China has put in place a series of policies to support private companies to engage in biotechnology research. This study uses data from a survey of 103 major agribusiness firms in the agricultural chemical and seed industries in China to evaluate the impact of government policies on private R&D investment in biotechnology. The results show that firms with positive profit expectation, public R&D subsidies, R&D collaboration with universities/research institutes or state-owned enterprises are more likely to embark on biotechnology research activities.
Dairy foods provide a significant portion of the recommended daily nutrition for much of the US population. Improving the availability of safe and nutritious dairy products and decreasing the environmental impact of the dairy community continue to be high priorities for both industry and the public sector. In recognition of these shared priorities, scientists and other specialists from the USDA, National Dairy Council, industry, academia, and nongovernmental organizations participated in the “Elevating Dairy Research and Extension Through Partnership” meeting on June 19, 2018.
After years of neglect, there is a renewed interest in agricultural mechanization in Africa. Since government initiatives to promote mechanization are confronted with major governance challenges, private-sector initiatives may offer a promising alternative. However, given limited scientific studies on such private-sector options such approaches are often viewed skeptically. One concern is that multi-national agribusiness companies take advantage of smallholder farmers. Another concern is that mechanization causes rural unemployment.
The mergers of some of the world's largest agribusinesses have led to speculation about what sort of global citizens the new companies will become and whether vulnerable rural populations, especially smallholder men and women farmers, will be negatively impacted. As innovation leaders in the agriculture industry, these new companies will be expected to play key roles in finding solutions for major agricultural challenges facing the world today.
La riqueza y la desigualdad continúan aumentando en todo el mundo, y aunque la última representa un desafío muy serio, la primera ofrece oportunidades para atender disparidades sociales y económicas que merecen ser analizadas. El sector filantrópico, como cualquier otro, muestra limitaciones y problemas, pero también ha brindado resultados e impactos significativos en áreas tan relevantes como educación, salud, pobreza, agricultura y ambiente, por citar algunos.
How can the transition and transformation towards more sustainable food and agriculture (SFA) materialize at country-level? Who will own, drive and be committed to this process? How can the process be sustainable and reach scale? The practical, "how-to" contribution titled "System-Wide Capacity Development for SFA" attempts to answer these questions.
This presentation bring successful examples of Sustainable intensification of maize-legume cropping systems for food security in eastern and southern Africa (SIMLESA): Gender Equitable Benefits through Agricultural Innovation Platforms (AIPs) in Rwanda, considerations of gender in the formal maize seed sector in Uganda and Capacity Building initiatives
The Applied Research and Innovation Systems in Agriculture project (ARISA) started in December 2014 with the aim of increasing net farm income for 10,000 smallholder farming households in eastern Indonesia. The project was designed to address a key challenge in agricultural research for development: how to ensure that proven research outputs1 are available and accessible for use in farming communities.
Multi-stakeholder platforms have become mainstream in projects, programmes and policy interventions aiming to improve innovation and livelihoods systems, i.e. research for development interventions in low-and middle-income contexts. However, the evidence for multi-stakeholder platforms' contribution to the performance of research for development interventions and their added value is not compelling. This paper focuses on stakeholder participation as one of the channels for multi-stakeholder platforms' contribution to the performance of research for development interventions, i.e.
Gender mainstreaming was acknowledged as an indispensable strategy for achieving gender equality at the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action. Since then, governments have made substantial efforts in developing gender-responsive policies and implementation strategies. The advent of climate change and its effects, which have continued to impact rural livelihoods and especially food security, demands that gender mainstreaming efforts are accelerated.