This article combines innovation intermediary and technological innovation systems literature to develop fundamentals of an approach for analysing how organisations acting as intermediaries support firms in eco-innovation and potentially contribute to technological innovation system functions. The operationalisation of the analytical approach is illustrated using case studies on a total of eight support organisations acting as intermediaries in the region of Scania, Sweden and North Rhine Westphalia, Germany.
Indicator-based tools are widely used for the assessment of farm sustainability, but analysts still face methodological and conceptual issues, including data availability, the complexity of the concept of sustainability and the heterogeneity of agricultural systems. This study contributes to this debate through the illustration of a procedure for farm sustainability assessment focussed on the case study of the South Milan Agricultural Park, Italy. The application is based on a set of environmental, social and economic indicators retrieved from the literature review.
El aceite de palma es estigmatizado en los mercados mundiales debido a problemas derivados de prácticas de establecimiento que han ocasionado la devastación de grandes extensiones de bosques tropicales en el sudeste de Asia. Este estigma es especialmente evidente en países desarrollados, en donde los consumidores exigen productos respetuosos del medio ambiente. Dicha situación impuso la necesidad de certificar si el aceite de palma que llega a los mercados de altos ingresos proviene de plantaciones que llevan a cabo prácticas sostenibles.
In light of the discussion on ‘best-fit' in pluralistic advisory systems, this article aims to present and discuss challenges for advisory services in serving various types of farmers when they seek and acquire farm business advice.The empirical basis is data derived from four workshops, five interviews with staff from advisory organizations, and interviews with 11 farmers.Emerging configurations serve different types of farmers,that is, private advisors serve different clients in different ways; these could be considered subsystems within the overall advisory system.
Este artículo tiene por propósito comparar las redes de compras públicas para la agricultura campesina y familiar en los programas de alimentación escolar de los municipios de Granada (Antioquia-Colombia) y São Lourenço do Sul (Rio Grande do Sul-Brasil) en los años de 2016 y 2017. Para tal fin, se construyó un abordaje teórico-metodológico desde la perspectiva de las redes de política pública, articulado a dos metodologías, el Análisis de Redes Sociales y la comparación de Sistemas de Máxima Diferencia.
In this paper the developments in agricultural research and education in the Netherlands will be presented in a historic context and the recent evolutions in agriculture-based research and knowledge systems are evaluated. It is concluded that societal needs, scientific discoveries, and public and private funding are the driving forces behind change. However, most important for the quality and vigour of knowledge centres is the ability to adapt to change
The aim of the present article is to propose a new approach to improve interactions between stakeholders, using traceability and contractualization. Faced with a crisis generated by volatility, collective action, incorporating all stakeholders, including consumers, is needed: but what exactly must be done? The article first describes the SDSC approach which combines three main concepts: Extended Demand, Extended Supply and Demand-Supply Chain (DSC), and then goes on to detail how a collaborativemodeling tool needs to be built up.
The process of adopting innovation, especially with regard to precision farming (PF), is inherently complex and social, and influenced by producers, change agents, social norms and organizational pressure. An empirical analysis was conducted among Italian farmers to measure the drivers and clarify “bottlenecks” in the adoption of agricultural innovation. The purpose of this study was to analyze the socio-structural and complexity factors that affect the probability to adopt innovations and the determinants that drive an individual’s decisions.
This paper is part of the H2020 project AgriLink “Agricultural Knowledge: Linking farmers, advisors and researchers to boost innovation”. It presents and develops the concept of ‘microAKIS’, i.e. the micro knowledge- and innovation-system that farmers personally assemble to manage their agricultural practices and ensure sustainability.
The latest comprehensive research agenda in the Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension was published in 2012 (Faure, Desjeux, and Gasselin 2012), and since then there have been quite some developments in terms of biophysical, ecological, climatological, social, political and economic trends that impact farming and the transformation of agriculture and food systems at large as well as new potentially disruptive technologies.