Based on international literature, preliminary experiences in a three-country West African research programme, and on the disappointing impact of agricultural research on African farm innovation, the current paper argues that institutional change demands rethinking the pathways to innovation so as to acknowledge the role of rules, distribution of power and wealth, interaction and positions. The time is opportune: climate change, food insecurity, high food prices and concomitant riots are turning national food production into a political issue also for African leaders.
The Asia-Pacific Association of Agricultural Research Institutions (APAARI) in collaboration with the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), Department of Agriculture (DOA), Thailand, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations – Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (FAO RAP), Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) and International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), organized a High Level Policy Dialogue (HLPD) on Investment in Agricultural Research for Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific on 8-9 December 2015 in Bangkok, Th
These proceedings include all the papers presented during the AISA workshop either as oral papers or as posters. It also includes the edited text resulting from the Living Keynote process, an innovation in itself.
The AISA workshop was held on 29-31 May 2013 in Nairobi, Kenya, as part of an international week devoted to Agricultural innovation in Africa. The AISA workshop focused on active social learning among participants, developed a collective "living keynote" about the following issues:
This paper builds on experiences from the Research Into Use programme in South Asia that tried to up-scale promising research outputs into wider use. The experience suggests that while facilitating access to technology is important in putting research into use, it has value only when it is bundled together with other innovation-management tasks such as: developing networks, organising producers, communicating research needs, mediating conflicts, facilitating access to inputs and output services, convening innovation platforms, and advocating for policy change and other negotiated changes in
This paper takes a closer look at innovation systems, including the various actors involved, their interrelationships, and governance mechanisms. Innovation systems operate at different levels, in terms of structure, functioning, and performance at the national level, and from two different angles: as a macrostructure that involves different functions and key organizations working on these functions, and as the composite of different innovation networks comprising individuals and local and national organizations.
This is the proceedings of the international conference ‘Innovations in Organic Food System for Sustainable Production and Enhanced Ecosystem Services’. The proceedings are a compilation of peer-reviewed articles based on presentations of 18 speakers invited conference speakers and published as a Special Issue of the scientific journal ‘Sustainable Agriculture Research’ by the Canadian Centre of Science and Education.
This is the third volume of the proceedings of the national conference on "Water for Food and Environment", which was held from June 9 -11, 2009 at the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BMICH). The volumes 1 and 2 have been produced as separate documents of this report series. In response to a call for abstracts, 81 abstracts were received from government institutes dealing with water resources and agriculture development, universities, other freelance researchers and researchers from the International Water Management Institute (IWMI).
Research results and FAO National Aquaculture Sector Overview (NASO) fact sheets show that female participation rates vary by type and scale of enterprise and country. Women are frequently active in hatcheries and dominate fish processing plant labourers. Women’s work in small-scale aquaculture frequently is unrecognized, under or unpaid. Most aquaculture development projects are not gender sensitive, and aquaculture success stories often do not report gender dimensions; projects can fail if their designs do not include gender.
Summary of the first week of the e-conference "Innovation systems for food security and nutrition: understanding the capacities needed". The e-conference, organized by the Secretariat of the Tropical Agriculture Platform (TAP), is aiming at bringing together the issues of capacity development, agricultural innovation, and food security and nutrition with the objective of developing recommendations for policy-making.
The e-conference started on 18 April and lasted until 13 May 2016.
Summary of the fourth week of the e-conference "Innovation systems for food security and nutrition: understanding the capacities needed". The e-conference, organized by the Secretariat of the Tropical Agriculture Platform (TAP), is aiming at bringing together the issues of capacity development, agricultural innovation, and food security and nutrition with the objective of developing recommendations for policy-making.
The e-conference started on 18 April and lasted until 13 May 2016.