This paper looks at brokerage functions in a project on building innovation capacity through improved networking. Innovation capacity influences how actors respond to changes in their environments. In such dynamic environments well connected sets of actors are at an advantage in that they can combine skills to address the emerging opportunities and challenges. However, policy and cultural barriers especially in African innovation systems raise the transaction costs of networking leading to weak connectivity among actors thus poor innovation capacity.
Interest in farmland is rising. And, given commodity price volatility, growing human and environmental pressures, and worries about food security, this interest will increase, especially in the developing world. One of the highest development priorities in the world must be to improve smallholder agricultural productivity, especially in Africa. Smallholder productivity is essential for reducing poverty and hunger, and more and better investment in agricultural technology, infrastructure, and market access for poor farmers is urgently needed.
Innovations play a significant role in the primary sector (i.e., agriculture, fisheries and forestry), ensuring a greater performance towards bioeconomy and sustainability. Innovation is being progressively applied to examining the organization of joint technological, social, and institutional modernizations in the primary sector. Exploring the governance of actor relations, potential policies, and support structures is crucial in the phase of innovation, e.g., during research activities, often applied at the national or sectorial scale.
The youth crisis has recently received much attention from the global community, particularly in how it intersects with the future of agriculture. Causes of the youth crisis include univeral youth disinterest in agriculture, deskilled youth populations, lack of access to resources, gender disparity and lack of reliable data regarding youth in agriculture.
Historically, farmers have been some of the most innovative people in the world. However, agriculture lags behind other sectors in its uptake of new information technologies for the control and automation of farming systems. In spite of decades of research into innovation, generally we still do not have a good understanding as to why this is the case. This paper reviews two theories of innovation and offers a new approach to thinking about agricultural ICT (e-Agriculture). It firstly explores the problem of ICT adoption in agriculture.
In this special issue teh authors will investigate, from the perspective of agricultural ethics (e.g. animal welfare, agricultural and food ethics, environmental ethics etc.) the potential to develop a Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) approach to agriculture, and the limitations to such an enterprise. RRI is an emerging field in the European research and innovation (R&I) policy context that aims to balance economic, socio-cultural and environmental aspects in innovation processes.
Agricultural research for development has made important contributions to poverty reduction and food security over the last 40 years. Nevertheless, it is likely that both the speed of global change and its impacts on natural and socio-economic systems are being under-estimated. Coupled with the moral imperative to justify the use of public resources for which there are multiple, competing claims, research for development needs to become more effective and efficient in terms of contributing towards longer-term development goals.
Ce guide technique sur le «consentement préalable, donné librement et en connaissance de cause» (CPLCC) établit des mesures concrètes permettant aux organisations gouvernementales de respecter et de protéger le CPLCC et aux organisations de la société civile, aux utilisateurs des terres et aux investisseurs privés dans le monde de s’acquitter de leurs responsabilités envers le CPLCC, conformément à ces Directives.
Although agricultural value chain resilience is a crucial component to food security and sustainable food systems in developing countries, it has received little attention. This paper synthesizes knowledge from the social-ecological systems (SES), supply chain management, and value chain development literature to make three contributions to this research gap. First, it is conceptualized the agricultural value chain resilience and relate it to overall food system resilience.
This paper sets out an analytical framework for doing research on the question of how to use agricultural research for innovation and impact. Its focus is the Research Into Use programme sponsored by the UK's Department for International Development (DFID). This is one example of a new type of international development programme that seeks to find better ways of using research for developmental purposes.