This report discusses general innovation issues and how they are affecting economic growth. It emphasizes how the advances in ICT, biotechnology and other fields of science are changing the innovation landscape and what are the implications for CD.

This report reviews recent trends in agricultural innovation systems (AIS) and discusses the impact of a wide range of policies on the creation and diffusion of innovation in the agricultural and agrifood sector. It suggests a framework for analysing the role of governments in fostering increased innovation, with a view to helping to identify practical actions that governments could take to improve productivity growth, sustainable use of resources, and resilience to future market developments in national and global agriculture and agri-food systems.

The Challenge of Capacity Development: Working Towards Good Practice draws on four decades of documented experience provided by both bilateral and multilateral donors, as well as academic specialists, to help policy makers and practitioners think through effective approaches to capacity development and what challenges remain in the drive to boost country capacity. The analysis is underpinned by a conceptual framework which guides practitioners to view capacity development at three interrelated levels: individual, organisational and enabling environment levels.

This conference proceedings from the OECD Conference on Agricultural Knowledge Systems (AKS), held in Paris, on 15-17 June 2011, discusses a large range of experiences and approaches to AKS  explores how to foster development and adoption of innovation to meet global food security and climate change challenges. The conference considered developments in institutional frameworks, public and private roles and partnerships, regulatory frameworks conducive to innovation, the adoption of innovations and technology transfers, and the responsiveness of AKS to broader policy objectives.

This chapter outlines the role of a well-functioning agricultural innovation system in ensuring good use of public funds, and higher responsiveness to the needs of ‘innovation consumers’ through improved collaboration between public and private participants, including across national borders. A well-functioning agricultural innovation system is key to improving the economic, environmental and social performance of the food and agriculture sector.

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.

Agriculture remains the mainstay of Indian economy and major source of livelihood of rural household, predominantly by small and marginal farmers, and securing the food and nutritional security. This paper describes the reality of small and marginal farmers in India. These farmers face several problems of credit, input supply, proper linkage with market as so on. Women farmers are lagging behind in adopting the drudgery reduction technologies followed by health and nutrition of farm families.

The Fiji Islands, like many small Pacific island nations, are thought to incur high rates of postharvest loss. Little work has been undertaken to quantify the amount of loss within Pacific horticultural value chains, or identify the key determinants. This study sought to quantify postharvest loss within Fijian smallholder tomato value chains and to examine the relative importance of current on-farm practices as possible contributors to this loss.

Traditional approaches addressing hunger, typically based on agricultural development, are deemed insufficient alone to address the problem and attention is now being directed to food value chains, although experience is currently limited. To assess the state of science and identify knowledge gaps, an integrative review of the broad topic of value chains and diet quality was undertaken, with particular focus on interventions and their related impact pathways.

The publication reviews forty years of development experience and concludes that donors and partner countries alike have tended to look at capacity development as mainly a technical process, or as a transfer of knowledge or institutions from North to South.