Food insecurity and the weak position of smallholders in food value chains are key challenges in many low- and middle-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In order to increase food security and make agricultural value chains more inclusive, donors, governments and researchers increasingly stimulate partnerships between multiple actors, in which knowledge exchange, joint learning and knowledge co-creation play a central role in reducing the time lag between research findings and their translation into practical outcomes.
The Foresight project Global Food and Farming Futures final report provides an overview of the evidence and discusses the challenges and choices for policy makers and others whose interests relate to all areas that interact with the food system.
The contributions and dynamic interaction of thousands of stakeholders from all sectors have created the GCARD (Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development) Roadmap, providing a clear path forward for all involved. The Roadmap highlights the urgent changes required in Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D) systems globally, to address worldwide goals of reducing hunger and poverty, creating opportunity for income growth while ensuring environmental sustainability and particularly meeting the needs of resource-poor farmers and consumer.
The Global Innovation Index (GII) aims to capture the multi-dimensional facets of innovation by providing a rich database of detailed metrics for 127 economies, which represent 92.5% of the world’s population and 97.6% of global GDP. As Ban Ki-moon, the eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations, noted at the UN Economic and Social Council in 2013, the GII is a ‘unique tool for refining innovation policies . . . for providing an accurate picture on the role of science, technology and innovation in sustainable development’.
This paper presents a qualitative case study of a US based beef co-operative integrated to a VBSC. Was used an analytical framework of viability, sustainability and resilience to analyse impacts at farm-level. Our analysis highlights a number of positive effects on farm-level viability, sustainability and resilience including improvements to market orientation and price stability, among others which provide crucial insights for beef PO development in Ireland.
This research delves into the underlying impacts of farmers' innovative entrepreneurship on agricultural and rural economic development in China, adopting a dynamic and spatio-temporal perspective. The study utilizes panel data encompassing 30 provinces (cities and autonomous regions) from 2015 to 2020, with a systematic consideration of diversified spatial weight matrices.
This article addresses the impact of Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IAR4D) on food security among smallholder farmers in three countries of southern Africa (Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi). Southern Africa has suffered continued hunger despite a myriad of technological interventions that have been introduced in agriculture to address issues of food security, as well as poverty alleviation.
Smallholder producers in sub-Saharan Africa are often unable integrate into markets and access high-value opportunities by effectively participating in global chains for high-value fresh produce. Using data from a survey of large avocado farmers in Kenya, this study examines the determinants and impacts of smallholder-producer participation in avocado export markets on labor inputs, farm yields, sales prices, and incomes, using a switching regression framework to control for selection effects
The report specifically analyses the NIS in Peru and Colombia in the coffee and dairy sectors due to their economic importance for both countries and the large percentage of small producers in these sectors. In order to analyse the NIS, we have utilised an innovations systems approach to form the analytical framework. This framework focuses on four main areas – understanding the actors in the NIS, their roles and attitudes, the patterns of interaction of these actors, and the enabling environment with a focus on small producer inclusion.
The innovation systems (IS) approach—developed by Richard Nelson, Christopher Freeman and Bengt-Ake Lundvall, amongst others—has become perhaps the dominant approach in the academic literature for the study of innovation. It has also exerted considerable influence on policy. This paper examines both the theory underpinning the IS approach, which bears considerable affinities with Austrian economics, and also its policy implications.