This brief explores the definition of Agricultural Knowledge and Information System (AKIS) and the inventory of AKIS in Europe.
A growing variety of public and private rural advisory services are available today, leading to increasingly “pluralistic service systems” (PSS), in which advisory services are provided by different actors and funded from different sources. However, these PSS and the way they operate are still poorly understood. In particular, how PSS can effectively respond to demands of heterogeneous farmers in contexts where small-scale agriculture increasingly needs to exploit value addition and adapt to market requirements.
This document is about a session of the Second Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD2), which was held in Punta del Este, Uruguay, in 2012. The session focused on how to strengthen institutional capacities as well as multi-disciplinary and multi-organizational networking, including through improved policies, management practices, structures and incentives, so that institutions become more adaptive and responsive, as well as more effective in linking farmers, research, education, extension and development actors.
For smallholder agriculture to prosper and transform itself, access to rural services is essential. Rural services that enable smallholders to overcome constraints to increase their productivity, manage their farms as a sustainable business, link to inputs and outputs markets and act collectively to improve their livelihoods are a first line of action to reduce rural poverty. Undoubtedly, improving rural services has long been on the development agenda.
This brief summarises the results and recommendations of a scoping study that examined the current levels of professionalism in the Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services (GFRAS) regional networks. The aim was to provide evidence that would guide the future activities and tools offered by GFRAS as well as to promote inter-regional learning and information exchange.
El presente estudio se basa en el análisis sobre la incorporación de los principios de actuación por los que ha de guiarse el Fondo Internacional de Desarrollo Agrícola (FIDA), en su labor con Pueblos Indígenas y Afrodescendientes. El Programa de Desarrollo Rural en la Costa Caribe de Nicaragua, NICARIBE, fue el proyecto de referencia para el análisis.
El propósito de ese informe es aportar insumos en el marco de un amplio diálogo de saberes, para el reconocimiento de la estrecha relación entre la investigación agrícola para el desarrollo, la innovación tecnológica y el bienestar de las comunidades rurales con referencia a sus medios de vida.
Este documento describe de manera sencilla los conceptos teóricos y prácticos de las Escuelas de Campo.
The objective of TAF’s projects was either to strengthen companies’ core operations by delivering consulting expertise to enable them to grow, and hence contribute to food security through increased production and food availability, or to facilitate the implementation of new business models that extend their reach to poor consumers, producers or employees through ‘inclusive business’ initiatives
This report synthesizes findings from seven country scoping studies on gender‐responsive approaches to rural advisory services (RAS) in Africa. The studies, which were conducted in Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Sudan, and Uganda, were meant to identify existing policies, programmes, approaches, and tools into which gender considerations had been injected, and then to provide them as RAS to farmers, with specific focus on women and youth. The goal was to propose a road map for mainstreaming RAS to promote sustainable agriculture in Africa