This ‘Tourist Guide’ is a resource document charting the emerging landscape of systems studies on rural innovation. Note that the term ‘rural innovation’ is used rather than ‘agricultural innovation’ in recognition of the wider scope of knowledge applications that are important in contemporary rural livelihoods. There is a growing body of literature dealing with rural innovation with some research groups developing ideas over the last 20 odd years on the topic.
Indicator-based tools are widely used for the assessment of farm sustainability, but analysts still face methodological and conceptual issues, including data availability, the complexity of the concept of sustainability and the heterogeneity of agricultural systems. This study contributes to this debate through the illustration of a procedure for farm sustainability assessment focussed on the case study of the South Milan Agricultural Park, Italy. The application is based on a set of environmental, social and economic indicators retrieved from the literature review.
This article combines innovation intermediary and technological innovation systems literature to develop fundamentals of an approach for analysing how organisations acting as intermediaries support firms in eco-innovation and potentially contribute to technological innovation system functions. The operationalisation of the analytical approach is illustrated using case studies on a total of eight support organisations acting as intermediaries in the region of Scania, Sweden and North Rhine Westphalia, Germany.
This paper examines the level of heterogeneity of member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), regarding their potential and performance as Agricultural Sectoral Innovation Systems (ASIS). The main objective is the classification of the ASIS in an OECD context; based on a series of indicators that correspond to their productivity, competitiveness, social, economic and institutional conditions, as well as their capacities and innovation results.
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 report reviews the evidence of impact of capacity strengthening on agricultural research for development (AR4D) in developing countries. The study was commissioned by DFID as part of the documentation process of the project Strengthening Capacity for Agricultural Research for Development in Africa (SCARDA).
Several posters have been created on the occasion of the 5th TAP Partners Assembly (Laos, 20-22 September 2017) to show recent activities and achievements in the eight pilot countries of the CDAIS project.
The Farmer Field School (FFS) approach has been very successful and witnessed a strong expansion in many areas beyond crop production. Notwithstanding this success, the adoption of FFS in national extension often remains problematic and FFS activities have often been implemented in the margin of national institutions with strong reliance on donor funding. The creation of an enabling environment for institutional support is essential for expanding the effort, improving quality, and strengthening impact and continuity of the FFSs.
This Final report identifies best-fit practices, and makes recommendations on how to target women advisory service providers in capacity development programmes.
ICT-driven digital tools to support smallholder farmers are arguably inevitable for agricultural development, and they are gradually evolving with promising outlook. Yet, the development and delivery of these tools to target users are often fraught with non-trivial, and sometimes unanticipated, contextual realities that can make or mar their adoption and sustainability. This article unfolds the experiential learnings from a digital innovation project focusing on surveillance and control of a major banana disease in East Africa which is being piloted in Rwanda.