This book is the re-titled third edition of the widely used Agricultural Extension (van den Ban & Hawkins, 1988, 1996). Building on the previous editions,Communication for Rural Innovation maintains and adapts the insights and conceptual models of value today, while reflecting many new ideas, angles and modes of thinking concerning how agricultural extension is taught and carried through today.
This paper was prepared to present at the Farmer First Revisited: 20 Years On conference at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK, December, 2007. Its focus is the challenge of strengthening agricultural innovation systems. The paper prefaces this discussion by reflecting on an apparent paradox. While agricultural innovation has never been better studied and understood, many of our ideas about innovation have failed to fundamentally change the institutional and policy setting of public and private investment intended to promote innovation for development.
This study introduces a framework for managing information flow in innovation systems. An organisation's capacity to receive information, to share it with others and to learn from it is assumed to be the key factor that shapes the flow patterns and, hence, the performance of the innovation system concerned. The framework is applied to characterise the information structure underlying the agricultural innovation system of Azerbaijan and to develop an information strategy for the system to accelerate the information flow.
This report documents the history of the systems of rice intensification (SRI, for short) in India in the last few years and presents some of the institutional changes and challenges that SRI throws up. The first part looks at the complex and continuing evolution of SRI in India and presents SRI as an innovation in process and not as a completed product. Farmers and other actors are continuously shaping it through their practice. Part II focuses on insights of the innovation systems framework looking closely at the nature and quality of linkages of the various actors.
Within the last four years, a number of high profile reports outlining new strategies for pulling African agriculture out of its current impasse have emerged. These include the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme of NEPAD, and the InterAcademy Council Report commissioned by UN Secretary General Koffi Annan.
There is increasing demand for institutional reform in the agricultural sciences. This paper presents lessons from the content and directions in soil science research in India, to make a case for institutional reform in the agricultural sciences. It demonstrates how existing institutional and organizational contexts shape the research content of the soil sciences and its sub-disciplines. These contexts also shape the capacity of the soil sciences to understand and partner with other components of the wider natural resource management (NRM) innovation systems.
Iron deficiency is a widespread nutritional problem in developing countries, causing impaired physical activity and cognitive development, as well as maternal mortality. Although food fortification and supplementation programmes have been effective in some countries, their overall success remains limited. Biofortification, that is, breeding crops for higher micronutrient content, is a relatively new approach. We propose a methodology for ex-ante impact assessment of iron biofortification, which builds on disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and a large household data set.
The role of civil society in influencing public opinion towards more democratic and developmental approaches is now well-recognised in diverse fields such as health, education, livelihoods, issues relating to disadvantaged social groups and the environment. Yet, science and technology in India is predominantly seen as the preserve of the state, and more recently the market. In the linear model of innovation, civil society is seen at best as having a role in extension or the delivery of technology produced elsewhere.
This policy brief sets out the conceptual and empirical underpinnings of a learning-orientated monitoring and evaluation approach known as Institutional Learning and Change (ILAC) and discusses options for learning-oriented interventions and policy research.
The purpose of this paper is to map some elements that can contribute to an IFAD strategy to stimulate and support pro-poor innovations. It is an initial or exploratory document that hopefully will add to an ongoing and necessary debate, and is not intended as a final position paper. The document is organized as follows.