested areas of the Brazilian Legal Amazon up to 2008. Deforestation data from and uses were mapped with Landsat-5/TM images analysed with techniques, such as linear spectral mixture model, threshold slicing and visual interpretation, aided by temporal information extracted from NDVI MODIS time series. The result is a high spatial resolution of land use and land cover map of the entire Brazilian Legal Amazon for the year 2008 and corresponding calculation of area occupied by different land use classes. The results showed that the four classes of Pasture covered 62% of the deforested areas of the Brazilian Legal Amazon, followed by Secondary Vegetation with 21%. The area occupied by Annual Agriculture covered less than 5% of deforested areas; the remaining areas were distributed among six other land use classes. The maps generated from this project - called TerraClass - are available at INPE's website (http://www.inpe.br/cra/projetos_pesquisas/terraclass2008.php)
This book collects 24 stories of change from the EU-funded CDAIS project. Launched in 2015, the overall objective of CDAIS is to make agricultural innovation systems more efficient and sustainable in meeting the demands of farmers, agri-business and consumers. The stories are about the eight pilot countries - in Africa, Asia and Latin America - in which CDAIS operates. Countries and title of the 24 stories are provided below, with date of last update for each story.
Angola:
01) From farm to agri-business (February 2018)
02) From knowing needs to sowing seeds (March 2018)
03) Growing hope from a new crop (April 2018)
Bangladesh:
04) From green to silver (December 2017)
05) New markets for mangos (November 2017)
06) Pineapples – putting plans into action (September 2018)
Burkina Faso:
07) A marketplace of innovative ideas (September 2018)
08) Organic certification takes root (January 2018)
09) Women lead the way in rural enterprises (June 2018)
Ethiopia:
10) Feed Safety – change through learning (September 2017)
11) The need for seed – subtle changes (December 2017)
12) Innovating with chickpea cluster farming (September 2018)
Guatemala:
13) Better beans mean better nutrition (April 2018)
14) Avocados – from annual to tree crops (June 2018)
15) Moving to modern beekeeping (August 2018)
Honduras:
16) From potato pests to policy processes (April 2018)
17) Improving coffee by collaboration (June 2018)
18) New markets for cacao producers (June 2018)
Laos:
19) Seeds of an organic future (December 2017)
20) Pig farmers building bridges to success (June 2018)
21) Cattle producers blazing new trails (June 2018)
Rwanda:
22) Cooperation in cassava production (September 2018)
23) Challenges in the milk chain (September 2018)
24) Resolving conflicts in water use (September 2018)
Traditional shifting cultivation in the Amazon region has caused negative environmental and social effects due to the use of fire. This type of agriculture has been criticized because it results in emission of large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and a loss of soil productive potential. Since 1991, Project SHIFT-Tipitamba has researched this type of agriculture and, in a subsequent phase, attempted to propose solutions that could be adopted in northeastern Pará, a region of ancient colonization in Amazon and highly anthropized based on an exclusively slash-and-burn agricultural system for more than 100 years. This paper presents some results obtained over two decades of research on these agricultural systems and proposes a method for the recovery or maintenance of the productive potential of these areas based on sequential agroforestry with secondary vegetation management and chop-and-mulch land preparation.
“We first needed to know who we are, what we offer, and how to offer it,” says coffee farmer Denis Cortez. “We in the partnership organized ourselves, and now all get involved in working for the common good. We are more aware of the impacts of what we do, how to improve quality, and apply on our farms what we learn such as new processing methods.” He is one of thousands of producers that CDAIS and its partners are working with in western Honduras, with clear results.
This story of change from Honduras is part of a series of stories occurred under the EU-funded CDAIS project, aimed at making agricultural innovation systems more efficient and sustainable in meeting the demands of farmers, agri-business and consumers. CDAIS brings partners together and uses continuous learning cycles to address the challenges and opportunities in and around selected ‘innovation niche partnerships’ in eight pilot countries in Central America, Africa and Asia.
“CDAIS does not give us money, but it opens spaces for cacao producers, associations and industry to work together” says Sergio Segovia, president of the ASOPROCCAN association. Actors in the cocoa chain of Atlántida on the north coast are, thanks to CDAIS, now achieving quality standards and promoting entrepreneurship. This was the vision of this innovation partnership, to focus actions on fulfilling their dream of strengthening their organizations and applying good agricultural practices in cocoa cultivation. And as Bernarda Moya, a cacao producer in Balfate, La Ceiba explains, “The relationships that CDAIS helps to create, benefit us all.”
This story of change from Honduras is part of a series of stories occurred under the EU-funded CDAIS project, aimed at making agricultural innovation systems more efficient and sustainable in meeting the demands of farmers, agri-business and consumers. CDAIS brings partners together and uses continuous learning cycles to address the challenges and opportunities in and around selected ‘innovation niche partnerships’ in eight pilot countries in Central America, Africa and Asia.
“The empowerment of our organization was important, to realise our potential to access to finance, markets and to make bean cultivation more productive” expresses Moises Acosta, vice-president of the Honduran Seed Producers Network, “and the bean value chain is now being strengthened and made more sustainable.” He is one of the producers who CDAIS and partners work with in Olancho department, with results that are now being replicated across the country.
This story of change from Honduras is part of a series of stories occurred under the EU-funded CDAIS project, aimed at making agricultural innovation systems more efficient and sustainable in meeting the demands of farmers, agri-business and consumers. CDAIS brings partners together and uses continuous learning cycles to address the challenges and opportunities in and around selected ‘innovation niche partnerships’ in eight pilot countries in Central America, Africa and Asia.
“Before, people were not really interested” says Lionel Ozorio, president of the ATESCATEL seed cooperative, “but the CDAIS project has helped to bring people together and now we see much more buy-in.” This innovation partnership is building key functional capacities amongst producer associations, and now, bringing other stakeholders onboard to help improve nutritional security through innovative approaches in promoting a new bean variety with increased production potential and nutritional content. “And now we are getting the message across in better ways through improved dialogue with a much wider range of actors.”
This story of change from Guatemala is part of a series of stories occurred under the EU-funded CDAIS project, aimed at making agricultural innovation systems more efficient and sustainable in meeting the demands of farmers, agri-business and consumers. CDAIS brings partners together and uses continuous learning cycles to address the challenges and opportunities in and around selected ‘innovation niche partnerships’ in eight pilot countries in Central America, Africa and Asia.
On 5 May 2018, the Association for Integrated Development of the Altiplano became formally established, and avocado farmers celebrated. “Today, we are so happy to have consolidated our consortium of eight producer associations from different municipalities in Sololá” explains Don Andrés, community leader and lifelong farmer. “Farmers from San Andrés Semetabaj and other communities around Lake Atitlán began to talk about growing a new variety of avocado some time ago. But since the CDAIS project came, so many things have changed. They helped us come together, like a large family of growers now working in partnership for our common good.”
From the Maya to modern times, beekeeping has been a much respected rural activity in Guatemala. Then in recent years, production increased and a national association was formed. But internal disagreements soon saw a fall in production and sales. Then thanks to CDAIS, producers across the country asked for and were given, a new space to gather. And there they rediscovered their common interests and goals, and have re-established their original organization, to excellent effect.
International partnership to carry out collaborative research and development programs has been implemented for a long time. However, with globalization, the economic, social, political and cultural diversity of interacting partners reached levels where this variety of collaborators often has shown some weaknesses in issues like governance. Strong and sound partnerships must be manageable in order to ensure the achievement of the set objectives. Embrapa, as a Brazilian public agricultural research and development institution that coordinates the Brazilian National Agricultural Research System (NARS), has acquired some experience in strengthening the inter-institutional relationship across continents. Recently, Embrapa was involved in a new research program focusing participatory and adaptive research to improve the production and marketability of small ruminants in arid areas of Latin America. The program is supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and coordinated by a CGIAR-Center - the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). The program was started at the end of 2003 with the participation of two countries, Brazil and Mexico. Brazil is being represented by Embrapa and Mexico by the National Research Institute for Forestry, Agriculture and Livestock (INIFAP). The program has a Steering Committee, where all involved institutions have a representative member, including the donor (IFAD) and research institutions (CGIAR/ICARDA, Embrapa for Brazil and INIFAP for Mexico). The so far obtained results show the viability of international collaborative research programs to improve fund raising and to optimize the use of available human resources.
This document consists of the proceedings of the 4th Internation Symposium-cum-Workshop Red Cientifica Alemania Lationamericana (RECALL) on International Scientific Cooperation in Higher Education: Participation, Partnership and Perspectives healt in Talca, Chile, Nov. 28 to Dec., 4, 2005.
Over the past decades, Brazilian agriculture has played an important role in the international market, in response to growing global demand for products, services and food security. This achievement was in a large extent powered by the ability to generate knowledge and the actions promoted by science and technology institutes. This article aims to describe the model of knowledge generation in agriculture, assuming that the knowledge cycle is responsible for the capture, identification, selection and share of informal and formal information, through practices in the workplace and outside it, in personal and institutional networks. Based on a comprehensive literature review, this research deals with a multi-case study on three Brazilian science and technology institutes dedicated to agricultural research. Using both, qualitative and quantitative approaches, and collecting data through semistructured interviews applied to seniors researchers, as well as questionnaires answered by 410 scientists holding masters and doctoral degrees in natural sciences. Results indicate the existence of a knowledge generation model in agriculture research focused innovation, whose process starts from capturing ideas on how to solve a problem using the technological competence developed, through formal research projects.
Small-scale farmers in the Brazilian Amazon collectively hold tenure over more than 12 million ha of permanent forest reserves, as required by the Forest Code. The trade-off between forest conservation and other land uses entails opportunity costs for them and for the country, which have not been sufficiently studied. We assessed the potential income generated by multiple use forest management for farmers and compared it to the income potentially derived from six other agricultural land uses. Income from the forest was from (i) logging, carried out by a logging company in partnership with farmers? associations; and (ii) harvesting the seeds of Carapa guianensis (local name andiroba) for the production of oil. We then compared the income generated by multiple-use forest management with the income from different types of agrarian systems. According to our calculations in this study, the mean annual economic benefits from multiple forest use are the same as the least productive agrarian system, but only 25% of the annual income generated by the most productive system. Although the income generated by logging may be considered low when calculated on an annual basis and compared to incomes generated by agriculture, the one-time payment after logging is significant (US$5,800 to US$33,508) and could be used to implement more intensive and productive cropping systems such as planting black pepper. The income from forest management could also be used to establish permanent fields in deforested areas for highly productive annual crops using conservation agriculture techniques. These techniques are alternatives to the traditional land use based on periodic clearing of the forest. Nevertheless, the shift in current practices towards adoption of more sustainable conservation agriculture techniques will also require the technical and legal support of the State to help small farmers apply these alternatives, which aim to integrate forest management in sustainable agricultural production systems.
This tool will enable stakeholders in the countries’ organic agriculture movements to assess the functioning of national control systems (NCSs) for organic production and, with the assistance of IICA, to collaborate on the development of action plans to strengthen institutions and agencies involved in organic production control at a national level, thereby providing consumers in national and international markets with greater quality assurance for these types of products.
In light of recent trends in international agricultural markets, and in the interest of analyzing, contributing to discussions of and making informed decisions on how to address the complex problem of price volatility, we are pleased to present this first issue of the ECLAC-FAO-IICA Bulletin, prepared within the framework of an initiative launched by our institutions in 2009 calling for the annual publication of a document on the state of and outlook for agriculture and rural life in Latin America and the Caribbean. Since mid-2010 and throughout the early months of 2011, global food prices have been steadily rising, surpassing even the levels reached during the crisis of 2008. For those countries of the region that specialize in the export of raw materials, this increase in agricultural prices affords them a unique opportunity to improve their terms of trade. However, it may also be very costly for them in terms of decreased food security, increased malnutrition and possible social unrest, especially in net food importing countries. The persistence of volatility, which is the result of constant variations in price, will continue to create great uncertainty for farmers, added to the great risks already posed by climate change and recurrent pests and diseases.
This document examines the macroeconomic and sectoral context and the trends and outlook for crops, livestock, fisheries, forests and rural well-being, as well as the public policies and institutional framework for these sectors. Based on an analysis of the trends and prospects, each chapter offers a series of recommendations for the consideration of decision-makers, in an effort to help address the challenges posed by the global economic dynamics and to take advantage of opportunities. This edition also includes a special chapter on the Sustainable Development Goals of Agenda 2030, with the aim of providing guidance to decision-makers for the development of policies and tools that will strengthen the contribution of agriculture and rural areas to the achievement of those objectives from a comprehensive and systemic perspective.
This edition of “The Outlook for Agriculture and Rural Development in the Americas,” covering 2015-2016, is divided into the following four chapters:
Chapter I: Macroeconomic Context: The author analyzes the evolution and outlook for financial and macroeconomic markets, which determine the conditions in which agriculture in the Americas will have to operate.
Chapter II: Sectoral Context and Agriculture: The chapter begins with an analysis of the trends in the region’s main agricultural aggregates (sectoral context), followed by the trends and prospects for the various subsectors (crops, livestock, fisheries, and forests).
Chapter III: Rural Well-being: Based on the household survey data of twelve Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries, the author discusses the situation of young people and rural women with regard to labor markets and access to assets, as well as income inequality in the rural milieu.
Chapter IV: Policies and the Institutional Framework: This section contains a review of the principal changes that have taken place in agricultural policies and the public institutional framework of the sector, both in the LAC region and among its main trading partners. It also outlines the challenges facing the region as it endeavors to achieve more competitive, sustainable, and equitable agriculture.
The aim of this study was to identify the actors involved in the innovation system producers of corn Mexico Center Region, highlighting the role of the actors of institutional support in adoption of innovations. To do this, 490 corn producers served within the framework of MasAgro 2012 program, in the states of Guerrero, Hidalgo, Puebla, Morelos, State of Mexico and Tlaxcala were interviewed. The degree of adoption of innovations was measured, and using the methodology of social network analysis linking between actors analyzed. Among the states signifcant diFerences (p< 0.05) in education, acreage, yields and rate of adoption of innovations they found. Despite all link types to be signifcant (p< 0.05) for the adoption of innovations corn producer in the region. The link with government institutions had a greater weight in the level of innovation of the farmer. The diversity of links and connection with external agents (such as institutional support) in the innovation system producer of corn contributes to adoption of innovations.
Rural extension is a process of work and accompaniment with the producer aimed to sustainable development of their skills. In Mexico, a series of extension models have been adapted, that goes from the US, implemented in the early 1980’s, to the hub model or innovation node (platform - demonstration module - extension area) applied since 2010 under the MasAgro Program. The aim of this paper is to analyze the various processes of extension in Mexico. Questioning whether in Mexico has been developed an integration scheme between the components of research, production and demonstration related to rural extension or simply has been offered a series of professional services in a disjointed manner. It is concluded that the extension in Mexico shows discontinuity in operation and focus on the search for productivity, and not improvement in the quality of life of the rural population neither in the sustainability of production systems. The main restriction was found in the use of demonstrative component in the extension processes.
This book discusses innovation problems and opportunities for family farming in the different regions of the American continent, as well as the role of hemispheric, regional and national agrifood research systems. Likewise, it provides a description of the main innovation actions and projects promoted by IICA, and the main success cases over recent years.
The honey production in Mexico is a relevant activity of the livestock subsector, due to the generation of jobs and income in the agricultural sector, as well as its contribution of foreign exchange. In the period from 2005 to 2015 the average annual production was 58 thousand tons, which fluctuated between 55 and 62 thousand tons. This has placed Mexico as the eighth largest producer in the world and the third exporting country. The analysis of the performance of three agroindustries (AI) and the adoption level of good practices of honey production (BPPM, in Spanish) in 450 beekeepers in the state of Yucatan, before and after receiving technical advice and training through a management model of innovation. The information was collected between September 2013 (baseline survey) and March 2014 (final line survey). With a catalogue of 25 BPPM, an adoption index of good honey production practices (IABPPM, in Spanish) was established and its adoption rate (TABPPM, in Spanish). The results indicate that the AI are distinguished in their operation by aspects such as: size, raw material supply and production destination. The change in the IABPPM between the baseline and final line was positive (P<0.01), both overall and by the seven categories of the index. The increases in TABPPM were higher in those practices with low initial adoption, compared to those that already had high adoption rates from the beginning. Future research should be oriented to study and analyse which other factors help to explain the adoption of BPPM, beyond the agricultural extension model implemented.
This brochure is on the Virtual Extension and Research Information and Communication Network (VERCON), a conceptual model that any country can use and adapt to improve access to agricultural information and knowledge sharing and to strengthen the linkages between rural institutions and individuals, using information and communication technologies.
Precision agriculture (PA) is growing considerably in Brazil. However, there is a lack of information regarding to PA adoption and use in the country. This study sought to: (i) investigate the perception of growers and service dealership about PA technologies; (ii) identify constraints to PA adoption; (iii) obtain information that might be useful to motivate producers and agronomists to use PA technologies in the crop production systems. A web-based survey approach method was used to collect data from farmers and services dealership involved with PA in several crop production regions of Brazil. We found that the growth of PA was linked to the agronomic and economic gains observed in the field; however, in some situations, the producers still can not measure the real PA impact in producer system. Economic aspects coupled with the difficulty to use of software and equipment proportioned by the lack of technical training of field teams, may be the main factors limiting the PA expansion in many producing regions of Brazil. Precision agriculture work carried out by dealership in Brazil is quite recent. The most services offered is gridding soil sampling, field mapping for lime and fertilizer application at variable rate. Many producers already have PA equipment loaded on their machines, but little explored, also restricting to fertilizers and lime application. Looking at the currently existing technologies and services offered by dealership, the PA use in Brazil could be better exploited, and therefore, a more rational use of non-renewable resources.
Le développement de l'agriculture organique au Brésil prend des formes multiples. Au travers de leur expérience de l'AO, dans une communauté proche de trois métropoles, de petits maraîchers d'Ibiúna (São Paulo) créent des entités collectives et expérimentent de nouvelles pratiques sociales. À partir d'entretiens et d'observations sur le terrain, nous montrons comment ces minifundios se sont, ou ont été, organisés pour développer l'AO dans un même territoire Nous identifions quatre formes sociales d'organisation, leurs dynamiques, leurs valeurs et leurs inter-relations. Nous discutons des éléments susceptibles de sécuriser leur reproduction sociale et de soutenir de nouvelles voies de développement.
The "Technological Innovation Act", promulgated in Brazil in 2004, represents the main legal framework implemented to promote technological innovation and to delineate a favorable scenario for scientific development in Brazil. It regulates specially the relationship between Scientific and Technological Institutions (STI) - such as universities and public research institutes - and private companies in Brazil. Among other things, the law determines that each STI should compose a Technological Innovation Center (NIT, as its acronym in Portuguese) to act as an interface of the STI and its markets. These centers are equivalent to what is internationally called Technology Transfer Office and have as main responsibility to transfer the knowledge and inventions generated at Public Research Institutes (PRI) to private sector.This paper describes and provides some reflections upon the experience of three NIT, located in the State of São Paulo (Brazil): Innovation Agency of University of Campinas (Inova/ Unicamp); Innovation Agency of Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) and Embrapa Informatics of Agriculture. The analysis was focused on the following issues: history, legal structure and organizational model, mission and activities, relationships and results.
This paper is part of the Proceedings for the 9th Research Workshop on Institutions and Organizations – RWIO Center for Organization Studies – CORS, which took place on October 13-14th, 2014.
Family farms are by far the most numerous component of the agricultural sector in the Brazilian Amazon. However socially vital for the development of the region, these small landholdings' agricultural and cattle ranching activities frequently overdraw and degrade natural resources, threatening important ecosystem services. Predominant agricultural practices have been marked by shifting cultivation, with intense use of fire and low productivity, causing high rate of destruction of natural forests. These current production patterns have not been able to alleviate poverty in many local communities, calling for changes in land use planning and agricultural management strategies toward more sustainable practices. Agroambiente is a research network from Embrapa and collaborators committed to investigate alternative agricultural practices for the maintenance of ecosystems services in the Brazilian Amazon. The network was firstly created to offer scientific support to a Government Program for ecosystem services compensation to family farmers (Proambiente Program), but has been expanding its scope to integrate social and environmental scientists focusing their studies mainly on: factors influencing provision of environmental services; methods for assessing ecosystem health status; management practices with lower impact on the environment; land use changes and market-based mechanisms for poverty alleviation through ecosystem services. Current research activities and their respective methodologies are: 1) Links between social perspectives and agricultural management decisions, carried out by interviews with land owners; 2) Search and validation of innovative production systems applied by farmers assessing inputs and productivity rates in different management conditions; 3) Construction of indices for assessment of ecosystem health in rural establishments through the development of an evaluation system (Ecocert- Proambiente); 4) Management alternatives for fire risk and accidental burnings abatement; 5) Evaluation of land use/land cover dynamics based on Landsat TM images and land use histories by interviews with the farmers; 6) Evaluation of carbon sequestration potential by estimating carbon stocks in different compartments of secondary forests; and 6) Appraisal of available market-based mechanisms for carbon schemes. Some rural communities have already been involved in sustainable agriculture practices such as agroforestry systems and fair trade (e.g. south western Brazilian Amazon). Production systems adopting no-till and no-fire may have initially lower productivity than traditional systems, but some viable management alternatives have been found. The Ecocert-Proambiente system was developed and validated with 62 indicators that covered social, economic, environmental and property management aspects. Avoided deforestation and maintenance of secondary forests were more feasible alternatives in terms of cost-benefit than the CDM negotiations from the establishment of agroforestry systems. Considering this scenario, estimatives in secondary forests of Pará state indicated aboveground biomass varying from 22 to 247 Mg ha-1. Altogether, these results are important to guide public policies in Brazil towards environmental conservation and social benefits in the Amazon.
Findings from a survey on sources of income and land allocation outcomes of 578 households from 26 communities with diverse ethnic composition at distinct environmental settings in Ucayali (Peruvian Amazon) are used to contrast livelihood strategies featuring high forest and high agriculture dependency, examining whether agricultural intensification can be linked to lower deforestation. A typology of households based on their land use allocation profile was used to assess current and cumulative cleared land. Recently cleared areas by households oriented to perennials, semi-perennials and pastures were similar to those focusing on annual crops. Multiple class comparisons provided evidence that land use intensification is not associated to land sparing. Near 40% of the households＇ annual income was derived from forests, followed by agriculture (25%), wages (17%) and livestock (11%). Income structure was used to determine high dependency on forests and on agriculture, featured by respectively 24% and 17% of the households, while 10% relied mostly on wages and/or businesses and half of them had a balanced income structure. Results indicate different expressions of the criticality of forest products, highlighting livelihood strategies based on the integration of income sources. Moreover, the study shows that despite the relevance of forest products, mestizo and indigenous livelihoods heavily depend on agriculture. Policy interventions aimed at environmental conservation and economic development will only be successful when strengthening the integration between agriculture and forest use featured by different social groups in the Amazon.
Transgenic maize was approved in Brazil in 2008/2009. In 2012, it occupied 73% of the country maize growing area. This high adoption rate confirms studies indicating that technology use has been the major driving force in Brazilian agriculture. Maize seed market in the world has been a concentrated sector. Although, when this sector is associated with transgenesis, this concentration increases sharply. In one side, there is the idea that companies can benefit from gains of scale and complementarities to maximize their efficiency in research and development (R&D). On the other side, this concentration may allow the exercise of market power by dominant companies. The objective of this study is to analyze the impacts of the adoption of transgenic technology in the arrangements of maize breeding programs and seed production sector in Brazil. A critical analysis of the situation of the breeding programs that do not have this technology is made.
Brazilian agriculture is a success story. The country that until the 1960s systematically received food donations from abroad. and up to the 1980s was still a large food importer, had its agriculture profoundly changed. The traditional agriculture that prevailed in Brazil until the 1970s was progressively transformed in the following decades into a modern and highly competitive agriculture based on science. Along with this structural transformation in the primary sector, the industry and service sectors directly linked to agriculture also became two of the world's biggest and most competitive. Furthermore, as food production increased at higher rates than food demand over time. food prices decreased. These gains in consumer surplus took place due partially to lower income for Brazilian farmers.
Some of the most promising and at the same time some of the most challenging areas of future food production are found in the savannas of South America. Integrating cropping, livestock, and forestry in these regions can increase the eco-efficiency of agricultural production. This chapter presents a case study of an integrated crop, livestock, and forestry system in Brazil. The study area is in Goiás State in the Cerrado region, a vast savanna covering almost one quarter of Brazil's land area. About half of the area suited to agriculture in the Cerrrado is under cultivated pasture, but much of this is degraded as a result of overgrazing. The systems studied in this report include different arrangements to test productivity, profitability and sustainability of eucalyptus, crops, and pastures. Findings demonstrated that integrated crop, livestock, and forestry systems are economically and technically feasible in the Cerrados. In addition to producing food of high biological value (meat and milk), cultivated pasture provides other important environmental benefits, including long-term ground cover, carbon fixation, increases in soil organic matter content; and reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases.
There is increasing evidence that public organizations dedicated exclusively to research and development (R&D) in agribusiness need systematic management tools to incorporate the uncertainties and complexities of technological and nontechnological factors of external environments in its long-term strategic plans. The major issues are: What will be the agribusiness science and technology (S&T) needs be in the future? How to prepare in order to meet these needs? Both Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuaria (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, Embrapa), attached to the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have developed a comprehensive strategic and operational planning process in order to answer these key questions in the 1990s. The main objective of this article is to present a comparative and preliminary analysis of concepts, methodologies, and processes utilized, and some results obtained by these public organizations.
One of the most important challenges for the researchers in the 21st Century is related to global heating and climate change that can have as consequence the intensification of natural hazards. Another problem of changes in the Earth's climate is its impact in the agriculture production. In this scenario, application of statistical models as well as development of new methods become very important to aid in the analyses of climate from ground-based stations and outputs of forecasting models. Additionally, remote sensing images have been used to improve the monitoring of crop yields. In this context we propose a new technique to identify extreme values in climate time series and to correlate climate and remote sensing data in order to improve agricultural monitoring. Accordingly, this paper presents a new unsupervised algorithm, called CLIPSMiner (CLImate PatternS Miner) that works on multiple time series of continuous data, identifying relevant patterns or extreme ones according to a relevance factor, which can be tuned by the user. Results show that CLIPSMiner detects, as expected, patterns that are known in climatology, indicating the correctness and feasibility of the proposed algorithm. Moreover, patterns detected using the highest relevance factor is coincident with extreme phenomena. Furthermore, series correlations detected by the algorithm show a relation between agroclimatic and vegetation indices, which confirms the agrometeorologists' expectations.
Georeferenced data are a key factor in many decision-making systems. However, their interpretation is user and context dependent so that, for each situation, data analysts have to interpret them, a time-consuming task. One approach to alleviate this task, is the use of semantic annotations to store the produced information. Annotating data is however hard to perform and prone to errors, especially when executed manually. This difficulty increases with the amount of data to annotate. Moreover, annotation requires multidisciplinary collaboration of researchers, with access to heterogeneous and distributed data sources and scientific computations. This paper illustrates our solution to approach this problem by means of a case study in agriculture. It shows how our implementation of a framework to automate the annotation of geospatial data can be used to process real data from remote sensing images and other official Brazilian data sources.
In the Amazon, slash and burn is the most common technique used by American-Indians, small farmers and even big ranches to transform forests into rural landscapes. The basis of food subsistence for diverse populations (rice, corn and bean), slash and burn is also a must for the plantation of cocoa, coffee, palms and pastures. The Amazonian rural landscape is currently dominated by pastures, occupying around 80 % of the deforested surface. Even if the nature of the plantation varies according to location, height, soil type and local traditions, slash and burn remains relatively the same in all regions. Agro-ecological intensification and the integration of livestock and agriculture is 2-3 decades old. Different alternatives have been tested, particularly the introduction of leguminous (covering the land or forming trees) to improve the soil and to build a bank of proteins for cattle. New techniques for the recuperation of pasture lands have become widely popular among ranches. The introduction of one or two annual plantations between two pasture areas allows reestablishing fertility through the injection of nitrates and, as a result, increases the pasture's productivity. However, being relatively high-cost because of its demand in terms of mechanization and inputs, this technique is almost unaffordable for small Amazonian farmers.
Providing food and other products to a growing human population while safeguarding natural ecosystems and the provision of their services is a significant scientific, social and political challenge. With food demand likely to double over the next four decades, anthropization is already driving climate change and is the principal force behind species extinction, among other environmental impacts. The sustainable intensification of production on current agricultural lands has been suggested as a key solution to the competition for land between agriculture and natural ecosystems. However, few investigations have shown the extent to which these lands can meet projected demands while considering biophysical constraints. Here we investigate the improved use of existing agricultural lands and present insights into avoiding future competition for land. We focus on Brazil, a country projected to experience the largest increase in agricultural production over the next four decades and the richest nation in terrestrial carbon and biodiversity. Using various models and climatic datasets, we produced the first estimate of the carrying capacity of Brazil's 115 million hectares of cultivated pasturelands. We then investigated if the improved use of cultivated pasturelands would free enough land for the expansion of meat, crops, wood and biofuel, respecting biophysical constraints (i.e., terrain, climate) and including climate change impacts. We found that the current productivity of Brazilian cultivated pasturelands is 32-34% of its potential and that increasing productivity to 49-52% of the potential would suffice to meet demands for meat, crops, wood products and biofuels until at least 2040, without further conversion of natural ecosystems. As a result up to 14.3 Gt CO2 Eq could be mitigated. The fact that the country poised to undergo the largest expansion of agricultural production over the coming decades can do so without further conversion of natural habitats provokes the question whether the same can be true in other regional contexts and, ultimately, at the global scale.
The increasing demand for agricultural commodities is a major cause of tropical deforestation. However, pressure is increasing for greater sustainability of commodity value chains. This includes the demand to establish new crop plantations and pasture areas on already deforested land so that new forest clearing for agriculture is minimized. Where tree crops are planted as part of agroforestry systems on deforested land, this amounts to a form of re-agro-forestation which can generate environmental benefits in addition to crop production. Here, we discuss a case where agroforestry systems based on cocoa (Theobroma cacao) are being established on crop and pasture land in the south of Pará state, Brazilian Amazon. The adoption of cocoa by farmers and ranchers of the region is stimulated by the coincidence of (1) favorable prospects for cocoa on the national and international markets including the expectation of a global cocoa supply gap; (2) environmental policies obliging land owners to reforest excess cleared land with native trees, with agroforests based on the native cocoa tree being an economically attractive option; and (3) biophysical conditions (especially soil fertility) favorable for growing cocoa in part of the region. We show that in the state of Pará at least 1.26 million hectares of naturally high-fertility soils in deforested areas outside legally protected and indigenous lands are potentially suitable for cocoa production with low agrochemical inputs, sufficient to make a significant contribution to closing the predicted supply gap. Their actual suitability depends on their state of degradation after years of pasture use and the availability of technologies and finance to convert them into tree crop agroforests. We discuss the significant environmental benefits of pasture re-agro-forestation with cocoa-based systems, including reduced emissions of up to 135 Mg of carbon per hectare compared to the historically common scenario of planting cocoa after forest clearing. We identify important research questions related to the scaling up of this practice and the maximization of its environmental benefits. We conclude that the coincidence of the afore-mentioned factors could drive a re-agro-forestation frontier in this part of the Amazon, with potential for positive outcomes in terms of commodity production while generating social and environmental benefits.
In Pium, Tocantins state, Brazil, in 2012 Embrapa developed a technology transference project in partnership with the state?s rural extension service for the consolidation of low carbon emissions agriculture. The goal was to recover the degraded grasslands of the Trigueira farm (49°1'37.44"W and 10°24'58.84"S) with low cost using a crop-livestock system.
In 2010 the Brazilian Government established a goal to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) by agriculture from 36.1 up to 38.9% in ten years (2010 -2020). To contribute for reaching part of this purpose in Tocantins State, Embrapa and other research and extension services partners have been conducting a project of technology transference on sustainable agricultural practices, including integrated crop-livestock-forestry (ICLF), since 2012.
Large-scale agriculture is increasing in anthropogenically modified areas in the Amazon Basin. Crops such as soybean, maize, oil palm, and others are being introduced to supply the world demand for food and energy. However, the current challenge is to enhance the sustainability of these areas by increasing efficiency of production chains and to improve environmental services. The Amazon Basin has experienced a paradigm shift away from the traditional slash-and-burn agricultural practices, which offers decision makers the opportunity to make innovative interventions to enhance the productivity in previously degraded areas by using trees to ecological advantage. This study describes a successful experiment integrating the production of soybean and paricá (Glycine max L. and Schizolobium amazonicum) based on previous research that indicated potential topoclimatic zones for planting paricá in the Brazilian state of Pará. The authors concluded that innovative interventions are important to show local farmers that it is possible to adapt an agroforest system to large-scale production, thus changing the Amazon.
This text analyses the development of organic farming in Brazil. It shows the great variability of social models of organic production recognised by Brazilian Law: organic, agroecological, ecological or biodynamic agriculture, permaculture etc.. It depicts how the political and social concerns in the spheres of family farming and environment caused the reorganisation of production systems, in the agricultural practices and n the new relationships with the market and with natural resources. Based on interviews with farmers and stakeholders involved in the development of various organic systems,the authors qualified the related models of production as well as the related social and cultural values.They also present some aspects of the historical roots of this agroecological movement and the way family farmers adapt to the new challenges of ecological production.
This report shows some initial results about the research project entitled GlobalOrg, on a Brazilian case study, investigating the sustainability of tropical fruit organic farming in a global food chains perspective. It was performed an analysis about the production strategies of certified units of a familiar smalholders cooperative from Itápolis-SP-Brazil. In this analysis it was verified the application of sustainability principles recommended by the ecological based agriculture, focused on the agrobiodiversity, material recycling and the social-economic aspects from the agroecology conversion process. The research occurs through the complementarities provided by a combination of sociological and agronomic research methods, it means, qualitative interviews and questionnaire application with semi-structured questions. What was concluded is that the establishment of an economic relationship between the cooperative and a fair-trade international entity stimulates an interesting growing in the production diversity and also stimulates the application of different principles of ecological based agriculture. It indicates an important balance between the sustainability dimensions and demonstrates a visible attitude change in the natural resource exploration in this region.
This paper aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a participatory approach which has been applied by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) and Brazilian Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock (CNA) in aquaculture sector in Brazil.
The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Grain Legumes (Legume Innovation Lab; LIL), supports ten multi-disciplinary collaborative research and institutional capacity strengthening subcontracted projects working in 13 Feed the Future countries in Africa and Central America and the Caribbean involving scientists at 10 US universities, 3 USDA/ARS research centers, and 23 developing country national agriculture research systems and universities.
This evaluation, conducted February-July 2016, follows a USAID-approved evaluation plan. It involved a review of background literature and project documents; a week-long series of interviews with more than 75 project stakeholders at the 2016 Pan-African Grain Legume and World Cowpea Conference in Zambia; site visits to the Management Office (MO) and LIL projects in Guatemala and Uganda; and remote interviews with various stakeholders. The evaluation focuses on the ten projects comprising the LIL research portfolio, the performance of the MO, and USAID Mission supported Associate Awards managed by the LIL MO. Four targets of interest were identified: achievements in research; program structure and management; institutional capacity and collaborations; and the program future.
De manera particular, el establecimiento y desarrollo de mecanismos de aprendizaje entre actores tiene un alto potencial para generar conocimientos acumulativos y compartidos acerca de lo que funciona, lo que no funciona y los factores que influyen en el éxito o fracaso de diferentes iniciativas de intervención en tiempos y espacios diversos. Por esto, las alianzas de aprendizaje son un mecanismo con potencial para mejorar la efectividad de las intervenciones externas. En el presente artículo se presenta el caso de la Alianza de Aprendizaje Perú (AAP) como una experiencia de gestión de conocimiento e incidencia de políticas, integrada por instituciones de cooperación internacional e instituciones públicas
This paper presents a case study of the work carried out by CIAT to facilitate the creation of a community of practice, using Dgroups and taking advantage of this virtual space to apply a qualitative monitoring technique called Most Significant Change. The experience reported here mixed key ingredients to create and facilitate a community of practice to facilitate knowledge sharing and communication flow among 14 learning and knowledge sharing centres in Latin America and the Caribbean. To create a community of practice, it is not enough to have a common and free virtual space, technical support, and on-line facilitation. Factors such as connectivity, experience in using virtual tools, personal interests, influence of gender on participation, and decision making play key roles in determining the success of a community of practice. A major lesson learned was that a community of practice is an initiative that must build on its membership and not outsiders who only are taking into account some issues, one side of the situation and not the whole context.
Both women and indigenous peoples face key barriers that limit their capacity to access and benefit from development projects. In a country like Peru where women and indigenous peoples represent a large share of the rural poor, integrating proactive measures into project design is crucial to reach these populations. The Peru Agricultural Research and Extension Program (INCAGRO) gave great emphasis to designing financing instruments that will give equitable opportunities to indigenous peoples and women's organizations. The 'en breve' will describe how INCAGRO integrated indigenous peoples and women's organizations into its activities to strengthen the market for agricultural services.
This documents is part of a series of notes highlighting lessons emerged from the operational and analytical program of the World Bank‘s Latin America and Caribbean Region (LAC).
The present study is part of an effort by the World Bank and the State of Bahia to assess agriculture sector risks as a contribution to the strategic economic development and poverty reduction agenda of the state government. It is composed of two phases: an agricultural sector risk identification and prioritization (volume one) and a risk management strategy and action plan (volume two). The study provides practical elements for the implementation of the Bahia sustainable rural development project - named Bahia Produtiva, which is currently implemented by Regional Development and Action Company of Bahia (CAR) and is financed by a World Bank loan. Risks in Bahia’s agricultural sector are highly concentrated in soybean, maize, cotton, cacao, fruits, vegetables, and beans. There are a number of relatively frequent (1 in 3, 1 in 5 and 1 in 10 year occurrence probability) risks that have moderate expected impact. These risks are climate (drought), pest and diseases, and price volatility. Although livestock production is greatly exposed to sanitary risks, Bahia has not suffered catastrophic animal or plant health events in recent years. Looking at risks from the combined perspective of their impact potential (moderate to critical) and management possibility (none to very high), severe drought and moniliase disease in cacao appear as the risks with the most critical potential impact and minimum risk management. Therefore, they require medium to long-term investment and strong preparation to cope. Considering output value as a measure of aggregated impact of risks in Bahia as a whole, the greatest challenges are drought, aggressive pests and diseases, and weeds resistant to herbicides in Western Bahia, taking into account the proportionally large economic size of that region. The present action plan reflects the strategic lines and includes some basic details on who, when, and how much is required for the implementation of the actions. This report presents the findings and conclusions of the first and second phases of the agriculture sector risk assessment for the state of Bahia.
This report is comprised of two volumes: (i) volume one: risk assessment; and (ii) volume two: risk management strategy. Volume one continues with chapter one, which characterizes the recent performance of the agriculture sector, including agro-climatic and market conditions. It also identifies the productive systems used for this analysis. Chapter two describes the main risks in the agricultural sector, capturing market, production, and enabling environment risks along the value chains involved in the selected productive system typologies. Chapter three presents the estimations of the aggregate impacts of unmanaged agricultural risk on agricultural losses and production volatility. Chapter four identifies risk profiles for different stakeholders, underlying the different types of risk impacts, and then highlights a vulnerability framework. Finally, chapter five presents a prioritization of risks and proposes a preliminary set of priority risk management measures. A short list of potential solution actions is offered as the starting point for a more in-depth solution analysis to be undertaken during the second phase of the risk assessment. Volume two is composed of four chapters. Chapter one provides a brief discussion on the agricultural risk profile and risk management options (solutions) in Paraiba and an inventory of current programs, projects and policies that in different ways address the main agricultural risks. Chapter two presents an overview of the key agricultural sector features as are relevant for understanding the ARM strategy. Chapter three presents the ARM strategy with respect to the intervention areas identified during the first phase, i.e. weather information system, Sanitary and Phytosanitary System (SPS), supply chain coordination, and Agroclimatic Information Systems, including concrete risk management actions. Chapter four incorporates detailed information on the proposed actions aggregated in strategic lines. It includes information about the estimated cost of the actions, the responsible institution and the timeframe. Moreover, a second table provides a short term calendar by institution.
This country note briefly summarizes information relevant to both climate change and agriculture in Ecuador, with focus on policy developments (including action plans and programs) and institutional make-up. Like most countries in Latin America, Ecuador has submitted one national communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with a second one under preparation. Land use change and forestry are the largest contributors to greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions in the country. The emission reduction potential of the agricultural sector (including land use change and forestry) is significant and not yet sufficiently explored in the country. Agriculture is highly vulnerable to weather variability. Sustainable water management and climate-sensitive insurance coverage for agricultural production can reduce some of the observed vulnerabilities in the country.
This country note briefly summarizes information relevant to both climate change and agriculture in Bolivia, with focus on policy developments (including action plans and programs) and institutional make-up. Like most countries in Latin America, Bolivia has submitted one national communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with a second one under preparation. Land use change and forestry, coupled with agriculture, are by far the largest contributors to green house gas (GHG) emissions in the country. The emission reduction potential of the sector is large, but not sufficiently explored. Bolivia counts with only two registered Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects, none of which is in the agricultural sector. Agriculture is highly vulnerable to climate variability and weather extremes and around a third of the population derives their livelihood from agricultural production. A greater emphasis on adaptation strategies, in particular those related to water harvest and sustainable land management, as well as developing and applying adequate insurance mechanisms can be placed for better management of public resources in light of natural disasters in the agriculture sector.
Agriculture remains fundamental for Nicaragua from both a macroeconomic and social view. It is the largest sector of the Nicaraguan economy, and it remains the single biggest employer with around 30 percent of the labor force and including processed foods, like meat and sugar, agriculture accounts for around 40 percent of total exports value. Nicaragua appears to be gradually losing competitive edge of some of its key agricultural exports within the most important export markets. Agricultural total factor productivity of certain basic goods has been falling, which could be attributed to some extent for the limited use of improved technologies and the gaps in terms of the quality of its infrastructure and logistics services even though there have been some progress in this regard. In spite of these trends, Nicaragua has the potential to expand production sustainably, on both the extensive and the intensive margins.
This paper aims to develop a vision statement for the agricultural sector that may then guide the future investments in Chile's agricultural innovation system, A joint and shared perspective on how the sector might look and what role agricultural innovation should play in getting there is a prerequisite for any effective strategy. But developing such a vision is not only a function of what the country wants: it also depends on the context in which Chile's agricultural sector will find itself. This paper therefore reports on a participatory process to explore the many uncertainties that surround Chile's agriculture and to derive possible implications and answers. This will then lead to a vision for the sector that should be realistic both in terms of Chile's agricultural ambitions and its surrounding uncertainties. Based on the vision, a series of topics that needs to be explored in the agricultural innovation system if Chile wishes to make its vision come true will be identified and briefly described. The current paper is the second one in a series of three that were agreed between the Government of Chile and the World Bank to support the development of a long term agricultural innovation strategy. The first paper reviewed the functioning of the three main public technological institutes and made recommendations on how their performance can be improved. This second study explores the future of Chile's agriculture towards 2030, using a scenario planning methodology and developing a vision for the future of its agricultural innovation system. The third study will then outline a concrete action plan to make progress on the main topics that need to be addressed in order to achieve the vision.
The report builds on the 'towards a vision for agricultural innovation in Chile in 2030' report and is further based on a series of background papers and a consultation process that took place between December 2010 and May 2011. The current study is the third in a series of three that were agreed between the Government of Chile and the World Bank to support the development of a long-term agricultural innovation strategy. The first paper reviewed the functioning of the three main public technological institutes and recommended how their performance can be improved. The second study explored the future of Chile's agriculture towards 2030, using scenario planning and developing a vision for the future of its agricultural innovation system. This paper is based on the results of the former two studies, as well as a set of background documents and further consultations, and will outline the action plan required to achieve the aforementioned vision. The objective of this action plan is to enhance the capacity of Chile's agricultural innovation system in order to achieve the goals as laid out in the vision for the sector for the year 2030. It builds on the current strengths of the agricultural innovation system and elaborates on the main actions needed to address the priority topics. Five principles serve as the foundation of the plan: recognizing national and regional responsibilities; distinguishing public and private roles; diversity; excellence; and institutional integration. Most of the actions can be implemented between 2011 and 2015 and consolidated in the next five years. After 2020, plans and activities can be revised in the light of the progress obtained up to that moment.
This report summarizes and consolidates the findings of three Bank studies on poverty issues in Mexico, written as part of the second phase of this work: Urban Poverty, Rural Poverty, and Social Protection. It also expands on how Mexico will seek to use social protection policy as a vehicle for redistribution. Discussed in Chapter 1, the state has a clear role in providing risk-pooling mechanisms where private insurance markets fail (e.g., old age and health insurance), but the role of social protection policy in promoting redistribution is more an issue of national choice. That choice, however, has clear consequences for equity and poverty reduction outcomes. The economic trade-off between growth and equity, and thus between growth and redistribution, has been refuted by both theoretical advances, and international experience in recent years. International experience points to examples where redistribution has been achieved in a wide variety of ways. The choice is two fold: how much distribution; and through which means. The relative importance given to redistribution, and the role assigned to the social protection system in achieving equity objectives is a question of national objectives, but is crucial to guiding the direction of social protection policy reform. To summarize, the report finally focuses on four key emerging issues within social protection in Mexico: a) social security reform, b) health risks among the poor, c) old age poverty, and, d) the need to balance public risk management mechanisms with a more integrated strategy to combat chronic poverty. In order to tackle these challenges, Mexico faces a range of political choices.
The World Bank has a long relationship with Uruguay's agricultural sector, expanding over a period of more than 60 years in which several projects and various analytical and advisory assistance initiatives have been implemented. The main purposes of the present report are: a) to analyze the main characteristics of family agriculture as well as its development potential and constraints; b) to examine Uruguay's current agricultural policy and institutional framework; c) present a set of measures aimed at reducing vulnerabilities and increasing development opportunities for family producers; and d) contribute to Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fishery's (MGAP's) preparation of an agricultural and rural development plan 2010-15, by presenting a set of policy recommendations and measures to support an economic and environmentally sustainable family agriculture development within the Government's overall strategy to promote more equitable rural development. Uruguay's agricultural and food sector has successfully mastered past crises and retained its role as an important sector of the national economy, which saw its contribution to Gross Domestic product (GDP) increased from 6.0 percent during the economic crisis in 2000-2001 to 9.1 percent of national GDP, or 13.7 percent including agro-food processing, in 2008.
This report summarizes the findings of the study on Competitive Commercial Agriculture for Africa (CCAA). The objective of the CCAA study was to explore the feasibility of restoring international competitiveness and growth in African agriculture through the identification of products and production systems that can underpin rapid development of a competitive commercial agriculture. The CCAA study focused on the agricultural potential of Africa's Guinea Savannah zone, which covers about 600 million hectares in Africa, of which about 400 million hectares can be used for agriculture, and of which less than 10 percent are cropped. The African Guinea Savannah is one of the largest underused agricultural land reserves in the world. In terms of its agro climatic features, the land is similar to that found in the Cerrado region of Brazil and in the Northeast Region of Thailand, with medium-to-high agricultural potential but also significant constraints in the form of infertile soils and variable rainfall. Based on a careful examination of the factors that contributed to the successes achieved in Brazil and Thailand, as well as comparative analysis of evidence obtained through detailed case studies of three African (Mozambique, Nigeria, and Zambia) countries. This report argues that opportunities abound for farmers in Africa to regain international competitiveness, especially in light of projected stronger demand in world markets for agricultural commodities over the long term.
This work summarizes background papers prepared for the World Bank Group with significant input from government counterparts and other development partners. It takes stock of major recent developments and argues that a lot has been achieved in the last decade in terms of production of commodities for export and food consumption, with favorable impact on rural poverty reduction. It also argues that the two factors driving the recent agricultural performance, namely favorable international prices and expansion of the agricultural frontier, have reached their limits. So while trade policies are broadly on target, much can be done by focusing on the productivity of small family agriculture and improving competitiveness by reducing transaction costs (logistics) affecting small, medium, and large commercial farms. In the short to medium term, the household income of the rural poor will continue to depend largely on agriculture. Thus interventions will need to take into account the heterogeneity of smallholder agriculture while simultaneously increasing its resilience to climate risks through climate-smart agriculture.
This report is the result of a World Bank mission that visited Paraguay in June 2013 at the request of the Government of Paraguay. The mission’s objective was to identify, quantify, and prioritize agriculture risks that determine the volatility of agriculture gross domestic product (GDP), based on a methodology to assess sector risks developed by the World Bank. The methodology stipulates a two-phase process. The first phase (risk evaluation), which is in volume one of this report, was reviewed by the government and evaluates the current situation and perspective of agriculture sector risks, starting from the standpoint of supply chains. From here, and based on the identification of the most important risks, given their frequency and severity, a list of possible solutions was produced in addition to the existing public and private programs and policies. This process is completed with a second phase, where an action plan was prepared (volume two) that can be executed in the medium term to reduce sector risks and to contribute to the sustainability of agriculture investments. The significant efforts undertaken by the government to maintain support programs in critical production and trade areas of the sector are recognized, as well as the institutional development to strengthen the response capacity to agriculture risks. Chapter one gives introduction. Chapter two presents information about the agriculture sector and its recent performance is included, allowing to determine the most important supply chains for this risk assessment and to place the relative economic and social importance of the various commodities and production methods in the appropriate context. In chapter three, a comprehensive assessment of production, market, and enabling environment risks is undertaken for the main commercial and family farming supply chains, in addition to livestock. Chapter four shows the repercussions that risks have had in the past, in particular aggregated losses incurred by supply chain actors. Chapter five assesses the impacts of these losses throughout the supply chains and explores the relative vulnerability of the different actors. Chapter six presents the results and ranking of risks, a list of possible solutions jointly with different public initiatives where some identified risks are addressed.
The Government of Peru is committed to improving rural electrification coverage, aiming to increase rural coverage from an estimated 55 percent at the end of 2010 to 88 percent by 2020. To achieve this goal, the Directorate General of Rural Electrification (DGER) of the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) has been implementing and executing the National Plan for Rural Electrification, prepared annually, based on the 2006 Rural Electrification Law, to extend service and attract participation of the population, local governments and electricity distribution companies. Within this program, the World Bank (WB) and Global Environmental Facility (GEF) are supporting the Directorate of Competitive Funds (DFC) of the DGER in the implementation and execution of the Rural Electrification (RE) Project, initiated in July 2006 and the Second Rural Electrification Project initiated in July 2011, to assist electricity distribution companies to implement rural electrification. Among the activities underway in the first RE Project is the implementation of a pilot program to develop the productive use of electricity, promoting opportunities for income generation in rural areas. This report provides an early assessment of the productive uses of electricity in Peru under the RE Project.
Chile is one of the leading agricultural producers in Latin America and an important player in world agro-alimentary markets-a position it is determined to maintain. In 2008, the government (through the Ministry of Agriculture) requested technical assistance from the World Bank to define how agricultural innovation can help maintain future competitiveness and how it needs to evolve. However, since changes in its agricultural innovation system will pay off more in the long run than in the short term, Chile needed a realistic assessment of what it will take to be an agricultural leader in the future, knowing that without an understanding of the future, any major investment in agricultural innovation would be like shooting a cannon in the dark. Although many dynamic changes (such as population growth, improved incomes, market development, climate change, shifting dietary patterns, and advances in technology) can be identified, mapping and tracing their interaction is highly complex. So the Ministry and the Bank jointly engaged in a visioning exercise to understand the factors that drive Chile's agricultural future. This smart lesson summarizes that exercise and shares some of the lessons learned.
This report tells the story of a gender pilot that was carried out in water users' organizations for irrigated agriculture in the Peruvian highlands or Sierra region. It was designed upon the request of Peru's ministry of agriculture, with the objective to strengthen the role of women in water management and to improve their condition as agricultural producers. At first, a gender diagnostic was carried out to better understand the different barriers that hinder the attendance and thus equality of participation of women in trainings and meetings. After this diagnostic, a discussion followed about the importance for a community of including women in water management. In response to these diagnostics and subsequent discussions, the water users resolved to set specific targets for becoming more inclusive organizations, and shaped the content and timing of their activities to allow a greater number of women to participate. The pilot, carried out between 2007 and 2009, improved women s technical skills, self-esteem and position in the water users organizations, and has raised awareness among the community members about women's specific needs and expectations related to water management for irrigated agriculture. The participatory methodology used in this pilot was designed with the support of the World Bank group gender action plan, and is currently being scaled up in the World Bank financed Sierra Irrigation Subsector Project (PSI Sierra).
The Chile Country gender assessments (CGAs) identify gender-responsive policies and actions are strategic for poverty reduction, economic growth, human well-being, and development effectiveness. The report proposes priority policy objectives: increase female labor force participation, especially for low-income households, and reduce discontinuity in women's work experience. The report focus on the gender equality in the labor markets; improve access to financial services; expand access to business networks, business development services, and technology for women entrepreneurs. The potential impacts on economic growth gaps of increasing female labor force participation or reducing the gender gap.
This report is organized into nine chapters. Chapter one provides the introduction to the report. Chapter two presents alternative approaches to agribusiness development and chapter three discusses the role of agribusiness incubators. Chapter four discusses the challenges of agribusiness incubators and chapter five presents a typology of agribusiness incubators. Chapter six elaborates on the evolution of incubators over time. Chapter seven presents the analysis of impact and cost-benefits. Chapter eight summarizes good practices and lessons learned. Chapter nine presents the recommendations.
Beyond the City evaluates the contribution of rural development and policies to growth, poverty alleviation, and environmental degradation in the rest of the economy, as well as in the rural space. This title brings together new theoretical and empirical treatments of the links between rural and national development. New findings and are combined with existing literature to enhance our understanding of the how rural economic activities contribute to various aspects of national development. The study is based on original research funded by the World Bank's Office of the Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean. Of particular relevance is the interaction between agricultural and territorial development issues. The empirical findings also make substantial contributions to the debate over the appropriate design of public policies aiming to enhance the rural contribution to national development, including economic growth, poverty reduction, environmental sustainability, and macroeconomic stability.
Several posters have been created on the occasion of the 5th TAP Partners Assembly (Laos, 20-22 September 2017) to show recent activities and achievements in the eight pilot countries of the CDAIS project.
The CDAIS project, funded by the EU and jointly implemented by Agrinatura and FAO, enhances innovation in agriculture by improving the functional capacities of individuals, organizations and systems. It brings partners together and uses continuous learning cycles to address the challenges and opportunities in and around selected ‘innovation niche partnerships’ in eight pilot countries in Central America, Africa and Asia.
This poster specifically describes the partnerships in Honduras.
Several posters have been created on the occasion of the 5th TAP Partners Assembly (Laos, 20-22 September 2017) to show recent activities and achievements in the eight pilot countries of the CDAIS project.
The CDAIS project, funded by the EU and jointly implemented by Agrinatura and FAO, enhances innovation in agriculture by improving the functional capacities of individuals, organizations and systems. It brings partners together and uses continuous learning cycles to address the challenges and opportunities in and around selected ‘innovation niche partnerships’ in eight pilot countries in Central America, Africa and Asia.
This poster specifically describes the achievements and next steps in Honduras.
Several posters have been created on the occasion of the 5th TAP Partners Assembly (Laos, 20-22 September 2017) to show recent activities and achievements in the eight pilot countries of the CDAIS project.
The CDAIS project, funded by the EU and jointly implemented by Agrinatura and FAO, enhances innovation in agriculture by improving the functional capacities of individuals, organizations and systems. It brings partners together and uses continuous learning cycles to address the challenges and opportunities in and around selected ‘innovation niche partnerships’ in eight pilot countries in Central America, Africa and Asia.
This poster specifically illustrates the achievements and next steps in Guatemala.
Several posters have been created on the occasion of the 5th TAP Partners Assembly (Laos, 20-22 September 2017) to show recent activities and achievements in the eight pilot countries of the CDAIS project.
The CDAIS project, funded by the EU and jointly implemented by Agrinatura and FAO, enhances innovation in agriculture by improving the functional capacities of individuals, organizations and systems. It brings partners together and uses continuous learning cycles to address the challenges and opportunities in and around selected ‘innovation niche partnerships’ in eight pilot countries in Central America, Africa and Asia.
This poster specifically describes the innovation niches partnerships in Guatemala.
The CDAIS project, funded by the EU and jointly implemented by Agrinatura and FAO, enhances innovation in agriculture by improving the functional capacities of individuals, organizations and systems. It brings partners together and uses continuous learning cycles to address the challenges and opportunities in and around selected ‘innovation niche partnerships’ in eight pilot countries in Central America, Africa and Asia.
This flyer is intended as one of a series that will report the many and varied activities of CDAIS in each country, including, for example, policy dialogues, ‘marketplaces’, and specific outcomes.
This flyer specifically covers the CDAIS experience in Honduras, that involved the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock of Honduras and the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation.
The CDAIS project, funded by the EU and jointly implemented by Agrinatura and FAO, enhances innovation in agriculture by improving the functional capacities of individuals, organizations and systems. It brings partners together and uses continuous learning cycles to address the challenges and opportunities in and around selected ‘innovation niche partnerships’ in eight pilot countries in Central America, Africa and Asia.
This flyer is intended as one of a series that will report the many and varied activities of CDAIS in each country, including, for example, policy dialogues, ‘marketplaces’, and specific outcomes.
This flyer specifically covers the CDAIS experience in Angola, that involved the Government of Angola, the Instituto de Investigação Agronómica and the Instituto Superior de Agronomia Universidade de Lisboa.
Click here to see the Portoguese version of the flyer.
This case study in the development of hot pepper marketing in the Caribbean covers the period from the early 1980's to 2000. During the period several partnerships were forged among a host of public and private research institutions, export agencies, private companies and farmer groups to solve major constraints along the commodity chain. The objective of the study is to examine these partnerships that over time have developed the hot pepper commodity and taken advantage of specific niches in the marketplace in North America and the United Kingdom as farmers of the Caribbean strive to be competitive in the face of trade globalisation. In this study, steps in the commodity chain approach are examined and the impact of partnerships assessed
in terms of their effects on the marketing of hot pepper. These steps include genetic improvement, production systems, post harvest technologies and marketing. The partnerships are centred around the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI), the region's main agricultural research and development Institute. The research work has spanned eight Caribbean countries but has been conducted mainly in Antigua, St. Lucia, Dominica, Jamaica and Barbados.
This presentation was prepared for the meeting of the Executive Committee of FORAGRO which was held in Montpellier, France, on march 2010. The main points discussed here are the following:
- Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) context from the perspective of agricultural Research, Development & Innovation (RD&I)
- FORAGRO – Stakeholders and Lines of Action
- Processes of identification of priorities in LAC
- Regional Consultation Process for the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD)
- Priority topics for LAC Region
- Strategic elements for implementation of the priorities
The XII National Encounter of Smallholder Farmer Innovators of Honduras was held in the city of Siguatepeque from 3-5 September 2014. One hundred twenty smallholder men and women farmers, as well as decision makers participated at this meeting. The meeting was a space to exchange experiences of smallholder farmer innovations, as well as to celebrate a seed fair to exchange seeds, local varieties and traditional knowledge.
This presentation was made during the GFAR/IICA joint workshop "Enabling innovation for sustainable agricultural development in the Americas within a global context", held at FAO Headquarters, Rome, on 10 February 2017. The purpose of this document is to highlight the main challenges of agriculture in the Americas, share information regarding current state of innovation in
the Americas, confirm IICA´s commitment to advance a hemispheric agenda in innovation for a competitive, sustainable and inclusive agriculture, motivate the dialogue to find “innovative” ways to trigger sustainable innovation processes in the Americas.
Drawing on studies from Africa, Asia and South America, this book provides empirical evidence and conceptual explorations of the gendered dimensions of food security. It investigates how food security and gender inequity are conceptualized within interventions, assesses the impacts and outcomes of gender-responsive programs on food security and gender equity, and addresses diverse approaches to gender research and practice that range from descriptive and analytical to strategic and transformative. The chapters draw on diverse theoretical perspectives, including transformative learning, feminist theory, deliberative democracy and technology adoption. As a result, they add important conceptual and empirical material to a growing literature on the challenges of gender equity in food production. A unique feature of this book is the integration of both analytic and transformative approaches to understanding gender and food security. The analytic material shows how food security interventions enable women and men to meet the long-term nutritional needs of their households, and to enhance their economic position. The transformative chapters also document efforts to build durable and equitable relationships between men and women, addressing underlying social, cultural and economic causes of gender inequality. Taken together, these combined approaches enable women and men to reflect on gendered divisions of labour and resources related to food, and to reshape these divisions in ways which benefit families and communities.
This paper synthesizes Component 2 of the Regoverning Markets Programme. It is based on 38 empirical case studies where small-scale farmers and businesses connected successfully to dynamic markets, doing business with agri-processors and supermarkets. The studies aimed to derive models, strategies and policy principles to guide public and private sector actors in promoting greater participation of small-scale producers in dynamic markets. This publication forms part of the Regoverning Markets project.
Increasingly, multi-stakeholder processes have been recognized as being necessary to the development of public policies seeking to promote systemic innovation in response to complex and multidimensional challenges, such as household food security, rural development, and environmental change. Saint Lucia, a small island developing state located in the Caribbean, has been grappling with a wide range of agriculture, food and nutrition security challenges with varying degrees of policy success. Recognizing the significance of the challenge, this paper explores the nature of the stakeholder interactions surrounding the development of Saint Lucia’s 2009–2015 National Agricultural Policy and considers some of the implications for food and agriculture-related policy outcomes. Results reveal a general lack of supportive conditions for effective multi-stakeholder processes, including low stakeholder participation levels, conflicting roles of different forms of social capital in the interactions between stakeholders, and missing “boundary” organizations capable of facilitating a transition towards more flexible and adaptive institutions, enhanced knowledge exchange and learning, and greater trust among stakeholders in the policy network. Future avenues for research and development are subsequently identified.
In an effort to raise incomes and increase resilience of smallholder farmers and their families in Feed the Future1 (FTF) countries, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded the Developing Local Extension Capacity (DLEC) project. This project is led by Digital Green in partnership with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), CARE International (CARE) and multiple resource partners. DLEC works with country stakeholders and USAID missions to scale and improve locally relevant, cost-effective and pluralistic agricultural extension systems that bring together information technologies and community-based organizations. By collaborating with USAID missions, host-country governments, public and private EAS providers, rural civil society organizations and host-country research institutes, DLEC helps extension systems become more effective, accountable, scalable and sustainable. The first stage of DLEC’s work includes conducting diagnostic assessments of local EAS contexts and capacities in FTF and aligned countries. This analysis looks at the current situation of agricultural extension services in Honduras, the actors and their capacities. The results of the study will be used to guide actions and investments to strengthen the EAS system.
Presentation by Quintin Gray, Former Agriculture Counselor and U.S. Consulate in the United Arab Emirates, at the Global Forum for innovations in agriculture (Abu Dhabi, 20-21 March 2017), an event to present solutions and inspire debate across all types of food production. Held in strategic partnership with the Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority and supported by the Ministry of Presidential Affairs and Ministry of Climate Change and Environment, the GFIA conference featured speakers from around the world tackling five key challenges: climate-resilient crops; growing the aquaculture industry; future-proofing animal health; smallholder farmer development; and sustainable animal production.
IFPRI’s flagship report reviews the major food policy issues, developments, and decisions of 2016, and highlights challenges and opportunities for 2017 at the global and regional levels. This year’s report looks at the impact of rapid urban growth on food security and nutrition, and considers how food systems can be reshaped to benefit both urban and rural populations. Drawing on recent research, IFPRI researchers and other distinguished food policy experts consider a range of timely questions:
■ What do we know about the impacts of urbanization on hunger and nutrition?
■ What are our greatest research and data needs for better policy making that will ensure food security and improve diets for growing
urban populations?
■ How can we better connect rural smallholders to urban food consumers to ensure that smallholders benefit from expanding urban food markets?
■ Why do city environments drive a nutrition transition toward poorer diets, and what policies can improve the nutrition environment?
■ How are urban areas reshaping agricultural value chains for staple crops and benefiting small farmers?
■ What role do informal markets play in feeding cities, and how can they be better governed to increase urban food security?
The 2017 Global Food Policy Report also presents data tables and visualizations for several key food policy indicators, including country-
level data on hunger, agricultural spending and research investment, and projections for future agricultural production and consumption. In addition to illustrative figures, tables, and a timeline of food policy events in 2016, the report includes the results of a global opinion poll on urbanization and the current state of food policy.
Poor farmers seldom benefit from new agricultural technologies. In response, research and extension approaches based on agricultural innovation systems are popular. Often agricultural research organisations are the network brokers, facilitating the emergence of the innovation system. Based on an analysis of the Sustainable Modernization of Traditional Agriculture (MasAgro) initiative in Mexico, this viewpoint suggests that such organisations are more often suitable network brokers when the objective is the development and scaling out of a technology by itself. When the objectives are multi-faceted and include extension and education, other actors are better placed to be the network broker.-
According to the authors of this paper, actual methods of scaling are rather empirical and based on the premise of ‘find out what works in one place and do more of the same, in another place’. These methods thus would not sufficiently take into account complex realities beyond the concepts of innovation transfer, dissemination, diffusion and adoption. As a consequence, scaling initiatives often do not produce the desired effect. They may produce undesirable effects in the form of negative spill-overs or unanticipated side effects such as environmental degradation, bad labour conditions of farm workers and loss of control of farming communities over access to genetic resources. Therefore the authors conceptualise scaling processes as an integral part of a systemic approach to innovation, to anticipate on the possible consequences of scaling efforts. The propose a method that connects the heuristic framework of the multi-level perspective on socio-technical transitions (MLP) to a philosophical ‘modal aspects’ framework, with the objective of elucidating the connectedness between technologies, processes and practices. The resultant framework, the PRactice-Oriented Multi-level perspective on Innovation and Scaling (PROMIS), can inform research and policymakers on the complex dynamics involved in scaling. This is illustrated in relation to three cases in which the framework was applied: scaling agro-ecological practices in Nicaragua, farmer field schools on cocoa cultivation in Cameroon and ‘green rubber’ cultivation in Southwest China.
In this book, the authors assessed the role of biotechnology innovation for sustainable development in emerging and developing economies. This book compiles studies that each illustrate the potential, demonstrated value and challenges of biotechnology applications for sustainable agricultural innovation and/or industrial development in a national, regional and international context. This book was written in the frame of the International Industrial Biotechnology Network (IIBN), a joint initiative between UNIDO and IPBO (International Plant Biotechnology Outreach) supported by the Flemish government (EWI). IIBN coordinated by IPBO fosters the development of sustainable applications of agricultural and industrial biotechnology in developing and emerging economies through international cooperation.
Little is known about effective ways to operationalize agricultural innovation processes. The authors of this article use the MasAgro program in Mexico (which aims to increase maize and wheat productivity, profitability and sustainability), and the experiences of middle level ‘hub managers’, to understand how innovation processes occur in heterogeneous and changing contexts. Their research shows how a program, that initially had a relatively narrow technology focus, evolved towards an innovation system approach. The adaptive management of such a process was in response to context-specific challenges and opportunities. In the heterogeneous context of Mexico this results in diverse ways of operationalization at the hub level, leading to different collaborating partners and technology portfolios.
Grants for agricultural innovation are common but grant funds specifically targeted to smallholder farmers remain relatively rare. Nevertheless, they are receiving increasing recognition as a promising venue for agricultural innovation. They stimulate smallholders to experiment with improved practices, to become proactive and to engage with research and extension providers. The systematic review covered three modalities of disbursing these grants to smallholder farmers and their organisations: vouchers, competitive grants and farmer-led innovation support funds. The synthesis covers, among others, innovation grant systems in Malawi (Agricultural Input Subsidy Programme), Latin America (several Challenge Funds for Farmer Groups), Uganda (National Agricultural Advisory Services ), and Colombia (Local Agricultural Research Committees - CIAL). This research was funded by the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID). The research was commissioned as part of a joint call for systematic reviews with the Department for International Development (DFID) and the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie).
Public–private partnerships that aim at the development of innovations have gained increasing attention from governments, public research and private companies, because they enable partners to draw from complementary resources and profit from synergy and joint learning. This article develops arguments for when partnerships should form and compares them with experiences in real partnership cases in Latin America. Theoretically, partnerships make sense when no partner can do it alone, when partners gain more than they invest, when there is synergy and when the gains are proportionally distributed. Empirical evidence in Latin America shows that partnerships in agricultural innovation often form without clear perceptions of the costs involved and benefits to be obtained. To make public–private partnerships more viable, both parties should practice coherent planning of how to attain the common objective. However, private partners are usually satisfied with partnerships as the investment is low, in-kind, or can be tax-exempted.
This paper discusses the challenges and determinants of agro-operations and innovation initiatives in developing countries. With particular reference to the Caribbean region, available country statistics and data are analysed. A generic model of collaborative innovation for agriculture that stresses collaboration among the stakeholders (government, knowledge institutions, public and private firms and others) is described. Drawn from the experience of The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, the paper illustrates the rationale and the action agenda of the country to revitalise its agro-operations and innovation capabilities for sustainable development. The country's experience may provide insights for other developing countries in the areas of innovation capability building and technology transfer.
This article starts by describing the evolution of innovation in agricultural research and cooperation for development, including an historical overview of agricultural research for development from green revolution to the re-discover of traditional knowledge. Then the authors analyze participation in innovation processes and make a comparison of innovation systems and platforms targeting the agri-food sector in developing countries. A particular focus is reserved to the European regional networks and to the experience of the USAID Middle East Water and Livelihoods Initiative. Finally, a series of recommendations for the way forward are drawn.
In this paper, results from a study on the use of improved coffee production technology schemes among smallholder coffee producers in three prominent coffee producing regions in Honduras are presented. The impact of various schemes (trajectories) in which different agents influence the producers’ decision to use new technologies was analyzed. In particular, there are differences in the influence of a) private coffee buying organizations and b) government and public development agencies on the innovation behavior of coffee growers. Drawing from network data that depict the internal and outbound connectedness of producers in three village communities in main coffee producing zones in Honduras, tools of social network analysis were applied to find out how interactions with certain agents, separately and cumulatively, has influenced their use of improved methods in coffee production and marketing.
The present report is based on the authors' visits to Bolivia, Honduras and Nicaragua, during June-August 2004 in order to develop an initial understanding of innovation processes and identifying stakeholders working with national innovation processes. It also review the experiences of the invited Latin American participants in the 7th Global Conference of Competitiveness Institute (entitled "Building Innovative Clusters for Competitive Advantage") in September 2004 and finally presents suggestion for further activities. The main purpose of the Latin American project in Bolivia, Honduras and Nicaragua was to introduce and develop a process that will increase awaress, cooperation and debate on the role and opportunity that "innovation clusters" may have in the development of innovations.
The agricultural innovation system can be strengthened by increasing the learning capacity of research and field organisations. Participatory methods were developed to study three dimensions of the capacity of such organisations in Nicaragua to access and analyse information, highly correlated to learning capacity – the individual routines of their professionals, the formal procedures of the organisation and the organisation's use of collaborative projects to strengthen core operations. These and the results of a study of the origins of recent innovations in agro-industry and on farms, indicated the strength of linkages in the innovation system. The system is producing innovations at a slow rate and not necessarily with substantial gains in efficiency. Research and field organisations have some links with farmers, but not with farmer organisations and even fewer with the input supply sector, agro-industry and traders. Suggestions are made for improving individual information seeking routines, using collaborative projects for strengthening learning capacity and for building strategic alliances.
Emilio Ruz, executive secretary of the Cooperative Programme for Agri-food and Agroindustrial Technological Development of the Southern Cone (PROCISUR), presented the PROCISUR’s frame-work of innovation management at the 3rd GFRAS Annual Meeting, "The Role of Rural Advisory Services in Agricultural Innovation Systems", 26-28 September 2012, Philippines. His presentation has been prepared with Julio C. Catullo,
Extension Group Coordinator of PROCISUR.
The report specifically analyses the NIS in Peru and Colombia in the coffee and dairy sectors due to their economic importance for both countries and the large percentage of small producers in these sectors. In order to analyse the NIS, we have utilised an innovations systems approach to form the analytical framework. This framework focuses on four main areas – understanding the actors in the NIS, their roles and attitudes, the patterns of interaction of these actors, and the enabling environment with a focus on small producer inclusion. The research findings confirm that Colombia has a stronger and more operationalized NIS compared to Peru. The main state agencies that have served as a base for the current NIS are COLCIENCIAS (in Colombia) and CONCYTEC (in Peru). Both were founded as Science and Technology Agencies in 1968 and incorporated ‘innovation’ into their functions in 2004 and 2009, respectively. However, even though their historical foundations are similar, they demonstrate large disparities in their growth trajectories, approach and corresponding impacts.
In the 90’s first steps were taken in Cuba to strengthen family farming. A participatory seeds breeding, multiplication and diffusion project started, a challenge to Cuban scientists, not used to involve farmers in the decision making process and recognizing them as equal partners. This project further evolved to become the Local Agricultural Innovation Programme, Spanish acronym PIAL (Programa de Innovación Agropecuaria Local). PIAL is recognized today as one of the leading programmes in Cuba facilitating collective action in support of family farming and reaching over 50,000 small farmers nationwide. Inspired by initial successes in Cuba, ICRA staff has been using these experiences to support also innovation processes in Mexico and Bolivia. This profile briefly describes three approaches used to facilitate collaboration and coordinated action at local level: (1) Participatory Landrace Breeding, (2) Participatory Seed Diffusion and (3) Facilitation of collective action of multi-actor groups.
This report provides a synthesis of all findings and information generated through a “stocktaking” process that involved a desk study of Prolinnova documents and evaluation reports, a questionnaire to 40 staff members of international organizations in agricultural research and development (ARD), self-assessment by the Country Platforms (CPs) and backstopping visits to five CPs. In 2014, the Prolinnova network saw a need to re-strategise in a changing context, and started this process by reviewing the activities it had undertaken and assessing its own functioning. This process of “stocktaking” generated insights into the network’s accomplishments between 2003 and 2013, seen in relation to the financial resources that were available, at both international and country level. The exercise also helped the CPs to re-strategise their work and partnerships for the coming years and to formulate and share lessons, conclusions and recommendations for strengthening global multistakeholder partnerships in ARD within and beyond the network.
This book represents the proceedings of the FAO international technical conference dedicated to Agricultural Biotechnologies in Developing Countries (ABDC-10) that took place in Guadalajara, Mexico on 1-4 March 2010. A major objective of the conference was to take stock of the application of biotechnologies across the different food and agricultural sectors in developing countries, in order to learn from the past and to identify options for the future to face the challenges of food insecurity, climate change and natural resource degradation. The proceedings are organized in two main sections. The first section contains ten chapters with an extensive series of FAO background documents prepared before ABDC-10. They focus on the current status and options for biotechnologies in developing countries in crops, livestock, forestry, fisheries/aquaculture and food processing/safety, as well as on related policy issues and options, in particular about targeting agricultural biotechnologies to the poor; enabling research and development (R&D) for agricultural biotechnologies; and ensuring access to the benefits of R&D. The second section contains five chapters dedicated to the outcomes of ABDC-10, namely the reports from 27 parallel sessions of sectoral, cross-sectoral and regional interest, most of which were organized by different intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations and regional fora; keynote presentations; and the conference report adopted by delegates in Guadalajara on the final day.
The private sector’s presence in agricultural advisory services worldwide has been on the increase for over three decades. This trend has also been observed in the Mantaro Valley (Peru), in a context of dairy family farming. The objective of the communication is to analyse the modalities of advisory services privatization and assess the consequences of this privatization for the farmers and their livestock systems. Data were collected through input suppliers, different types of advisers and producers interviews. The activity of private advisers is most often associated with the sale of livestock inputs, which, while facilitating access to technical support for almost all producers, does not take the overall producer needs into account. This study shows the importance of improved coordination of advisory activities between public and private actors for an efficient agricultural advisory system, a condition that encourages a sustainable farming system approach.
The paper was presented at the 12th European IFSA Symposium (Workshop : "Developing agricultural advisory systems for innovation: Governance and innovative practices") in 2016.
African agriculture is currently at a crossroads, at which persistent food shortages are compounded by threats from climate change. But, as this book argues, Africa can feed itself in a generation and help contribute to global food security. To achieve this Africa has to define agriculture as a force in economic growth by: advancing scientific and technological research; investing in infrastructure; fostering higher technical training; and creating regional markets. To govern the transformation Africa must foster the emergence of a new crop of entrepreneurial leaders dedicated to the continent's economic improvement. The book is divided into seven chapters. Chapter 1 examines the critical linkages between agriculture and economic growth. Chapter 2 reviews the implications of advances in science
and technology for Africa’s agriculture. Chapter 3 provides a conceptual framework for defining agricultural innovation in a systemic context. Chapter 4 outlines the critical linkages between infrastructure and agricultural innovation. The role of education in fostering agricultural innovation is the subject of Chapter 5. Chapter 6 presents the importance of entrepreneurship in agricultural innovation. The final chapter outlines regional approaches for fostering agricultural innovation.
The Papa Andina network employs collective action in two novel approaches for fostering market chain innovation. The participatory market chain approach (PMCA) and stakeholder platforms engage small potato producers together with market agents and agricultural service providers in group activities to identify common interests, share market knowledge and develop new business opportunities. These forms of collective action have generated commercial, technological and institutional innovations, and created new market niches for Andean native potatoes grown by poor farmers in remote highland areas. These innovations have benefited small farmers as well as other market chain actors. This paper describes Papa Andina’s experiences with collective action for market chain innovation. It then discusses the implications of these experiences for the understanding of collective action and the policy implications for research and development organizations.
LenCD has prepared a joint statement on results and capacity development (presented in this publication), which stresses that meaningful, sustainable results are premised on proper investments in capacity development and that these results materialize at different levels and at different times, along countries’ development trajectory. To provide evidence in support of this statement, LenCD launched a call for submission of stories. The 15 stories featured in this publication have been selected by a fourmember review panel, through a rigorous appraisal process of over 40 stories, received as a response to the LenCD call. The stories have been contributed by different countries and development partners and cover 14 countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Latin America. The stories showcase how endogenous investments in capacity development have led, over time, to produce short, medium and long-term sustainable results.
This paper analyzes the impact of participation in multi-stakeholder platforms (Plataformas) aimed at linking smallholder potato farmers to the market in the mountain region of Ecuador. It describes and evaluates the Plataformas’ program to determine whether it has been successful in linking farmers to higher-value markets and the effects that such connections have brought, particularly with regard to farmers’ welfare and to the environment. The analysis is run comparing a set of different and carefully constructed control groups to beneficiaries and using various specifications. Results are strongly consistent across the different specifications and are sound across the counterfactuals, suggesting impacts are adequately identified. Findings suggest that the program was successful in improving the welfare of beneficiaries, while potential negative environmental impacts, particularly with relation to agrobiodiversity and use of agrochemicals seem not to be a concern. Mechanisms through which impacts have been achieved are analyzed. Little spillover effects are found.
There are divergent views on what capacity development might mean in relation to agricultural biotechnology. The core of this debate is whether this should involve the development of human capital and research infrastructure, or whether it should encompass a wider range of activities which also include developing the capacity to use knowledge productively. This paper uses the innovation systems concept to shed light on this discussion, arguing that it is innovation capacity rather than science and technology capacity that has to be developed. It then presents six examples of different capacity development approaches. It concludes by suggesting that policy needs to take a multidimensional approach to capacity development in line with innovation systems perspective. But it also argues that policy needs to recognise the need to develop the capacity of diversity of innovation systems and that a key part of the capacity development task is to bring about the integration of these different systems at strategic points in time
The innovation system perspective acknowledges the contributions made by all stakeholders involved in knowledge development, dissemination and appropriation. According to the specific agricultural production system, farmers adopt innovations, modify them or innovate on their own. This paper examines the role of farmers' experiments and innovations in Cuba's agricultural innovation system (AIS), identifies knowledge exchange encounters and describes some strategies implemented to institutionalize farmers' experiments and innovations. The research methods comprised 34 semi-structured interviews with agricultural experts from the science, administration and advisory system, and 31 free list questionnaires to assess the institutional influence on farmers' experiments and innovations. In addition, three case studies of outstanding farmers' experiments are presented.
This presentation argues the need of green growth in agriculture, analyzes features of the innovation systems and ends with some policies practices. The presentation has been prepared for "Innovation and Modernising the Rural Economy", OECD’s 8th Rural Development Policy Conference, 3-5 October 2012 (Krasnoyarsk, Russian Federation).
Small-scale farmers' experimental innovations have not generally been considered for on-farm research trials as those in the traditional sector have been perceived as recipients, rather than originators, of technical knowledge and sustainable and viable practices. Yet there is abundant evidence throughout the tropics that small-scale farmers are adaptive and experimental problem solvers, and experts at devising innovative survival strategies. While literature on the topic is rich with accounts from Africa, Asia and Latin America, there is a general dearth of examples from the Caribbean. This paper highlights some examples of farm- and village-level problem solving and survival practices among small-scale domestic food producers in the challenging agroecological environment of Jamaica.
Grown in Jamaica since the days of slavery, food yams are major staples in local diets and a significant non-traditional export crop. The cultivation system used today is the same as 300 years ago, with alleged unsustainable practices. A new cultivation system called minisett was introduced in 1985 but the adoption rate twenty four years later is extremely low. This paper analyzes the prospects for the widespread adoption of minisett and sustainable yam cultivation and advocates that greater use be made of farmers’ extensive knowledge of the complex agro-ecological, socio-cultural and economic milieu in which they operate.
The purpose of this paper is to map some elements that can contribute to an IFAD strategy to stimulate and support pro-poor innovations. It is an initial or exploratory document that hopefully will add to an ongoing and necessary debate, and is not intended as a final position paper. The document is organized as follows. After the Introduction (Section 1), the Section 2 presents an outline of the innovation systems framework, adapted to the present discussion on rural development work such as that promoted by IFAD, in contrast to its more frequent use in the context of debates on science and technology. Section 3 discusses some important trends and changes in rural innovation systems, from the perspective of rural poverty reduction and rural development. Section 4 highlights some opportunities for pro-poor innovation, according to a framework that takes into consideration the heterogeneity of rural poverty. Section 5 concludes by asking a number of questions, with the expectation that they may contribute to a debate on what it is that IFAD can do to be more effective in promoting pro-poor rural innovation systems.
This chapter analyses the functioning of the Brazilian agricultural innovation system. It discusses the role of the different actors and describes governance mechanisms to define priorities and evaluate performance. It analyses trends in agricultural R&D expenditure and sources of funding, the role of intellectual property protection in fostering knowledge markets, and outlines mechanisms used to facilitate knowledge transfers, including collaboration at the national level and the adoption of innovation at the farm or firm level. It also outlines efforts to strenghten international R&D co-operation. Finally, it provides evidence on the performance of the agricultural innovation system, including R&d outputs and adoption rates.
In this paper the authors present the diagnosis and re-design of farm systems as part of an innovation process involving farmers and scientists to improve the sustainability of family farms in south Uruguay. Although were selected farms with a large variation in resource endowment, they shared the main critical points of sustainability: low productivity and deteriorated soil quality. The participatory approach followed to diagnose and re-design the farm systems was successful in improving significantly family income and labour productivity and at the same time reducing soil erosion and improving SOC on most farms.
This 2016 report provides an economic overview of the Canadian agriculture and agri-food system using the most recent data available. It is meant to be a multi-purpose reference document that presents: • the agriculture and agri-food system in the context of the Canadian economy and international markets; and, • a snapshot of the composition and performance of the agriculture and agri-food system as it evolves in response to challenges, opportunities and market developments. The report begins with a special feature section on natural resource use and the environment. This section examines the impact of agriculture on the environment and quantifies greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by Canada’s various economic sectors, including agriculture. Historical levels of emission trends by agricultural sub-sector (e.g. livestock and crop, land use, on-farm energy use) are provided, along with emissions/removals associated with land management changes. Projected GHG emissions for the agriculture sector through 2030 are given. The remainder of the section addresses Canada’s agricultural use of land and water resources, including types of agricultural land cover, water use and consumption by sector, irrigation levels by province, farm size, farm type, and crop, as well as irrigation methods and sources of irrigation water. The rest of the report looks at the agriculture and agri-food system’s relevance to the Canadian economy, as measured by its share of the Canadian gross domestic product (GDP) and number of jobs in Canada. It also reviews the sector’s performance internationally, in terms of its share of agriculture and agri-food trade to total world trade and a snap shot of each segment of the agriculture and agri-food system covering: primary agriculture, food processing, consumers and food distribution. The report ends with an overview of government support to agriculture. The report describes the Canadian agriculture and agri-food system as a modern, integrated and competitive supply chain that is important to the Canadian economy. It is a dynamic and resilient system that constantly adapts to changing consumer demands, technological advances and globalization.
This paper (Part I) present a case study of work conducted by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) to adapt network mapping techniques to a rural and developing country context. It reports on work in Colombia to develop a prototype network diagnosis tool for use by service providers who work to strengthen small rural groups. It is complemented by a further paper in this issue by Louise Clark (Part II) which presents work to develop a network diagnosis tool for stakeholders involved in agricultural supply chains in Bolivia. The prototype methods used in both Parts I and II are based on social network analysis (SNA) methodology. SNA is a rapidly developing methodology that is gaining increasing popularity as an analytical and visualization tool with a wide range of applications across a number of disciplines such as health care, psychology and business organization. The focus of SNA is the nature of the relationships that exist between different actors in order to better understand how an actor’s position in a network influences their access to resources such as goods, capital and information.
This paper (Part II) presents work to develop a network diagnosis tool for stakeholders involved in agricultural supply chains in Bolivia. It is complemented by a further paper (Part I) by Boru Douthwaite and colleagues in the same issue of this journal which presents a case study of work conducted by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). The prototype methods used in both Parts I and II are based on social network analysis (SNA) methodology. SNA is a rapidly developing methodology that is gaining increasing popularity as an analytical and visualization tool with a wide range of applications across a number of disciplines such as health care, psychology and business organization. The focus of SNA is the nature of the relationships that exist between different actors in order to better understand how an actor’s position in a network influences their access to resources such as goods, capital and information.
Public-private partnerships are a new way of carrying out research and development (R&D) in Latin America's agricultural sector. These partnerships spur innovation for agricultural development and have various advantages over other institutional arrangements fostering R&D. This report summarizes the experiences of a research project that analyzed 125 public-private research partnerships (PPPs) in 12 Latin American countries. The analysis indicates that several types of partnerships have emerged in response to the various needs of the different partners. Nevertheless, public-private partnerships are not always the most appropriate mechanism by which to carry out R&D and foster innovation in agriculture. Sometimes, it is more efficient to organize research via participatory projects or through research contracts.
This report assesses trends in investments, human resource capacity, and research outputs in agricultural R&D -excluding the private (for-profit) sector- in LAC. It is an update of Stads and Beintema (2009), covering a more complete set of countries and focusing primarily on developments during 2006-2012/2013. The analysis draws largely from a set of country factsheets prepared by Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators (ASTI), which is led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), using comprehensive datasets derived from primary surveys and additional secondary sources targeting close to 700 agencies in 27 LAC countries.
The Farmer Field School (FFS) approach has been very successful and witnessed a strong expansion in many areas beyond crop production. Notwithstanding this success, the adoption of FFS in national extension often remains problematic and FFS activities have often been implemented in the margin of national institutions with strong reliance on donor funding. The creation of an enabling environment for institutional support is essential for expanding the effort, improving quality, and strengthening impact and continuity of the FFSs. This paper aims to analyse opportunities, challenges and implications of institutionalizing FFS at the national level.
This paper has been prepared under the guidelines provided by the TAP Secretariat at the FAO, as a contribution to the G20 initiative TAP, which includes near 40 partners and is facilitated by FAO. Its purpose is to provide a Regional synthesis report on capacity needs assessment for agricultural innovation, with capacity gaps identified and analyzed, including recommendations to strengthen agricultural innovation systems (AIS) and draft policy recommendations to address the capacity gaps.
Rural extension plays a significant and irreplaceable role in an innovation system that creates, designs, validates, and promotes new ideas, solutions, technologies, and forms of management focused on the resolution of problems and satisfaction of the needs of farmers and rural inhabitants and the organizations that represent them. In view of the above, this document presents proposals for making rural extension a key part of innovation systems focused on rural territorial development. This is understood as the productive and institutional transformation of a specific space in order to reduce rural poverty.
CABI’s Plantwise programme runs local plant clinics in 24 countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America where trained ‘plant doctors’ provide on-the-spot diagnosis and advice for farmers who bring samples to the clinics. A database that records each consultation and shares knowledge across clinics and countries continually builds the ability of the programme to respond to farmers’ needs. The programme embodies key principles of an innovation systems approach. Systems diagnosis, building networks and linkages, balancing supply push with demand pull, strengthening the role of intermediaries, and experimenting and learning are among the features which ensure the programme continually evolves to meet emerging needs and challenges. As well as providing a valuable service to smallholder farmers, enriching their ability to address production constraints, the sharing of lessons among stakeholders is having a positive overall effect on national plant health systems.
This paper presents an overview of current opportunities and challenges facing efforts to increase the impact of rural and agricultural extension. The starting point for this analysis is in recognition that the days when agricultural extension was synonymous with the work of public sector agencies are over. The extension services described here may just as likely consist of an input vendor advising a farmer about what seed to plant, a television station broadcasting a weather forecast, a supermarket advising traders about what standards are required for the vegetables they purchase or a farmer organization lobbying for research that reflects the demands of its members for new technologies. Mobilizing the potential of extension is about enhancing this broad and complex flow of information and advice in the agrifood sector. This paper outlines the potential role of extension in achieving the aims of the L'Aquila Food Security Initiative, which has mobilized a massive international commitment to enhancing food security.
The question of how agricultural research can best be used for developmental purposes is a topic of some debate in developmental circles. The idea that this is simply a question of better transfer of ideas from research to farmers has been largely discredited. Agricultural innovation is a process that takes a multitude of different forms, and, within this process, agricultural research and expertise are mobilised at different points in time for different purposes. This paper uses two key analytical principles in order to find how research is actually put into use. The first, which concerns the configurations of organisations and their relationships associated with innovation, reveals the additional set of resources and expertise that research needs to be married up to and sheds light on the sorts of arrangements that allow this marriage to take place. The second — which concerns understanding innovation as a path-dependent, contextually shaped trajectory unfolding over time — reveals the changing role of research during the course of events associated with the development and diffusion of products, services and institutional innovations. Using these analytical principles, this paper examines the efforts of the DFID-funded Research Into Use (RIU) programme that sought to explore the agricultural research-into-use question empirically. The paper then uses this analysis to derive implications for public policy and its ongoing efforts to add value to research investments.
This policy brief deals with the following points: (i) Given the importance of agriculture and the rural medium for countries’ growth and development, policy makers must strengthen the institutional structure of rural extension and increase public and private investment; (ii) Abundant natural resources, knowledge, technology, and extensionists are not enough. Countries also need policies, institutional frameworks, and solid management that link the local to the national and vice versa for the development of extension; (iii) The classical function of extension of “extending” knowledge and technologies and mainly working on aspects of production and education is being complemented by other needs and functions that go beyond the agricultural sector. The presence of these inter-sectoral functions merits the development of new institutional structures and skills; (iv) Institutional innovations for extension in a context of agricultural and rural innovation should consider the micro, meso, and macro levels. Failing to recognize them will lead to incomplete and unsustainable models and innovations.
This synthesis report presents the outputs of the workshop organised by CTA at its headquarters in Wageningen, The Netherlands, 15-17 July 2008. The outputs are presented in two main parts, each corresponding to one of the workshop objectives, and ends with a section on the way forward as suggested by the workshop participants. It also includes a first attempt to come to a consolidated generic framework on AIS performance indicators, based on the outputs of the different working groups. This is improved on the basis of feedback from workshop participants and their partners in ACP-countries and Europe during subsequent meetings and support for case studies on monitoring and evaluating contributions to innovation performance. The workshop involved 22 experts from 11 ACP countries, France and The Netherlands. CTA plans to organise follow-up workshops and support case studies to develop the process.
The Worldwide Extension Study provides empirical data on the human and financial resources of agricultural extension and advisory systems worldwide, as well as other important information on: the primary extension service providers in each country (e.g.: public, private and/or non-governmental); which types and groups of farmers are the primary target groups (e.g.: large, medium, and/or small-scale farmers, including rural women) for each extension organization; how each organization’s resources are allocated to key extension and advisory service functions; each organization’s information and communication technology resources and capacity; and what role, if any, different categories of farmers play in setting extension’s priorities and/or assessing performance.The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), working in collaboration with the University of Illinois (UIUC), FAO, and the Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services (GFRAS), developed the Worldwide Extension Study database as part of the assessment of the status of agricultural extension and advisory services worldwide between 2009-2013.
This paper analyzes how the Papa Andina Partnership Program, based at the International Potato Center, functions as an innovation broker in the Andean potato sector. As a regional initiative, Papa Andina operates as a second-level innovation broker, backstopping national partners who facilitate local innovation processes in their respective countries. Papa Andina works to strengthen local innovation capacity and to foster innovations in innovation the development of more effective ways of bringing stakeholders together to produce innovations that benefit small-scale farmers. There are virtuous feedback loops between first- and second-level innovation brokering functions. The paper outlines the approaches Papa Andina has developed and promoted for fostering innovation brokerage at these two levels and the types of results obtained. It then identifies some important challenges that Papa Andina faces in innovation brokerage at the international level. The paper concludes with a discussion of broader policy issues related to the roles and functions of innovation brokers and boundary organizations in promoting sustainable development.
The increasing complexity of technology development and adoption is rapidly changing the effectiveness of scientific and technological policies. Complex technologies are developed and disseminated by networks of agents. The impact of these networks depends on the assets they command, their learning routines, the socio-economic environment in which they operate and their history. In this new environment, scientific and technology policies should: (1) foster interactions among agents (whether public or private), (2) increase the effectiveness of public research, extension and funding institutions, (3) give sufficient freedom to researchers to set their research programs, and (4) monitor the quality of research (rather of research outputs). The evolution of innovation networks is analyzed looking at the development and diffusion of zero tillage (ZT) in Brazil.
Agriculture and food supply face a repositioning in the context of challenges associated with the Millennium Development Goals. From a development perspective it is of central importance to identify the role that the sector should perform in the fight against poverty and in a world that is increasingly urbanized. In this context, the general objective of the document is to contribute to the discussion of the current situation of the National Institutes of Agricultural Research (INIA’s - Institutos Nacionales de Investigación Agropecuaria) in Latin America in the framework of the National Innovation Systems and the international scenario. Specifically,the objectives are: i) to characterize the challenges they face and the scientific basis on which the INIA’s work and function (sections I.2 and I.3); ii) to analyze the evolution and role of the INIA’s in the Region (section I.4); iii) to propose changes that could be put in place to take advantage of opportunities, deal with challenges and be part of the new processes of innovation that are developing (sections I.5 and I.6); iv) to identify specific interventions required to put into practice the required transformations (sections I.7 and I.8); v) to contribute to a better understanding, design and management of innovation platforms for the regional agricultural sector (section II).
High elevation páramo (wetland) ecosystems in the Andes are important water sources for local communities and downstream agricultural and urban users. These headwater catchments, however, are often impacted by human activities (eg agricultural production) that affect both stream water quality and flow. Knowledge about water availability, quality, and use is essential for effective management but is often lacking, particularly in smaller mountain communities. Studies of natural resources in mountains, conducted jointly with local actors and with the participation of youth, are a way for rural communities to learn about their resources, appropriate this knowledge, and improve their quality of life. Research projects that involve youth in remote rural zones, where education is not of the same quality as in urban centers, represent an important opportunity for youth to acquire skills and relevant knowledge for their personal development and for participation in development processes. The present article presents a process and the results of a project that studied water resources in Bolivia and Colombia with local youth and water users. The research themes in the 2 countries were different, responding to the concerns of their respective communities, but the results had a similar major impact on the lives of young researchers, on the communities' perception of the state of their natural resources—in particular water—and on the role of knowledge in generating creative options for improving resource management and the quality of life in mountain communities.
