Social farming (SF) has emerged as a social innovation practice shaping heterogeneous approaches and results. This study discusses the complexity of SF policy and practices, and it is led by the main hypothesis that the relationship between agricultural and social dimensions might be very heterogeneous, not only in different national contexts but also within the same national and local level. SF policy and practices are investigated testing the hypothesis of three main different modalities of interaction according to how the social and the agricultural perspectives interact.
Smartphone technology is promising for the future development of agriculture, as it can facilitate and improve many operational procedures and can also be combined with precision agriculture technologies. Yet, existing research on smartphone adoption in agriculture is scarce. Therefore, this paper empirically explores the factors influencing smartphone adoption by German farmers. The relationship between farmers, farm characteristics and smartphone adoption was analysed using a binomial logit model.
This paper calls for a better integration of place-based, evidence-based and inclusive dimensions in the implementation of the Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) plans and industrial policies in sub-Saharan Africa. To this end, the analysis contrasts with and takes inspiration from the recent and ongoing international experiences in the elaboration of Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation (S3).
The EU-funded Horizon 2020 “Small Farms, Small Food Businesses and Sustainable Food Security” (SALSA) project has brought together 16 partners, from European and African countries and the UN system, who have a unique blend of multidisciplinary expertise and experience from a wide range of geographical and socio-political realities.
SALSA has aimed to provide a better understanding of the current and potential contribution of small farms and food businesses to sustainable Food and Nutrition Security (FNS).
SALSA is an EU Horizon 2020 project that set out to assess the current and future role of small farms and related small food businesses (suppliers, processors, distributors) in achieving sustainable Food and Nutrition Security (FNS). SALSA studied small farms in 30 reference regions in 20 countries - 25 regions (at the so-called NUTS3 administrative level) in Europe and 5 regions in Africa.
Small farms in Northern Europe are found alongside some of the largest - and in some cases, most industrialised - farms in the whole of Europe.
The EU-funded SALSA project set out to examine a potentially very important role of small farms – their contribution to food security.
The important role that small farms play in supporting rural livelihoods, conserving biodiversity and maintaining traditional landscapes, rural traditions and cultural heritage is widely accepted. Nevertheless, they are often under the radar of the agriculture policy mechanisms, which tend to focus on the very large farms and globally driven food chains.
In this paper is presented a novel approach to elicit stakeholder visions of future desired land use, which was applied with a broad range of experts to develop cross-sectoral visions in Europe. The approach is based on (i) combination of software tools and facilitation techniques to stimulate engagement and creativity; (ii) methodical selection of stakeholders; (iii) use of land attributes to deconstruct the multifaceted sectoral visions into land-use changes that can be clustered into few cross-sectoral visions, and (iv) a rigorous iterative process.
El interés de realizar esta investigación fue evidenciar los aportes del enfoque de cadena de valor al desarrollo territorial rural, para el cual se seleccionó un caso piloto correspondiente al proyecto denominado "Diversificación de zonas de ladera con productos de alto valor: mieles especiales" llevado a cabo en el departamento del Huila durante los años 2005 al 2007, por un grupo multidisciplinario de investigadores cuyo objetivo fue el fortalecimiento y mejoramento de la competitividad de la cadena apícola liderada por la cooperativa integral de apicultures de Huila - COAPI