The contributions and dynamic interaction of thousands of stakeholders from all sectors have created the GCARD (Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development) Roadmap, providing a clear path forward for all involved. The Roadmap highlights the urgent changes required in Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D) systems globally, to address worldwide goals of reducing hunger and poverty, creating opportunity for income growth while ensuring environmental sustainability and particularly meeting the needs of resource-poor farmers and consumer.
What can we learn from ongoing initiatives? There has been a lot of interest during the last two decades in employing Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for achieving development. While many of these initiatives have benefited rural women by way of access to new information and new employment opportunities, women still face a number of constraints in accessing ICTs. This paper explores the role of ICTs in empowering Indian rural women, through a review of ICT initiatives in India.
The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the role that benchmarking can play in rural and agricultural innovations. Although generally known as 'traditional sector', rural activities are far from static but rather driven by old and new challenges pleading for innovative responses. Despite the broad range of insights from the burgeoning literature on innovation systems during the last decade, most benchmarking thinking and practice still remains highly science-based and centred in promoting public R&D, especially in developing countries.
Innovation systems can be defined in a variety of ways: they can be national, regional, sectoral, or technological. They all involve the creation, diffusion, and use of knowledge. Systems consist of components, relationships among these, and their characteristics or attributes. The focus of this paper is on the analytical and methodological issues arising from various system concepts. There are three issues that stand out as problematic. First, what is the appropriate level of analysis for the purpose at hand?
This report is concerned with the ‘who?’ ‘what?’ and ‘how?’ of pro-poor extension. It builds on the analytical framework proposed in the Inception Report of the same study (Christoplos, Farrington and Kidd, 2001), taking it forward by fleshing out the analysis with empirical information gathered from several countries during the course of the study (from primary data in Bolivia, Colombia, Nicaragua, Uganda and Vietnam, and from secondary sources in a range of other countries, including India), and drawing conclusions on the scope for action by governments and donors in a range of contexts.
The Centre for Development Research (CDR), in collaboration with local partnership managed by the Bangladesh Agricultural University worked to establish a platform (i.e. a participatory rural video centre) that acts upon fostering rural women’s capacity for agricultural innovation in the north-west and north-east region of Bangladesh. In this paper, the authors elaborate principles of establishing the centre, and some evidences on Farmers’ Participatory Research (FPR) in the community.
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.
Research, extension, and advisory services are some of the most knowledge-intensive elements of agricultural innovation systems. They are also among the heaviest users of information communication technologies (ICTs). This module introduces ICT developments in the wider innovation and knowledge systems as well as explores drivers of ICT use in research and extension
The paper explores the implications of rural livelihood diversity for agricultural innovation policies. It summarises literature on the nature of rural poverty, with particular emphasis on the relative roles of farm and non-farm income. It also reviews the various roles, direct and indirect, that agricultural innovation can play in rural poverty reduction. Finally, it uses an agricultural knowledge and information systems (AKIS) perspective to argue for a differentiated approach to targeting agricultural innovations, based on an analysis of rural assets.
Many experts believe that low-cost mitigation opportunities in agriculture are abundant and comparable in scale to those found in the energy sector. They are mostly located in developing countries and have to do with how land is used. By investing in projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), countries can tap these opportunities to meet their own Kyoto Protocol obligations. The CDM has been successful in financing some types of agricultural projects, including projects that capture methane or use agricultural by-products as an energy source.