A complex systems approach to innovation provides rich insights into the drivers, barriers, and key elements for innovation in rural systems. Through a case study of dry direct seeding (DDS) in smallholder systems in Laos, this article reveals a “perfect storm” of challenges and opportunities resulting in rapid adoption. Labour shortage, climate variability, and machinery availability are key factors.
Scientific research continues to play a significant role in meeting the multiple innovation challenges in agriculture. If this role is to be fulfilled, provision needs to be made for effective translation of research outputs, where translation is understood to be the process whereby science becomes part of useful knowledge for decision making. There is increasing interest in enhancing translation in the European agricultural innovation, research and policy context, and specifically in making it a more collaborative process.
This paper presents and discusses a diagnostic framework to identify institutional processes in the creation of public-private partnerships (PPPs) for agricultural innovation. The diagnostic framework proposed here combines a conceptualisation of institutions with a conceptualisation of technology. We argue that a performative notion of institutions provides a better tool for institutional diagnostics than the common understanding of institutions as ‘rules of the game’.
This article reports on the long-term involvement of research agronomists in a design process of agricultural systems in a water catchment area. While agriculture is facing increasing challenges to meet current societal expectations, several studies in agronomy have focused on the design processes that allow farmers to change their agricultural systems.
he purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to take stock of the current state of knowledge about inclusive value-chain development (VCD) in the context of international agricultural research; and second, to draw out the implications for future research and action.
This paper is based on a review of recent research papers authored by professionals affiliated with international agricultural research centers and their partners in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
This report provides an overview of the Tropical Agriculture Platform (TAP) since its inception in 2012, when it was officially launched by FAO at the first G20 Meeting of Agriculture Chief Scientists (MACS) in September 2012 in Mexico, until December 2018. The G20 Agriculture Deputies agreed on this stock taking exercise that started under the 2018 Argentinian G20 Presidency.
This exercise was done on the occasion of the G20 MACS meeting in April 2019 in Japan. Its purposes are the following:
The purpose of this report is to provide some of the groundwork in answering the question of how the CGIAR system and other public agricultural research organisations should adapt and respond to an era of transformation framed by the SDGs. It does this by exploring the way in which this transformation agenda reframes agricultural research and innovation.
This document is accompanyng the volume Public Agricultural Research in an Era of Transformation: The Challenge of Agri-Food System Innovation (available in TAPipedia here), which provides some of the groundwork in answering the question of how the CGIAR system and other public agricultural research organisations should adapt and respond to an era of transformation framed by the SDGs.
Capacity building for integrating gender in research and development (R&D) on agricultural innovations often remains with organizing single gender training. Alternatively, it is often limited to hiring a gender specialist to allocate a small amount of her/his time to the project. This has proofed to be ineffective and a heavy burden for gender specialists. This success story presents an innovative approach to capacity development, which successfully changed agricultural researchers’ attitude to gender in Southeast Asia, with a specific focus in Vietnam.