This methodological guide was initially developed and used in Latin America and the Caribbean-LAC (Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Dominican Republic), and was later improved during adaptation and use in eastern African (Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia) through a South-South exchange of expertise and experiences. The aim of the methodological guide is to constitute an initial step in the empowerment of local communities to develop a local soil quality monitoring and decision-making system for better management of soil resources.
Many of the world’s food-insecure and undernourished people are smallholder farmers in developing countries. This is especially true in Africa. There is an urgent need to make smallholder agriculture and food systems more nutrition-sensitive. African farm households are known to consume a sizeable part of what they produce at home. Less is known about how much subsistence agriculture actually contributes to household diets, and how this contribution changes seasonally. We use representative data from rural Ethiopia covering every month of one full year to address this knowledge gap.
Apple production in South Tyrol is a true illustration of a vibrant agricultural innovation system.
This paper draws lessons from selected country experiences of adaptation and innovation in pursuit of food security goals.
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.
Small-scale farmers' experimental innovations have not generally been considered for on-farm research trials as those in the traditional sector have been perceived as recipients, rather than originators, of technical knowledge and sustainable and viable practices. Yet there is abundant evidence throughout the tropics that small-scale farmers are adaptive and experimental problem solvers, and experts at devising innovative survival strategies. While literature on the topic is rich with accounts from Africa, Asia and Latin America, there is a general dearth of examples from the Caribbean.
These notes summarise reflections on local innovation and participatory innovation development that took place within the PROLINNOVA International Support Team (IST), based on observations and discussions with network partners during advisory visits and international workshops.
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".
In this paper the authors provide climate smart agriculture (CSA) planners and implementers at all levels with a generic framework for evaluating and prioritising potential interventions. This entails an iterative process of mapping out recommendation domains, assessing adoption potential and estimating impacts. Through examples, related to livestock production in sub-Saharan Africa, they demonstrate each of the steps and how they are interlinked. The framework is applicable in many different forms, scales and settings.