The promotion of land, soil and water conservation measures has been a widespread development in sub-Saharan Africa in a bid to tackle degradation and improve productivity. As a result, several governments have launched various campaigns on soil, land and water conservation measures. The aim of this study is to determine some of the factors that influence farmers’ awareness (knowledge) and adoption of land, soil and water conservation practices. Data for this study was collected from 312 households using a questionnaire survey in the Chinyanja Triangle of Southern Africa.
In an effort to raise incomes and increase resilience of smallholder farmers and their families in Feed the Future1 (FTF) countries, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded the Developing Local Extension Capacity (DLEC) project. This project is led by Digital Green in partnership with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), CARE International (CARE) and multiple resource partners.
This document on Good Practices in Extension Research and Evaluation is developed as a hands on reference manual to help young researchers, research students, and field extension functionaries in choosing the right research methods for conducting quality research and evaluation in extension. This manual has been compiled by the resource persons who participated in the Workshop on ‘Good
Este articulo en el marco del proyecto “Territorios Digitales: el INTA, los jóvenes y la ruralidad”, llevado adelante por el equipo de Investigación en Comunicación del INTA Rosario, estudia el perfil tecnológico de los jóvenes en el ambiente rural argentino.
El objetivo de esta tesis será analizar desde la perspectiva de los productores agrarios, su relación con la innovación y los servicios intensivos en conocimiento, promovidos por el Sistema Agrario de Conocimiento e Innovación (AKIS), en la Comunitat Valenciana. A lo largo de los capítulos de desarrollo, se propone evaluar la relación entre los factores clave del comportamiento innovador de los productores (orientación al mercado, orientación al aprendizaje, actitud innovadora), la percepción del desempeño de su explotación, y la valoración de los servicios de investigación y extensión.
Increasingly, multi-stakeholder processes have been recognized as being necessary to the development of public policies seeking to promote systemic innovation in response to complex and multidimensional challenges, such as household food security, rural development, and environmental change. Saint Lucia, a small island developing state located in the Caribbean, has been grappling with a wide range of agriculture, food and nutrition security challenges with varying degrees of policy success.
This paper details the analytical framework used for developing a nested understanding of systemic innovation capacity in an AIS. The paper then introduces the two case studies, along with the data and methods of analysis, followed by a presentation of the results as timelines of configurations of capabilities at different levels of the AIS.
Crowdsourcing, understood as outsourcing tasks or data collection by a large group of non-professionals, is increasingly used in scientific research and operational applications. In this paper, we reviewed crowdsourcing initiatives in agricultural science and farming activities and further discussed the particular characteristics of this approach in the field of agriculture. On-going crowdsourcing initiatives in agriculture were analysed and categorised according to their crowdsourcing component.
Poor farmers seldom benefit from new agricultural technologies. In response, research and extension approaches based on agricultural innovation systems are popular. Often agricultural research organisations are the network brokers, facilitating the emergence of the innovation system. Based on an analysis of the Sustainable Modernization of Traditional Agriculture (MasAgro) initiative in Mexico, this viewpoint suggests that such organisations are more often suitable network brokers when the objective is the development and scaling out of a technology by itself.
Capacity development interventions in support of agricultural innovation are more effective when based on systematic and participatory assessments of existing skills and capacity needs. Recognizing that, an instrument has been developed in the context of the Capacity Development for Agricultural Innovation Systems (CDAIS) project. It consists of a capacity scoring tool that allows assessing innovation capacities, identifying strengths and weaknesses and monitoring capacity changes over time. This paper describes the scoring tool and provides guidelines on how to apply it successfully.