The overall objective of the Comprehensive Assessment of the Agricultural Sector (CAAS) is to provide an evidence base to enable appropriate strategic policy responses by the Government of Liberia (GoL) and its development partners in order to maximize the contribution of the agriculture sector to the Government's overarching policy objectives. Given the strong relationship between growth in agricultural productivity and poverty reduction, future efforts in Liberia need to focus on productivity enhancing measures with a pro-poor focus that increase incomes.
The overall objective of the Comprehensive Assessment of the Agricultural Sector (CAAS) is to provide an evidence base to enable appropriate strategic policy responses by the Government of Liberia (GoL) and its development partners in order to maximize the contribution of the agriculture sector to the Government's overarching policy objectives. Given the strong relationship between growth in agricultural productivity and poverty reduction, future efforts in Liberia need to focus on productivity enhancing measures with a pro-poor focus that increase incomes.
This paper takes the viewpoint of a social scientist and looks at agricultural scientists' pathways for science impact. Awareness of these pathways is increasingly becoming part and parcel of the professionalism of the agricultural scientist, now that the pressure is on to mobilize smallholders and their productive resources for (global) food security and for reducing persistent rural poverty. Significant new thinking about pathways is emerging and it is useful to present some of this, even if it is not cut-and-dried.
The efforts to adapt to climate change in developing countries are in their infancy, and hopefully CSA will be a major contributor to these efforts. But CSA itself is evolving, and there is a growing need to refine and adapt it to the changing realities. This section of the book focus on the implications of the empirical findings for devising effective strategies and policies to support resilience and the implications for agriculture and climate change policy at national, regional and international levels.
Policy brief No. 2. The majority of the world’s poor are smallholder farmers in developing countries. These smallhol- ders face several obstacles that limit their produc- tivity and profits, such that their incomes remain low. Institutional changes in the agricultural value chains are required to reduce poverty rates among smallholder farmers, and to stimulate agricultural growth.
In the Office du Niger large rice farming irrigation scheme in Mali, water management has been a permanent source of tension between the smallholder tenants and the administration. The transfer of tertiary canal maintenance to the tenant farmers was expected to improve water management but, in practice, that rather led to deterioration.
The innovation system perspective acknowledges the contributions made by all stakeholders involved in knowledge development, dissemination and appropriation. According to the specific agricultural production system, farmers adopt innovations, modify them or innovate on their own. This paper examines the role of farmers' experiments and innovations in Cuba's agricultural innovation system (AIS), identifies knowledge exchange encounters and describes some strategies implemented to institutionalize farmers' experiments and innovations.
Agroecology and organ agriculture present promising alternatives to the current food system, supported by a growing body of evidence. Despite the potential of AE/O, their full benefits cannot be realised in most countries due to political and institutional barriers and lock-ins, including incentives and funding that favour "business as usual" food systems. Overcoming present and future challenges will require educated and empowered stakeholders to support AE/O agriculture in their fields.
The agricultural industry is getting more data-centric and requires precise, more advanced data and technologies than before, despite being familiar with agricultural processes. The agriculture industry is being advanced by various information and advanced communication technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT). The rapid emergence of these advanced technologies has restructured almost all other industries, as well as advanced agriculture, which has shifted the industry from a statistical approach to a quantitative one.
In the SALSA project, transdisciplinarity means a process of integration of knowledge between researchers belonging to different disciplines (in our case, sociology, economics, anthropology, geography) and with non-academic actors such as NGOs members, innovation brokers, policy makers). The role of transdisciplinary theory building within SALSA is to link diverse areas of knowledge through a co-constructed conceptual framework in order to underpin effective action towards improved FNS.