Apple production in South Tyrol is a true illustration of a vibrant agricultural innovation system.
This report explores the role of rural networks in enhancing innovation processes, questioning the features of the agricultural/rural networks could enhance farmers’ ability to co-innovate in cooperation with other actors. The prospect of this investigation is also to provide interesting and significant experiences that constitute examples for the ‘European Innovation Partnership’ by increasing farmers’ capacities to create, test, implement and evaluate innovations in cooperation with other rural actors.
The report synthesises the research conducted under the PRO AKIS project for the topic "Designing, implementing and maintaining agricultural/rural networks to enhance farmers’ ability to innovate in cooperation with other rural actors".
This report presents the main results of the EU-funded IN-SIGHT project ‘Strengthening Innovation Processes for Growth and Development’. The authors sketched out a conceptual framework and knowledge base for a more effective European policy on innovation in agriculture and rural areas. Both conceptual framework and knowledge base are consistent with the new European agenda for agricultural and rural policy and sensitive to the diversity of the European agricultural and rural systems.
Organic farming is recognized as one source for innovation helping agriculture to develop sustainably. However, the understanding of innovation in agriculture is characterized by technical optimism, relying mainly on new inputs and technologies originating from research. The paper uses the alternative framework of innovation systems describing innovation as the outcome of stakeholder interaction and examples from the SOLID (Sustainable Organic Low-Input Dairying) project to discuss the role of farmers, researchers and knowledge exchange for innovation.
According to the literature on regime transition, niches are sources of innovation that may lead to the transformation of the dominant regime, if processes at other level of the system – the landscape and the mainstream regime - are supportive. A focus on actors involved in the transition process and the analysis of their specific role in knowledge networks can help assessing the robustness of a specific niche and its growth potential. Knowledge systems, and in particular the dynamics of local and expert knowledge, have in fact a key role in innovation models.
This document summarizes the fifteen projects that were selected by a panel of international experts as those which best represent the technological, institutional and organizational innovations carried out with and by small farmers – known as family farming - in LAC. This is the result of a hemisphere-wide competition organized in 2012 by FONTAGRO, with the aim of (1) showcasing success stories in which innovations having positive economic, social, and environmental impacts have been implemented and, (2) raising awareness regarding the importance of investing in innovation.
En el primer capítulo presenta los retos para la seguridad alimentaria y el cambio climático en México y el mundo, así como los compromisos internacionales de México para atender ambos desafíos.
El documento que presentamos fue pensado para que los técnicos, asesores, formadores, gestores, capacitadores, coordinadores o líderes, tanto de organizaciones rurales y asociaciones de productores, como de agencias de desarrollo –gubernamentales o de la sociedad civil― cuenten con un instrumento de apoyo para desarrollar unidades pequeñas de producción y de servicios rurales en una región parcular.
Este documento dentifica y tipifica diferentes estrategias y mecanismos innovadores que han sido aplicados en distintos escenarios para aumentar la cobertura y facilitar el acceso de los agricultores familiares a esos servicios, los que pueden servir de referencia para otras iniciativas que se quieran impulsar en ese sentido, bien sea para mejorar la calidad y eficiencia, o para aumentar la oferta de esos servicios.