The article provides a conceptual framework and discusses research methods for analyzing pluralistic agricultural advisory services. The framework can also assist policy-makers in identifying reform options. It addresses the following question: Which forms of providing and financing agricultural advisory services work best in which situation? The framework ‘disentangles’ agricultural advisory services by distinguishing between (1) governance structures, (2) capacity, (3) management, and (4) advisory methods.
This paper reviews the current policies and programmes of EIARD members in relation to capacity development and makes recommendations on future directions. The main issues and recommendations will be incorporated into a policy brief in which specific policy options or guidelines will be presented. The goal of EIARDs strategy is to reduce poverty (i.e. MDGs); to promote economic growth, food security, and sustainable management of natural resources in developing & emerging economy countries and to contribute to global development issues and knowledge generation.
This report on actors and issues in rural advisory services (RAS) aims to provide the required background information and analysis that will – together with other ongoing validation activities – enable GFRAS, the Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services, to develop its long-term strategies and work plans in order to fulfil its mission and functions. The report on actors and issues in rural advisory services (RAS) is based on a review of primary and secondary documentation about RAS and their stakeholders, undertaken in 2010.
Capacity development is regarded by CGIAR as an effective vehicle for sustainable development, when embedded within broader CGIAR Research Programs (CRP). This document offers guidelines on how CGIAR and boundary partners (or those partners who take up and adapt research results for the next level of users) can successfully develop and implement strategies which support this process of integration.
The purpose of the paper, using a comprehensive innovation systems failure framework, is to assess the performance of agrifood innovation systems of Scotland and the Netherlands, through analysis of the key innovation actors (organisations, networks or influential individuals), and their key functions (research provider, intermediary etc), and those mechanisms that either facilitate or hinder the operation of the IS (known as inducing and blocking mechanisms, respectively).
This flyer is about the AgriFood chain toolkit, which has been launched in 2013 by the CGIAR programme on Policies, institutions and markets.The AgriFood chain toolkit acts as a clearing house and learning platform – using the power of information and communication technologies to bring together people and resources.
In the post-harvest area and in agriculture research in general, both in India and internationally, policy attention is returning to the question of how innovation can be encouraged and promoted and thus how impact on the poor can be achieved. This publication assembles several cases from the post-harvest sector. These provide examples of successful innovation that emerged in quite different ways. Its purpose is to illustrate and analyze the diversity and often highly context-specific nature of the processes that lead to and promote innovation.
Various researchers and policy analysts have made empirical studies of innovation systems in order to understand their current structure and trace their dynamics. However, policy makers often experience difficulties in extracting practical guidelines from studies of this kind. In this paper, we operationalize our previous work on a functional approach to analyzing innovation system dynamics into a practical scheme of analysis for policy makers. The scheme is based on previous literature and our own experience in developing and applying functional thinking.
This paper examines how the different institutional innovations arising from various permutations of linkages and interactions of ARD organizations (national, international advanced agricultural research centres and universities) influenced the different outcomes in addressing identified ARD problems.
The emergence of a globalised knowledge economy, and the contemporary views of innovation capacity that this trend enables and informs, provides a new context in which development assistance to agricultural research and development needs to be considered. The main argument in this paper, which focuses on The Netherlands, is that development assistance should use this emerging scenario to identify niches where inputs can add value to the R&D investments of others, particularly in activities that help wire up innovation systems, linking R&D to other activities and actors in society.