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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Agricultural transformation and development are critical to the livelihoods of more than a billion small-scale farmers and other rural people in developing countries. Extension and advisory services play an important role in such transformation and can assist farmers with advice and information, brokering and facilitating innovations and relationships, and dealing with risks and disasters.

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.