Grants for agricultural innovation are common but grant funds specifically targeted to smallholder farmers remain relatively rare. Nevertheless, they are receiving increasing recognition as a promising venue for agricultural innovation. They stimulate smallholders to experiment with improved practices, to become proactive and to engage with research and extension providers. The systematic review covered three modalities of disbursing these grants to smallholder farmers and their organisations: vouchers, competitive grants and farmer-led innovation support funds.
This paper describes the research path followed by a team of researchers who had investigated the nitrate problem in a case study area, and who became aware of the low impact of their data on the policy debate and on the practices that – as the research team saw it – had given rise to the problem in the first place. They embarked on a series of interactions first with participatory action researchers from the SLIM project (see Fig.
The main objective of the Guidelines is to provide a non-binding complement to other guidelines and offer advice to RDP evaluation stakeholders on how to carry out the evaluation activities for answering the common evaluation questions related to innovation. Since the RDP’s effects on innovation in rural areas can be expected to take place, most likely, in the long-term, the guidelines focus in particular on those evaluation related activities, which will be reported in the AIR in 2019 and in the ex post evaluation. The Guidelines are structured in three parts:
The aim of this study is try to assess the potential of a hybrid approach to unravel consumer behaviour in agri-food markets. Concretely, the hybridization of the attitudinal approach, by means of the classical-utility theory, is explored, which represents a novelty in the literature where those attempts are truly scarce for foodstuffs.
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
This paper aims to analyze the innovative effort of the agri-food system (AFS) in the Valencian Autonomous Community (VC), Spain, estimating the intensity of innovation in each subsector of the AFS. The analysis distinguishes between the direct and indirect (or induced) innovation intensities incorporated by the acquisition of inputs from other subsectors produced in the VC or in the rest of Spain. The methodology employed is based on the inputoutput framework combined with data of technological innovation in enterprises.
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.
The aim of this study is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of Russian grain production, to determine country’s production potential and its possibility to remain one of the major grain producers on the world market. On the one hand was estimated the technical efficiency during the period of transition to the market economy. By applying a novel approach to the estimation of production efficiency on a regional level, we assess the grain production potential and determine factors that influence productivity beyond the control of the farmers.
The farmer-inventors mostly use tacit knowledge and practical skills to create their inventions with the objective of increasing efficiency as a means to improving family farm viability. Farmer-inventors with entrepreneurial intentions were less inclined to share their ideas freely and described financial and temporal constraints in commercialising their inventions. The Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System (AKIS) concept was used to frame an analysis of farmer-inventors’ interactions with innovation support organisations from the perspective of the farmers themselves.
This paper explores the potential of Actor Network Theory (ANT) in understanding how the process of interaction and translation between human and non-human actors contribute to the development, adoption and diffusion of science-based innovations linked to the transition to organic farming. The study relies on two case studies, the French Camargue case covering a range of technical and social innovations, and the case from Bulgaria focusing on the development of a technical and product innovation, i.e. a veterinary product for organic beekeeping.