Familiar mixed dairy sheep farm is the most widespread system in the Mediterranean basin, in Latin America and in developing countries (85%). There is a strong lack of technological adoption in packages of feeding and land use in small-scale farms. To increase competitiveness, it would be of great interest to deepen the knowledge of how innovation was selected, adopted, and spread. The objective of this research was to select strategic feeding and land use technologies in familiar mixed dairy sheep systems and later assess dairy sheep farms in Spain.
The potential beneficial and harmful social impacts generated by the introduction of novel technologies, in general, and those concerning nutrient recovery and the improvement of nutrient efficiency in agriculture, in particular, have received little attention, as shown in the literature. This study investigated the current social impacts of agricultural practices in Belgium, Germany and Spain, and the potential social impacts of novel technologies introduced in agriculture to reduce nutrient losses.
The digital transformation in agriculture introduces new challenges in terms of data, knowledge and technology adoption due to critical interoperability issues, and also challenges regarding the identification of the most suitable data sources to be exploited and the information models that must be used.
European agriculture is facing increasing economic, environmental, institutional, and social challenges, from changes in demographic trends to the effects of climate change. In this context of high instability, the agricultural sector in Europe needs to improve its resilience and sustainability. Local assessments and strategies at the farming system level are needed, and this paper focuses on a hazelnut farming system in central Italy. For the assessment, a participatory approach was used, based on a stakeholder workshop.
The EU rural development policy has addressed challenges related to climate change in agriculture by introducing public voluntary schemes, which financially support the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices. Several factors, most of which are non-financial ones, drive adoption and continuation of these schemes by farmers. Despite the importance of these factors, only a few studies explore their role in the European context. This paper contributes to filling this gap from a twofold perspective.
The study proposes a knowledge-intensive and qualitative research methodology based on researcher-farmer participatory approach, with the aim to improve the state of knowledge on organic rice, explore the yield potential and variability, and identify the successful agronomic practices. A wide range of cropping systems placed in North Italy were monitored and analysed during three years by a multi-actor network.
Understanding eco-innovation is an essential endeavor to achieve global sustainable development. In this sense, further research on implementation is needed to expand knowledge beyond current boundaries. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this debate by conducting an original multidimensional analysis using Spanish agri-food sector data. The empirical methodology applies a combination of descriptive statistics, cluster analysis and the chi-squared test.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will vary for different groups of rural population, with the highest impact expected to be on farmers and other vulnerable groups, especially women and youth. Targeted support is feasible only by activating a network of actors or organizations within agricultural innovation systems (AIS) and promoting customized technologies and practices suitable for location specific contexts.
The research programme URBAL (Urban-driven Innovations for Sustainable Food Systems) (2018–2020), funded by Agropolis Fondation (France), Fondation Daniel & Nina Carasso (France/Spain), and Fundazione Cariplo (Italy), and coordinated by CIRAD (France) and the Laurier Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Wilfrid Laurier University (Canada), seeks to build and test a participatory methodology to identify and map the impact pathways of urban-driven innovations on all the dimensions of food systems sustainability.
Discussions on food security in the Global North have raised questions about the capacity of peri-urban organic agriculture to provide sufficient healthy food for the urban market. Dealing with food security requires more attention to how to protect peri-urban organic farming systems from urban pressures while strengthening the sustainability of local food systems.