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".
This report has the aim of contributing to the PRO AKIS overall goal of exploring and identifying the possibilities, conditions and requirements of rural networks to enhance the farmers’ ability to create, test, implement and evaluate innovation in cooperation with other actors.In particular, the report presents two cases: the Small Fruit Cluster (SFC) and the Drosophila Suzukii Monitoring (DSM) network. The SFC is a nationwide, multi-actor network composed of several actors, interacting in the small fruit sector in Portugal.
Le présent document a reconnu l’existence d’un consensus international croissant au sujet de l’importance de l’objectif de renforcement des capacités et de la façon dont il a des chances d’être réalisé. L’accent a été mis sur la reconnaissance du fait que le renforcement des capacités est un processus endogène, sur l’importance de l’appropriation des politiques nationales qui en résulte, et sur la nécessité pour les donneurs de se limiter à encourager et à soutenir les efforts du pays.
Ce document offre un cadre de réflexion sur le renforcement des capacités, établi à partir des principaux enseignements tirés de l’expérience, qu’elle soit positive ou négative.
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.
In this paper, presented at the 12th European IFSA Symposium (Workshop: "Generating spaces for innovation in agricultural and rural development") in 2016, the authors assess the integration of new entrants to small-scale farming into agricultural knowledge and innovation systems (AKIS), in four study sites located on Europe’s periphery (Bulgaria, Poland, Portugal, and the United Kingdom).