On-farm agricultural innovation through incorporation of new technologies and practices requires access to resources such as knowledge, financial resources, training, and even emotional support, all of which require the support of different actors such as peers, advisors, and researchers. The literature has explored the support networks that farmers use and the overall importance ranking of different support actors, but it has not looked in detail at how these networks may differ for different farmers.
Grants for agricultural innovation are common but grant funds specifically targeted to smallholder farmers remain relatively rare. Nevertheless, they are receiving increasing recognition as a promising venue for agricultural innovation. They stimulate smallholders to experiment with improved practices, to become proactive and to engage with research and extension providers. The systematic review covered three modalities of disbursing these grants to smallholder farmers and their organisations: vouchers, competitive grants and farmer-led innovation support funds.
Tomando el caso de la agricultura holandesa como ejemplo, en este documento se hace un análisis del surgimiento y el papel de los gestores sistémicos de innovación en el estímulo de la interacción al interior del sistema de innovación agrícola y el desarrollo de la capacidad de innovación, además de reflexionar sobre su posible función en la agricultura de los países en vías de desarrollo y emergentes así como en la forma en que se puede promover su surgimiento y operación.
The transition to a market for agricultural research and knowledge-intensive services presents various challenges for actors in the agricultural knowledge infrastructure, on both the demand side (end users of innovations such as farmers, and the government) and the supply side (providers of research and knowledge-intensive services). New organizational arrangements try to bring together supply and demand in the agricultural knowledge infrastructure. This thesis is about such new organizational arrangements
This presentation sets out a future research agenda for research on agricultural extension and advisory services, under influence of sustainability transitions and disruptive technologies such as digital agriculture technology, and synthetic foods. For a recording of the presentation see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03V7zSD63pw
The nature of interactions between farmers and advisors is the focus of a growing body of research. While many studies explore the potential role of advisors in facilitating farmers' practice change in practices related to agricultural production such as soil, water, pest and animal health management, studies that specifically investigate how advisors support farmers with financial management (FM) are limited. The contribution this paper makes is to identify who farmers' FM advisors are and to shed light on how farmer-advisor interactions about FM are shaped.
In light of the discussion on ‘best-fit' in pluralistic advisory systems, this article aims to present and discuss challenges for advisory services in serving various types of farmers when they seek and acquire farm business advice.The empirical basis is data derived from four workshops, five interviews with staff from advisory organizations, and interviews with 11 farmers.Emerging configurations serve different types of farmers,that is, private advisors serve different clients in different ways; these could be considered subsystems within the overall advisory system.
The shrimp sector has been one of the fastest growing agri-food systems in the last decades, but its growth has entailed negative social and environmental impacts. Sustainable intensification will require innovation in multiple elements of the shrimp production system and its value chain. The study focuses on the case of the shrimp sector in the Mekong Delta in Viet nam to explore the constraints inthe transition to sustainable intensification in shrimp farming, using an analytical framework based on innovation systems thinking, i.e., an aquaculture innovation systems framework.
Latin America has historically been a vanguard of agroecology. In Nicaragua, an agroecological transition is occurring, with three decades of building a groundswell based on the farmer-to-farmer movement and the recent institutionalization of agroecology in national law. Yet, problems remain with agroecology’s diffusion. We introduce the Technological Innovation Systems approach to examine systemic barriers to the agroecological transition and cycles of blockages caused by barriers’ interactions.
Ecological intensification has been proposed as a promising lever for a transition towards more sustainable food systems. Various food systems exist that are based on ecological intensification and may have potential for a sustainability transition. Little is known, however, about their diversity and about how they perform against dominant systems in terms of the multiple societal goals. The aim of this study is to contribute to knowledge about sustainability transitions in food systems through an empirical analysis of vegetable food systems in Chile.