India's smallholding farmers face significant challenges. They struggle with erratic weather and the impacts of climate change, pest infestations, and declining yields. Financially constrained, many are trapped by high-interest loans from local lenders. Post-harvest, issues such as crop wastage, logistics, and market access can add their troubles, with up to 40 percent of produce lost. Market fluctuations and the inability to meet quality standards further exacerbate their struggles.
Agrifood systems generate significant benefits to society, including the food that nourishes us and jobs and livelihoods for over a billion people. However, their negative impacts due to unsustainable business-as-usual activities and practices are contributing to climate change, natural resource degradation and the unaffordability of healthy diets.
Mission-oriented agricultural innovation systems (MAIS) are becoming more prevalent in view of tackling the challenges of agri-food systems transformation. In this perspective, we argue that the politics of MAIS requires more comprehensive and considerable attention in the field, given the contested and deeply normative nature of the direction of innovations in agri-food systems transformation. Literature from development studies, policy sciences, and transition studies is reviewed to inform the perspective.
La Gestión de Tecnología e Innovación (GTI) juega un papel crucial en el avance del sector agropecuario de una nación, ya que promueve el mejoramiento de la productividad y competitividad en todas las regiones, consolidándose como una herramienta fundamental en su desarrollo. El propósito central de este estudio es proponer una nueva perspectiva en la gestión de la tecnología y la innovación para las Unidades de Producción Agropecuaria (UPA) de la provincia de Cotopaxi, presentando así una alternativa innovadora que busca resolver los retos existentes y futuros en esta materia.
[Introducción]: El cultivo de madera sostenible pierde terreno ante la producción agrícola y otros usos de la tierra; para contrarrestar esto, es necesario entender de qué manera el ente productor toma decisiones en la adopción voluntaria de sistemas agrícolas.
In rural areas of developing countries, more than 70% of the population still depends on agriculture. However, economic crises, unscientific land allocation and climate change issues have hindered attempted gains in agricultural productivity and related rural development outcomes. Technology-driven breakthrough has usually pushed agriculture to the brink of another development that can affect not only plant diversity and yield, but also climatological and socio-economic outcomes.
This note is a preview on the agricultural innovation systems (AIS) assessment methdology which is being tested in the nine countries of the European Union-funded TAP-AIS DeSIRA project. It presents the rationale, the steps, ethe expected outputs and outcomes.
Assessing or understanding the agriculture innovation system (AIS) is an essential step to better understand the needs, new skills and functions needed by the actors and the system. To accelerate the uptake of innovation and progress towards eradicating poverty, there is an urgent need for well-coordinated, demand-driven, and market-oriented information, knowledge, technologies and services.
Droughts are causing severe damages to tropical countries worldwide. Although water abundant, their resilience to water shortages during dry periods is often low. As there is little knowledge about tropical drought characteristics, reliable methodologies to evaluate drought risk in data scarce tropical regions are needed.
Familiar mixed dairy sheep farm is the most widespread system in the Mediterranean basin, in Latin America and in developing countries (85%). There is a strong lack of technological adoption in packages of feeding and land use in small-scale farms. To increase competitiveness, it would be of great interest to deepen the knowledge of how innovation was selected, adopted, and spread. The objective of this research was to select strategic feeding and land use technologies in familiar mixed dairy sheep systems and later assess dairy sheep farms in Spain.