The European Innovation Partnership for agricultural productivity and sustainability (EIP-AGRI), which can be perceived as a platform based on interaction among farmers, researchers, and advisors/extensionists, represents a useful tool for a better understanding of applied innovation processes.
Although innovation is understood to encompass much more than R&D, science continues to be an essential ingredient. In particular translation, adaptation and ‘valorisation’ of research results, the responsiveness of research to users’ needs and improved access to results are all regarded as important in achieving a more sustainable European agriculture. These challenges can be addressed in a number of ways including increased collaboration, networking, transdisciplinary research and co-operation between researchers and practitioners.
In this paper, presented at the 12th European IFSA Symposium (Workshop: "Generating spaces for innovation in agricultural and rural development") in 2016, the authors assess the integration of new entrants to small-scale farming into agricultural knowledge and innovation systems (AKIS), in four study sites located on Europe’s periphery (Bulgaria, Poland, Portugal, and the United Kingdom).
The European Innovation Partnership for agricultural productivity and sustainability (EIP-AGRI), which can be perceived as a platform based on interaction among farmers, researchers, and advisors/extensionists, represents a useful tool for a better understanding of applied innovation processes.
Partnership brokering is needed to work out new ways of organising food systems that treat agricultural smallholders as a resource and opportunity rather than a problem or distraction. This is because food systems are demanding innovation in the way they are organised. This is a matter of transforming stakeholders into partners in order to reconfigure food systems to operate differently, rather than just operate more efficiently. Fundamental systemic changes are needed as our contemporary food system is failing to deliver the food we increasingly demand.
Efficient water allocation for sustainable irrigated agriculture has become a growing concern, especially in transboundary river basins where the competition between upstream and downstream countries is substantially increasing. In this paper, the Diyala basin, one of the most water-stressed basins shared between Iraq and Iran, was used as an example case study. The water-stress situation is projected to get worse in the foreseeable future, as climate change adversely altered runoff at a time when demand for water is witnessing remarkable growth.
Summary of the second week of the e-conference "Innovation systems for food security and nutrition: understanding the capacities needed". The e-conference, organized by the Secretariat of the Tropical Agriculture Platform (TAP), is aiming at bringing together the issues of capacity development, agricultural innovation, and food security and nutrition with the objective of developing recommendations for policy-making.
The e-conference started on 18 April and lasted until 13 May 2016.
The Conceptual Background provides an in-depth analysis of the conceptual underpinnings and principles of the TAP Common Framework. It is also available in French and Spanish.
Rural Advisory Services (RAS) are increasingly recognised as critical to agricultural and rural development. They provide rural communities with wide range of skills and knowledge and facilitate their interactions among the different actors to help them access support and services required for improving their livelihoods. Family Farmers are one of the important clients of RAS as they are the most predominant type of farmers worldwide.
Agricultural education, research, and extension can contribute substantially to reducing rural poverty in the developing world. However, evidence suggests that their contributions are falling short in Sub-Saharan Africa. The entry of new actors, technologies, and market forces, when combined with new economic and demographic pressures, suggests the need for more innovative and less linear approaches to promoting a technological transformation of smallholder agriculture.