The 2016 Global Agricultural Productivity Report advocates policies and innovations in five key areas to help the agriculture and food sectors manage uncertain seasons of fluctuating business cycles and climate change, while fostering competitiveness today and sustainable growth tomorrow.
Technological innovations have driven economic development and improvement in living conditions throughout history. However, the majority of smallholder farmers in sub‐Saharan Africa have seldom adopted or used science‐based technological innovations. Consequently, several scholars have been persistently questioning the effectiveness of intervention models in smallholder agriculture.
Fall Armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda), or FAW, is an insect native to tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas. In the absence of natural controls or good management, it can cause significant damage to crops. It prefers maize, although it can feed on more than 80 additional species of crops including rice, sorghum, millet, sugarcane, vegetable crops and cotton.
This practitioner’s guide, a companion volume to The Innovation Paradox picks up where the previous report left off. It aims to help policy makers in developing countries better formulate innovation policies. It does so by providing a rigorous typology of innovation policy instruments, including evidence of impact—and more importantly, the critical conditions in terms of institutional capabilities to successfully implement these policy instruments in developing countries.
ICT-driven digital tools to support smallholder farmers are arguably inevitable for agricultural development, and they are gradually evolving with promising outlook. Yet, the development and delivery of these tools to target users are often fraught with non-trivial, and sometimes unanticipated, contextual realities that can make or mar their adoption and sustainability. This article unfolds the experiential learnings from a digital innovation project focusing on surveillance and control of a major banana disease in East Africa which is being piloted in Rwanda.
In this article is presented an emergent capacity development approach that the authors have developed through participatory action research in Peru and Ecuador, which they call ‘systemic theories of change’ (STOC), for organisational capacity development. They argue that capacity development should be understood as systemic learning. The STOC approach promotes reflection about how we as individuals, organisations, and broader social groups and societal configurations, understand how change occurs.
The private sector dominates biotechnology research in industrialized countries, but there are major market failures in developing countries in accessing the new tools and technologies. The public sector, national and international, will have to play a major role in filling this gap. This paper provides an overview of options that countries of different sizes and capacities can employ to gain access to the research tools and technologies that they need to address issues of relevance to poor producers and consumers.
Esta tesis expone un análisis de la cadena de valor del cacao, en su contexto internacional - nacional, y de la cadena de valor de una organización de segundo grado, como UNOCACE, en un marco de tiempo de diez años (2002 – 2012). Los elementos de estudio se basaron en la metodología de acción colectiva de Julio Berdegué y la plataforma RURALTER. Con el fin de exponer el rol determinante de la acción colectiva en las cadenas productivas.
This presentation for the Third Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD3,Johannesburg, South Africa, 5-8 April 2016) illustrates the topic of competitiveness in Africa smallholders system, focusing on the Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IAR4D) and Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS) concepts and on the role of the innovation platforms.
This paper outlines key areas of intervention that are identified as the core of FAO's strategy on strengthening Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS) across multiple areas of work (e.g. research and extension, agroecology, biotechnology, green jobs, resourcing etc.) for achieving sustainable rural development.