Scaling is a ubiquitous concept in agricultural research in the global south as donors require their research grantees to prove that their results can be scaled to impact upon the livelihoods of a large number of beneficiaries. Recent studies on scaling have brought critical perspectives to the rather technocratic tendencies in the agricultural innovations scaling literature.
This manual provides a set of conceptual definitions and practical implementation protocols for knowledge and scaling hubs. Both concepts of knowledge and scaling hubs are developed to aggregate, leverage, and coordinate the efforts undertaken by pilot research project with larger development programs and local scaling dynamics.
The objective of this paper is to analyse the olive oil value chain (OVC) in the Governorate of Medenine (south-east of Tunisia) and the relationships between its main operators for an effective involvement and better performance and resilience of olive sector. Based on semi structured interviews and participatory multi-stakeholders’ workshops, OVC has been analysed and described. MACTOR approach has been applied to establish linkages among chain operators and activities in a partnership approach.
This paper documents wages and working conditions for landless female and male agricultural labourers in Morocco. We found that higher-paid equipment-intensive tasks were predominantly assigned to men whereas women often performed lower-paid, time-intensive tasks. Women were systematically paid less than men even when they performed the same tasks. Enforcing existing legislation in Morocco to ensure equal pay for women is an essential first step towards enabling women to benefit equitably with men from their agricultural labour contributions.
Extension and advisory services (EAS) perform an important role in agricultural development and help reduce hunger and poverty. Development efforts are increasingly complicated because of challenges such as natural resource depletion and climate change. Agricultural development frameworks have moved from a linear to a more complex systems perspective. Many scholars today use the agricultural innovation systems (AIS) framework as a conceptual model.
Development is the process of change and facilitation helps in accelerating this process through the change agents‘ or the extension service provider. While working with farmers, agri-traders and processors, facilitation refers to promote group learning, building consensus and enhancing participation in collective actions. A facilitator has multidimensional roles to play.
In theory, under the federal structure agricultural extension services can serve communities better as it aims to be client responsive and accountable to its consumers at the village level. However, poor understanding of federalism that has only recently emerged from the persisting centralized and feudal conceptions, limited practices of democratic norms and values primarily due to the lack of understanding of local governance, and limited commitment of political actors and policy makers to federalism, may derail the good intentions behind federalism.
The new Constitution of Nepal (2015) has initiated federal, provincial, and local governments in Nepal, each bestowed with respective rights, responsibilities, power and authority. While developing the new mechanism of governance, the Constitution has given immense authority as well as responsibility to local governments, which is unprecedented and has never been experienced before in the history of Nepal. Along with the restructuring of the state, the institutional mechanism of the agriculture sector has also been restructured.
Mounting evidence points to the fact that climate change is already affecting agriculture and food security, which will therefore make the challenge of ending hunger, achieving food security, improving nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture even more difficult (FAO 2016). Through Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13, the 2030 Agenda calls for strengthened resilience and adaptive capacity in response to natural hazards and climate-related disasters globally.
In early 2020, GFRAS provided support to the Agricultural Extension in South Asia (AESA) Network and the Bangladesh Agricultural Extension Network (BAEN) in order to customize one of the NELK Modules in the context of Bangladesh. The BAEN Executive Committee selected the GFRAS NELK Module 7 on ‘Facilitation for Development’ for customization. AESA and BAEN jointly implemented the development of the customized module for Bangladesh. The process of customization consisted of five phases spread over a span of six months.