Researchers at the University of Queensland have worked on research projects in the PNG Highlands since 2005. These projects were, and are, applied research to manage soil fertility in sweetpotato-based cropping systems in the Highlands. They were funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. Our key collaborator was PNG’s National Agricultural Research Institute. Although the projects were in the field of Soil Science, specifically soil fertility management, our approach has always been multidisciplinary.
This paper discusses innovation in low and middle-income countries, focusing on the role it has played in local and national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the lessons from this effort for how innovation might be harnessed to address wider development and humanitarian challenges by mobilising resources, improving processes, catalysing collaboration and encouraging creative and contextually grounded approaches. The paper also examines how international development and humanitarian organisations can improve their support for local and national innovation efforts.
The paper explores the implications of rural livelihood diversity for agricultural innovation policies. It summarises literature on the nature of rural poverty, with particular emphasis on the relative roles of farm and non-farm income. It also reviews the various roles, direct and indirect, that agricultural innovation can play in rural poverty reduction. Finally, it uses an agricultural knowledge and information systems (AKIS) perspective to argue for a differentiated approach to targeting agricultural innovations, based on an analysis of rural assets.
La façon donc les organismes de recherche et d'appui aux agriculteurs participent aux processus de développement de l'agriculture et du monde rural fait l'objet de débats. Ceux-ci portent à la fois sur la compréhension des besoins réels des agriculteurs et sur les formes de coordination entre les différents acteurs de la production de connaissances traduisibles en actions. Nous proposons d'illustrer cette problématique à partir d'un programme de coopération franco-argentin Innovaciones, Desarrollo, Exploitationes Agropecuarias, Sociedad local (IDEAS), engagé en Argentine en 1995-1996.
El Silvopastoreo es un sistema de producción pecuaria en donde las leñosas perennes (árboles y/ o arbustos) interactúan con los componentes tradicionales (forrajeras herbáceas y animales) bajo un sistema de manejo integral, ha sido planteado con base en resultados investigativos, como una alternativa de producción sostenible que permite reducir el impacto ambiental de los sistemas tradicionales de producción.
The agricultural industry is getting more data-centric and requires precise, more advanced data and technologies than before, despite being familiar with agricultural processes. The agriculture industry is being advanced by various information and advanced communication technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT). The rapid emergence of these advanced technologies has restructured almost all other industries, as well as advanced agriculture, which has shifted the industry from a statistical approach to a quantitative one.
La participación de los pequeños productores en procesos de investigación asociados a los sistemas productivos agrícolas ha sido difícil de lograr. Por esto el objeto de la presente investigación fue el de lograr la vinculación de pequeños productores de yuca (Manihot esculenta Crantz) a procesos de investigación en la región caribe de Colombia. Por lo anterior, se implementaron ensayos de campo en los que se empleó un método de investigación participativa a través de modelos integrados de producción.
The creation of commercialization opportunities for smallholder farmers has taken primacy on the development agenda of many developing countries. Invariably, most of the smallholders are less productive than commercial farmers and continue to lag in commercialization. Apart from the various multifaceted challenges which smallholder farmers face, limited access to extension services stands as the underlying constraint to their sustainability.
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.
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) proposes environmental policies developed around action-based conservation measures supported by agri-environment schemes (AES). High Nature Value (HNV) farming represents a combination of low-intensity and mosaic practices mostly developed in agricultural marginalized rural areas which sustain rich biodiversity. Being threatened by intensification and abandonment, such farming practices were supported in the last CAP periods by targeted AES.