This presentation focuses on Agricultural Innovation Systems in different sectors, including the South African wine sector in the apartheid era.
This paper presents findings of an explorative case study that looked at 22 organisations identified as fulfilling an intermediary role in the Kenyan agricultural sector. The results show that these organisations fulfill functions that are not limited to distribution of knowledge and putting it into use. The functions also include fostering integration and interaction among the diverse actors engaged in innovation networks and working on technological, organisational and institutional innovation.
Globalization, urbanization and new market demands - together with ever-increasing quality and safety requirements - are putting significantly greater pressures on agrifood stakeholders in the world. The ability to respond to new challenges and opportunities is important not just for producers but also for industries in developing countries. This paper aims to present what "innovation response capacity" entails, especially for natural resourcebased industries in a developing country context.
Following the remarkable success of performance testing in the commercial sector, the Agricultural Research Council's Animal Improvement Institute (ARC–AII) initiated a beef cattle performance testing scheme for smallholder farmers in 1996. The scheme, which became known as Kaonafatsho ya Dikgomo (Sotho for animal improvement), has been running well in the Northern and North West Provinces and is set to spread gradually to the rest of the country.
This book documents a unique series of 19 case studies where agricultural biotechnologies were used to serve the needs of smallholders in developing countries. They cover different regions, production systems, species and underlying socio-economic conditions in the crop (seven case studies), livestock (seven) and aquaculture/fisheries (five) sectors. Most of the case studies involve a single crop, livestock or fish species and a single biotechnology.
This report provides a synthesis of all findings and information generated through a “stocktaking” process that involved a desk study of Prolinnova documents and evaluation reports, a questionnaire to 40 staff members of international organizations in agricultural research and development (ARD), self-assessment by the Country Platforms (CPs) and backstopping visits to five CPs. In 2014, the Prolinnova network saw a need to re-strategise in a changing context, and started this process by reviewing the activities it had undertaken and assessing its own functioning.
In this book, the authors assessed the role of biotechnology innovation for sustainable development in emerging and developing economies. This book compiles studies that each illustrate the potential, demonstrated value and challenges of biotechnology applications for sustainable agricultural innovation and/or industrial development in a national, regional and international context.
Processes of designing for systemic innovation for sustainable development (SD) through the lens of three long-term case studies are reported. All case studies, which originated from the SLIM (Social Learning for the Integrated Management and Sustainable Use of Water at Catchment Scale) Project, funded within the EU Fifth Framework Program (2001–2004), constitute inquiry pathways that are explored using a critical incident approach.
There have been numerous episodes of widespread adoption of improved seed and long-term achievements in the development of the maize seed industry in Sub-Saharan Africa. This summary takes a circumspect view of technical change in maize production. Adoption of improved seed has continued to rise gradually, now representing an estimated 44 percent of maize area in Eastern and Southern Africa (outside South Africa), and 60 percent of maize area in West and Central Africa. Use of fertilizer and restorative crop management practices remains relatively low and inefficient.
With a large proportion of sub-Saharan African countries’ GDP still heavily reliant on agriculture, global trends in agri-food business are having an increasing impact on African countries. South Africa, a leader in agribusiness on the continent, has a well-established agri-food sector that is facing increasing pressure from various social and environmental sources. This paper uses interview data with corporate executives from South African food businesses to explore how they are adapting to the dual pressures of environmental change and globalisation.