Farm input subsidies are often criticised on economic and ecological grounds. The promotion of natural resource management (NRM) technologies is widely seen as more sustainable to increase agricultural productivity and food security. Relatively little is known about how input subsidies affect farmers’ decisions to adopt NRM technologies. There are concerns of incompatibility, because NRM technologies are one strategy to reduce the use of external inputs in intensive production systems.
An extensive discussion in academic literature and policy currently celebrates Multi-Stakeholder Platforms (MSPs) as novel organizational forms that promote knowledge co-creation and innovation uptake among farmers and other stakeholders to address great challenges surrounding agri-food systems. While MSPs represent relatively novel organizations to address critical challenges such as rural poverty, food insecurity, and the negative effects of climate change, little is known on how they influence farmer innovation.
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.
This policy brief deals with the following points: (i) Given the importance of agriculture and the rural medium for countries’ growth and development, policy makers must strengthen the institutional structure of rural extension and increase public and private investment; (ii) Abundant natural resources, knowledge, technology, and extensionists are not enough.
As the PAEPARD project is complex and multi-faceted, ensuring that appropriate information is made available to users in a timely manner and in a form that can be easily understood and used has been a major challenge.
For farmers, the transition towards agroecology implies redesigning both their production system and their commercialisation system. To engage in this type of transition, they need to develop new knowledge on practices adapted to local conditions, which will involve new actors in their network. This chapter explores the role of actors’ networks in the agroecological transition of farmers, with a particular focus on farming practices and modes of commercialisation.
Inclusive business models dominate current development policy and practices aimed at addressing food and nutrition insecurity among smallholder farmers. Through inclusive agribusiness, smallholder food security is presumed to come from increased farm productivity (food availability) and income (food access). Based on recent research, the focus of impact assessments of inclusive business models has been limited to instrumental aspects, such as the number of farmers supported, the training provided, and immediate farm outcomes, namely revenue.
This paper argues that Dutch-funded capacity development projects in developing countries for tertiary agricultural education organisations as they are currently carried out are not able to successfully achieve the sustained changes required. That is, changes in how an organisation functions, its cultural norms and rules, and also in how it interacts within wider networks. Rather, long-term institutional change is needed.
African agriculture is currently at a crossroads, at which persistent food shortages are compounded by threats from climate change. But, as this book argues, Africa can feed itself in a generation and help contribute to global food security. To achieve this Africa has to define agriculture as a force in economic growth by: advancing scientific and technological research; investing in infrastructure; fostering higher technical training; and creating regional markets.
Over the last 20 years, poor rural farmers in Nigeria have seen the benefits of community organization as a tool for local economic development under the National Fadama Development Project series. They have witnessed improvements in rural areas that have embraced a more inclusive and participatory model of local economic decision making. Many communities have come together under the umbrella of new institutional arrangements for addressing local issues. These arrangements have visibly improved economic conditions, boosted agricultural incomes, and helped reduce rural poverty.