Little is known about effective ways to operationalize agricultural innovation processes. The authors of this article use the MasAgro program in Mexico (which aims to increase maize and wheat productivity, profitability and sustainability), and the experiences of middle level ‘hub managers’, to understand how innovation processes occur in heterogeneous and changing contexts. Their research shows how a program, that initially had a relatively narrow technology focus, evolved towards an innovation system approach.

The report entitled ‘Innovation in the Irish Agri-food Sector’ was compiled by researchers from the University College of Dublin (UCD) following interviews with stakeholders from across the sector, and an analysis of data from Eurostat, the OECD, and the Teagasc National Farm Survey. The report also shows that the sector is strong in terms of research capacity, overall education levels, and favourable tax regimes to encourage business innovation. The report was launched at the international conference ‘Driving Innovation in the Irish Agri-Food System', held in June 2014 at the UCD.

This study aims to assess if AKIS are effectively disseminating integrated soil fertility management (ISFM) knowledge by comparing results from two sites in Kenya and Ghana, which differ in the uptake of ISFM. Social network measures and statistical methods were employed using data from key formal actors and farmers. Their results suggest that the presence of weak knowledge ties is important for the awareness of ISFM at both research sites.

Poor farmers seldom benefit from new agricultural technologies. In response, research and extension approaches based on agricultural innovation systems are popular. Often agricultural research organisations are the network brokers, facilitating the emergence of the innovation system. Based on an analysis of the Sustainable Modernization of Traditional Agriculture (MasAgro) initiative in Mexico, this viewpoint suggests that such organisations are more often suitable network brokers when the objective is the development and scaling out of a technology by itself.

In 2012, the Food Systems Innovation (FSI) initiative was set up between four Australian organisations working to improve the impact of agriculture and food security programs in the Indo-Pacific region. The author was assigned to facilitate a stream of work in the partnership, working as an internal partnership broker in one of the four partner organisations, the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

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.

This paper characterises some of the main issues confronting water-catchment managing in a climate-changing world and addresses wide-spread concerns about the lack of connectivity between science, policy making and implementation. The paper’s arguments are ‘framed’ within a paradigm of systemic and adaptive governing, regulating, planning and managing understood as a nested systemic hierarchy. It is argued that climate change adaptation is best understood as a coevolutionary dynamic, principally, but not exclusively between human beings and the biophysical world.

Net-Map is an interview-based mapping tool that helps people understand, visualize, discuss, and improve situations in which many different actors influence outcomes. By creating Influence Network Maps, individuals and groups can clarify their own view of a situation, foster discussion, and develop a strategic approach to their networking activities.

This concept note has been developed within the context of the EU-funded CDAIS project, which is jointly implemented by AGRINATURA-EEIG and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to support the TAP Action Plan in eight pilot countries in Africa (Angola, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Rwanda), Asia (Bangladesh, Laos) and Central America (Guatemala, Honduras) .