This article studies the impact of innovation platforms in Tanga Region, Tanzania, set up by the MilkIT dairy development project to intensify smallholder production through feed enhancement and value chain approaches. The conceptual framework used builds up from three socio-economic theories. The Structure-Conduct-Performance model of markets contributes its elegant assumption, linking the way markets are organized with how market actors behave, which has an influence on market performance.
Participatory forest management is credited for supporting social learning processes and fostering capacity of forest users for collaboration and collective actions. Despite more than a decade of practice, the empirical evidence substantiating the contribution of participatory management for the capacity development of forest users is scarce. This study assesses a participatory forest management program in Madhupur Sal forest, Bangladesh, by comparing the capacity of de-facto groups of participants and nonparticipants and identifies factors that influence the capacity development.
Emilio Ruz, executive secretary of the Cooperative Programme for Agri-food and Agroindustrial Technological Development of the Southern Cone (PROCISUR), presented the PROCISUR’s frame-work of innovation management at the 3rd GFRAS Annual Meeting, "The Role of Rural Advisory Services in Agricultural Innovation Systems", 26-28 September 2012, Philippines. His presentation has been prepared with Julio C. Catullo,
Extension Group Coordinator of PROCISUR.
This publication provides a collection of papers, commentaries, expert opinions and reflections on state-of-the-art innovation systems thinking and approaches in agriculture. It is the direct output of a CTA and WUR/CoS-SIS collaboration which had its genesis in an expert consultation on ‘Innovation Systems: Towards Effective Strategies in support of Smallholder Farmers’.
This book discusses innovation problems and opportunities for family farming in the different regions of the American continent, as well as the role of hemispheric, regional and national agrifood research systems. Likewise, it provides a description of the main innovation actions and projects promoted by IICA, and the main success cases over recent years.
This study presents a quasi-experimental analysis of the impact of FairTrade certification on the commercial performance of coffee farmers in Tanzania. In doing so the study emphasises the importance of a well-contextualised theory of change as a basis for evaluation design. It also stresses the value of qualitative methods to control for selection bias. Based on a longitudinal (pseudo-panel) dataset comprising both certified and conventional farmers, it shows that FairTrade certification introduced a disincentive to farmers’ commercialisation.
This paper compares lessons learned from nine studies that explored institutional determinants of innovation towards sustainable intensification of West African agriculture. The studies investigated issues relating to crop, animal, and resources management in Benin, Ghana, and Mali.The studies showed that political ambitions to foster institutional change were often high (restoring the Beninese cotton sector and protecting Ghanaian farmers against fluctuating cocoa prices) and that the institutional change achieved was often remarkable.
This study, supported by the Challenge Program Water and Food (CPWF-Project 35), demonstrates the case of multiple-use of water through seasonal aquaculture interventions for improved rice–fish production systems in the Bangladesh floodplains. The project focused on community-based fish culture initiatives, increasingly adopted in the agro-ecological zones of the major floodplains of the Padma, Testa, and Brahmaputra basin.
This article presents the results of a study conducted in Northeast Thailand on wild food plant gathering in anthropogenic areas and the implications for vulnerable households. A sub-sample of 40 farming households was visited every month to conduct seven-day recalls over a 12-month period on wild food plant acquisition events. Results show that these plants are an essential part of the diet, constituting a "rural safety net" particularly for vulnerable households.
This study reports on the contribution of farmer– to-farmer video-mediated group learning to capital assets building of women in resource-poor households. Data were collected using structured interviews with 140 randomly selected women in 28 video villages and 40 women in four control villages in north-west Bangladesh. Video-mediated group learning enhanced women’s ability to apply and experiment with seed technologies. It also stimulated reciprocal sharing of new knowledge and skills between them, other farmers and service providers.