The purpose of this article is to investigate effective reformism: strategies that innovation networks deploy to create changes in their environment in order to establish a more conducive context for the realization and durable embedding of their innovation projects. Using a case study approach, effective reformism efforts are analyzed in a technological innovation trajectory related to the implementation of a new poultry husbandry system and an organizational innovation trajectory concerning new ways of co-operation among individual farms to establish economies of scale.
The privatization of agricultural research and extension establishments worldwide has led to the development of a market for services designed to support agricultural innovation. However, due to market and systemic failures, both supply side and demand side parties in this market have experienced constraints in effecting transactions and establishing the necessary relationships to engage in demand-driven innovation processes.
Sustainable intensification of smallholder farming is a serious option for satisfying 2050 global cereal requirements and alleviating persistent poverty. That option seems far off for Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) where technology-driven productivity growth has largely failed. The article revisits this issue from a number of angles: current approaches to enlisting SSA smallholders in agricultural development; the history of the phenomenal productivity growth in the USA, The Netherlands and Green Revolution Asia; and the current framework conditions for SSA productivity growth.
The agricultural innovation systems approach emphasizes the collective nature of innovation and stresses that innovation is a co-evolutionary process, resulting from alignment of technical, social, institutional and organizational dimensions. These insights are increasingly informing interventions that focus on setting up multi-stakeholder initiatives, such as innovation platforms and networks, as mechanisms for enhancing agricultural innovation, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
In the systems perspective on innovation, co-operation between several different types of actors is seen as key to successful innovation. Due to the existence of several gaps that hinder such effective co-operation, the scientific and policy literature persistently points at the need for intermediary organizations to fulfill bridging and brokerage roles. This paper aims to provide an overview of the insights from the literature on such ‘innovation brokers’, and to contribute to the literature by distilling lines of enquiry and providing insights on one of the lines identified.
Este fascículo, en su versión actual , es el primero de una serie inicial de textos y recursos del Sistema de Gestión Estratégica para el Desarrollo Territorial y la Agricultura Familiar (SiGET), cuya finalidad es compartir un conjunto de orientaciones metodológicas sobre los procesos de gestión social del desarrollo de los territorios rurales y de los sistemas territoriales de agricultura familiar (STAF) que son o pueden convertirse en motores de desarrollo.
Este fascículo metodológico trata de la siguiente tareas estratégicas:
• Articulación de actores y redes para la elaboración de la estrategia.
• Análisis sistémico del territorio.
• Formulación de una visión de futuro para el territorio.
• Identifcación de motores de desarrollo y objetivos estratégicos.
• Elaboración de planes a mediano plazo, programas e ideas de proyectos estratégicos.
• Concreción de acuerdos y alianzas para impulsar la estrategia.
El propósito de este texto es explorar el concepto de sistemas territoriales de agricultura familiar (STAF) en el marco de procesos que promuevan, de manera integrada, iniciativas de desarrollo de nuestros territorios rurales y de fortalecimiento de las agriculturas familiares, en el marco de políticas nacionales articuladas o complementarias entre sí.
El estudio buscó caracterizar dos elementos complementarios en el subcontinente latinoamericano: i) el surgimiento de políticas públicas específicas para el sector de la AF, y ii) la forma en que las políticas agrarias clásicas afectan ese sector. El documento consta de dos partes. La primera presenta un análisis transversal del conjunto de estudios de caso nacionales y la segunda parte presenta dichos estudios. Los trabajos de síntesis nacional fueron realizados a partir de la aplicación de una guía de análisis común que comportaba cinco bloques: 1.
This book is the re-titled third edition of the widely used Agricultural Extension (van den Ban & Hawkins, 1988, 1996). Building on the previous editions,Communication for Rural Innovation maintains and adapts the insights and conceptual models of value today, while reflecting many new ideas, angles and modes of thinking concerning how agricultural extension is taught and carried through today.