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).

A growing variety of public and private rural advisory services are available today, leading to increasingly “pluralistic service systems” (PSS), in which advisory services are provided by different actors and funded from different sources. However, these PSS and the way they operate are still poorly understood. In particular, how PSS can effectively respond to demands of heterogeneous farmers in contexts where small-scale agriculture increasingly needs to exploit value addition and adapt to market requirements.

When designing projects, it is important to engage local stakeholders as early as possible to ensure that capacity development (CD) activities are truly relevant to their needs. Multi-Stakeholder processes (MSPs) can also lead to greater ownership of project activities and outcomes. This case study gives an example from Sudan of successful MSPs for developing Food Security and Nutrition Information Systems (FSNIS) in four states. 

The capacity scoring questionnaire is an instrument that can be used when assessing the systems capacities of innovation partnerships or organizations in order to identify strengths and weaknesses and monitor change over time. It thus supports the design and implementation of successful capacity development interventions for agricultural innovation. This questionnaire has been developed in two versions (Version 1 and Version 2) and has been piloted in several countries in the context of the Capacity Development for Agricultural Innovation Systems (CDAIS).

The capacity scoring questionnaire is an instrument that can be used when assessing the systems capacities of innovation partnerships or organizations in order to identify strengths and weaknesses and monitor change over time. It thus supports the design and implementation of successful capacity development interventions for agricultural innovation. This questionnaire has been developed in two versions (Version 1 and Version 2) and has been piloted in several countries in the context of the Capacity Development for Agricultural Innovation Systems (CDAIS).

The Excel workbook contains some preconfigured spreadsheets that can be used for entering data collected through the capacity scoring questionnaire (Version 1 and Version 2), which has been developed in the context of the the CDAIS project, and to perform some basic analysis as well as visualize the data.

These proceedings relate to a regional workshop which was held in Muscat, Oman, in January 2008.

The purpose of this sourcebook is to pull together into a single document a collection of common sense tips and recommendations based on actual practices and experience around the world.

This decision guide is intended to help extension professionals and their organizations make informed decisions about which extension method and approach to use for providing information, technologies and services to rural producers and to facilitate interactions and knowledge flow. Expected users include field-based rural advisors, extension managers and programme planners.