The rapid growth of mobile phones in Ghana has opened up the possibility of delivering timely and useful weather and market information to farmers at costs lower than traditional agricultural extension services. In this paper, we assess the usefulness, constraints, and factors likely to influence farmers’ decisions to patronize mobile phone-based weather and market information. The study rely on primary data from 310 farmers in the Upper West Region, an understudied part of Ghana.
This report describes the 2012 NAIS Assessment was piloted in 4 countries: Botswana, Ghana, Kenya and Zambia. Data were collected through a survey questionnaire, open-ended interview questions, and data mining of secondary sources. A team led by a national coordinator took charge of data collection from various partner organizations in each country.
The research programme URBAL (Urban-driven Innovations for Sustainable Food Systems) (2018–2020), funded by Agropolis Fondation (France), Fondation Daniel & Nina Carasso (France/Spain), and Fundazione Cariplo (Italy), and coordinated by CIRAD (France) and the Laurier Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Wilfrid Laurier University (Canada), seeks to build and test a participatory methodology to identify and map the impact pathways of urban-driven innovations on all the dimensions of food systems sustainability.
From 4 June to 1 July 2012, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) hosted a moderated email conference on "Ensuring the full participation of family farmers in agricultural innovation systems: Key issues and case studies". It was a highly successful global dialogue, with a very stimulating discussion. About 560 people subscribed to the conference, of whom 114 people (20% of the total), from nearly 50 different countries, wrote at least one of the 242 messages that were posted.
Innovation learning platforms have their roots in the agricultural innovation systems (AIS) approach. AIS emphasizes a systems view of agricultural innovations and conceptualizes an innovation system as all individuals and organizations that keep on interacting in producing and using knowledge and the institutional context of knowledge sharing and learning. Research creates knowledge and technology; but innovation process goes further to include putting that knowledge into use.
A Communique summarizing the outputs of the GFAR Retreat held from 30th March to 1st April 2007 in Alexandria, Egypt.
This report finds ground for a temperate optimism regarding the future role of smallholder agriculture in helping Asian countries delivering on Agenda 2030. Growth rates of the region’s major economies remain buoyant. Notwithstanding the risks associated with a new global crisis or originating from the instability of financial markets, economic growth is expected to remain strong in the decade to come.
Au Bénin, le soja connaît un accroissement de la production ces dernières années grâce au développement d’in-novations technologiques, organisationnelles et institutionnelles. Mais ces innovations susceptibles d’accroître la productivité, la compétitivité et la viabilité des exploitations agricoles ne sont pas adoptées à grande échelle dans au centre du Bénin. La présente étude a effectué une analyse de la mise en œuvre des systèmes d’innovation de soja au Centre-Bénin pour induire des changements dans les comportements des acteurs et dans les systèmes de production.
In this paper the authors present the development of an analytical framework to study agricultural innovation systems. They divide the agricultural sector into four levels and expand the innovation system approach to study innovation processes.
This paper analyses intermediary organisations in developing economy agricultural clusters. The paper critically engages with a growing narrative in studies of intermediaries that have stressed the ownership structure of intermediaries as a key driver for enabling knowledge transfer, inter-firm learning and upgrading of small producers in clusters. Two case studies of Latin American clusters are presented and discussed.