The failure of the linear and non-participatory Agricultural Research and Development approaches to increase food security among smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa has prompted researchers to introduce an Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IAR4D) concept. The IAR4D concept uses Innovation Platforms (IPs) to embed agricultural research and development organizations in a network to undertake multidisciplinary and participatory research.
The aim of the book is to present contributions in theory, policy and practice to the science and policy of sustainable intensification by means of technological and institutional innovations in agriculture. The research insights re from Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The purpose of this book is to be a reference for students, scholars and practitioners inthe field of science and policy for understanding and identifying agricultural productivity growth potentials in marginalized areas.
The authors engaged in iterative cycles of mixed methods research around particular questions, actions relevant to stakeholders, new proposal formulation and implementation followed by evaluation of impacts. Capacity building occurred among farmers, technical personnel, and students from multiple disciplines. Involvement of research users occurred throughout: women and men farmers, non-governmental development organizations, Ministries of Health and Agriculture, and, in Ecuador, the National Council on Social Participation
Even prior to COVID, there was a considerable push for food system transformation to achieve better nutrition and health as well as environmental and climate change outcomes. Recent years have seen a large number of high visibility and influential publications on food system transformation. Literature is emerging questioning the utility and scope of these analyses, particularly in terms of trade-offs among multiple objectives.
In this paper, the authors review the conditions that have been undermining sustainable food and nutrition security in the Caribbean, focusing on issues of history, economy, and innovation. Building on this discussion, we then argue for a different approach to agricultural development in the Small Island Developing States of the CARICOM that draws primarily on socioecological resilience and agricultural innovation systems frameworks.
How effective are multi-stakeholder scenarios-building processes to bring diverse actors together and create a policy-making tool to support sustainable development and promote food security in the developing world under climate change? The effectiveness of a participatory scenario development process highlights the importance of “boundary work” that links actors and organizations involved in generating knowledge on the one hand, and practitioners and policymakers who take actions based on that knowledge on the other.
Innovations in the agri-food sector are needed to create a sustainable food supply. Sustainable food supply requires unexpectedly that densely populated regions remain food producers. A Dutch innovation program has aimed at showing the way forward through creating a number of practice and scientific projects. Generic lessons from the scientific projects in this program are likely to be of interest to agricultural innovation in other densely populated regions in the world.
There is an ongoing debate on what constitutes sustainable intensification of agriculture (SIA). In this paper, we propose that a paradigm for sustainable intensification can be defined and translated into an operational framework for agricultural development. We argue that this paradigm must now be defined—at all scales—in the context of rapidly rising global environmental changes in the Anthropocene, while focusing on eradicating poverty and hunger and contributing to human wellbeing.
This scoping review synthesizes the literature on government agricultural policy and production in order to 1) present a typology of policies used to influence agricultural production, 2) to provide a preliminary overview of the ways that impact is assessed in this literature, and 3) to bring this literature into conversation with the literature on food and tobacco supply.
Despite recent improvements in the national average, stunting levels in Afghanistan exceed 70% in some Provinces. Agriculture serves as the main source of livelihood for over half of the population and has the potential to be a strong driver of a reduction in under-nutrition. This article reports research conducted through interviews with stakeholders in agriculture and nutrition in the capital, Kabul, and four provinces of Afghanistan, to gain a better understanding of the institutional and political factors surrounding policy making and the nutrition-sensitivity of agriculture.