Este trabajo describe la evolución desde los sistemas de transferencia de conocimientos agrarios más tradicionales, con transmisión lineal de la investigación a los usuarios, hasta sistemas que propicien en mayor medida la innovación, con la intervención de multiplicidad de actores entre los que se incluyen investigadores, agricultores, asesores, educadores, políticos, empresarios, etc.
Industrial agriculture and its requirement for standardized approaches is driving the world towards a global food system, shrinking the role of farmers and shifting decision-making power. On the contrary, a holistic perspective towards a new food-system design could meet the needs of a larger share of stakeholders. Long-term experiments are crucial in this transition, being the hub of knowledge and the workshop of ‘participation in’ and ‘appropriation of’ the research in agriculture over a long term.
Fall Armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda), or FAW, is an insect native to tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas. In the absence of natural controls or good management, it can cause significant damage to crops. It prefers maize, although it can feed on more than 80 additional species of crops including rice, sorghum, millet, sugarcane, vegetable crops and cotton.
Labor saving innovations are essential to increase agricultural productivity, but they might also increase inequality through displacing labor. Empirical evidence on such labor displacements is limited. This study uses representative data at local and national scales to analyze labor market effects of the expansion of oil palm among smallholder farmers in Indonesia. Oil palm is labor-saving in the sense that it requires much less labor per unit of land than alternative crops.
This research examines the transformation of the agro-climatic conditions of the Altai region as a result of climate change. The climate of the Altai region in Russia is sharply continental and characterized by dry air and significant weather variability, both in individual seasons and years. The current study is determined by the lack of detailed area-related analytical generalizations for the territory of the Altai region over the past 30 years.
Sorghum crop is grown under tropical and temperate latitudes for several purposes including production of health promoting food from the kernel and forage and biofuels from aboveground biomass. One of the concerns of policy-makers and sorghum growers is to cost-effectively predict biomass yields early during the cropping season to improve biomass and biofuel management. The objective of this study was to investigate if Sentinel-2 satellite images could be used to predict within-season biomass sorghum yields in the Mediterranean region.
The aim of this work was to identify procedures adopted by family farms in the centre and north of Portugal and Galicia (Spain), and to verify whether they resemble those used in organic farming. A checklist was prepared in Portuguese and Spanish and applied personally to managers of family farms. The participation was voluntary and 125 valid responses were collected.
Among other functions, the INIA is involved in national and international cooperation in the field of agri-food research. The process of identifying and classifying gaps in our knowledge forms an essential part of this effort. This article describes that process, the tools and the materials used to achieve the final objective, namely, the identification of research priorities in the Spanish agri-food sector in order to deal with the societal challenges posed by society and the stakeholders involved.
This paper studies the relationship between internationalization and performance in agri-food firms. In line with the recent literature, it analyses the effects of the degree of internationalization using a uniform sample, a long-term focus and a measure that combines export intensity and regional diversification. The study empirically confirms the hypothesis of a horizontal S-curve relationship between geographical diversification and performance and identifies three phase
Public administrations have in recent years developed programs of public funding for innovation to boost the competitiveness of business. The study of how companies have used these funding sources generates knowledge to improve the design of support for private innovation and to provide advice for innovative companies. This paper investigates these issues in the agri-food sector which is of particular interest as it is comprised mainly of small and medium enterprises with a wide regional presence and interaction with their local environment.