This brief summarizes the main activities carried out by the 15 international agricultural research centers of the global research partnership for a food secure future CGIAR and their affiliated institutions develop innovative solutions for sustainable agriculture
Traditional approaches to innovation systems policymaking and governance often focus exclusively on the central provision of services, regulations, fiscal measures, and subsidies.
This guide is intended to assist facilitators in conducting a workshop with Extension and Advisory Service (EAS) providers for assessing their capacity needs. This guide has been compiled by the Centre for Research on Innovation and Science Policy (CRISP) for AESA with the assistance of a research grant from the Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services (GFRAS).
The publication reviews forty years of development experience and concludes that donors and partner countries alike have tended to look at capacity development as mainly a technical process, or as a transfer of knowledge or institutions from North to South.
Undertaking Capacity Needs Assessment (CNA) is critical for organizing appropriate capacity development interventions. AESA organised four workshops on CNA of EAS in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal with the following objectives.
1. Identify capacity gaps among EAS providers
2. Finalise a methodology for undertaking capacity needs assessment.
This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion in the scientific literature on the advantages and disadvantages of privatization of extension and advisory services and the shift from thinking in terms of the traditional Agricultural Knowledge System towards a broader Agricultural Innovation System.
The European Innovation Partnership for agricultural productivity and sustainability (EIP-AGRI), which can be perceived as a platform based on interaction among farmers, researchers, and advisors/extensionists, represents a useful tool for a better understanding of applied innovation processes.
Multi-actors networks are increasingly used by farmers to link between them and to be interactively connected with other partners, such as advisory organizations, local governments, universities, and non-farm organizations. Given the importance assigned to the agricultural innovation by EU resorting to the networking between the research chain actors and the farmers, a strong focus on enhancing the creation of learning and innovation networks is expected.
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".
The present case study investigated a policy-induced agricultural innovation network in Brandenburg.