Four FFSs concerning integrated crop–livestock systems were implemented by a R&D project namely “Adaptation to Climate Change in West Asia and North Africa (WANA) Marginal Environments through Sustainable Crop and Livestock Diversification (ACC project)” during the summer season 2013 in three villages namely Village 4, Village 7 and Village 1750 in Sinai Peninsula. This study aimed to do the following: (1) assess the learning impacts of farmer field schools of integrated crop–livestock package and (2) explore the factors that affect the respondents’ learning index.
Social learning processes can be the basis of a method of agricultural innovation that involves expert and empirical knowledge. In this sense, the objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness and sustainability of an innovation process, understood as social learning, in a group of small farmers in the southern highlands of Peru. Innovative proposals and its permanence three years after the process finished were evaluated. It was observed that innovation processes generated are maintained over time; however, new innovations are not subsequently generated
The Australian story of farmer innovation in Conservation Agriculture reveals a complex interplay of policy, economics, science, and farming. Farmer experimentation with Conservation Agriculture began in the 1960's and has continued to this day where around 80%-90% of Australia's 23.5 million hectares of winter crops are now grown using Conservation Agriculture principles. This remarkable achievement is the result of both sustained investment in agricultural research and development and farmer innovation.
The present essay aims to present a partial view of the evolution of thought on business management and economics of organizations applied to agriculture and identifies perspectives for empirical studies. The paper contains four topics. Following this introduction, the second part revisits the concept of agribusiness systems, the third part presents the institutional/property rights perspective and contractual approach, and part four suggests research issues in the field of economics of organizations
Following the food price crisis in 2008, African governments implemented policies aiming at crowding in investment in rice value chain upgrading to help domestic rice compete with imports. This study assess the state of rice value chain upgrading in West Africa by reviewing evidence on rice millers’ investment in semi-industrial and industrial milling technologies, contract farming and vertical integration during the post-crisis period 2009–2019. We find that upgrading is more dynamic in countries with high rice production and import bills and limited comparative advantage in demand.
This paper assesses how institutional interactions can strengthen effectiveness, by focusing on three multi-stakeholder partnerships for renewable energy. Based on an expert survey and semi-structured interviews, the study provides both theoretical and empirical contributions to understanding institutional interactions in relation to effectiveness. Moreover, it provides insights on how to strengthen the effectiveness of multi-stakeholder partnerships for renewable energy
The objective of this article is to increase the understanding of the indicator landscape and to complement the various stages of the innovation process with relevant indicators. In doing so, this study categorizes the identified indicators into company-specific and contextual dimensions. Furthermore, this study analyzes the indicators in terms of their potential for ex-ante and ex-post evaluation and investigates the characteristics of relevant publications. The analysis finds that more process rather than product indicators exist in the literature.
The concept of innovation ecosystems has become popular during the last 15 years, leading to a debate regarding its relevance and conceptual rigor, not the least in this journal. The purpose of this article is to review received definitions of innovation ecosystems and related concepts and to propose a synthesized definition of an innovation ecosystem.
There has been an increasing interest in science, technology and innovation policy studies in the topic of policy mixes. While earlier studies conceptualised policy mixes mainly in terms of combinations of instruments to support innovation, more recent literature extends the focus to how policy mixes can foster sustainability transitions.
There is sufficient evidence, drawn from surveys of innovation in the public sector and cognitive testing interviews with public sector managers, to develop a framework for measuring public sector innovation. Although many questions that are covered in the Oslo Manual guidelines for measuring innovation in the private sector can be applied with some modifications to the public sector, public sector innovation surveys need to meet policy needs that require collecting additional types of data.