The contributions and dynamic interaction of thousands of stakeholders from all sectors have created the GCARD (Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development) Roadmap, providing a clear path forward for all involved. The Roadmap highlights the urgent changes required in Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D) systems globally, to address worldwide goals of reducing hunger and poverty, creating opportunity for income growth while ensuring environmental sustainability and particularly meeting the needs of resource-poor farmers and consumer.
The Foresight project Global Food and Farming Futures final report provides an overview of the evidence and discusses the challenges and choices for policy makers and others whose interests relate to all areas that interact with the food system.
What can we learn from ongoing initiatives? There has been a lot of interest during the last two decades in employing Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for achieving development. While many of these initiatives have benefited rural women by way of access to new information and new employment opportunities, women still face a number of constraints in accessing ICTs. This paper explores the role of ICTs in empowering Indian rural women, through a review of ICT initiatives in India.
The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the role that benchmarking can play in rural and agricultural innovations. Although generally known as 'traditional sector', rural activities are far from static but rather driven by old and new challenges pleading for innovative responses. Despite the broad range of insights from the burgeoning literature on innovation systems during the last decade, most benchmarking thinking and practice still remains highly science-based and centred in promoting public R&D, especially in developing countries.
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.
This paper presents the processes, general guidelines lessons and experiences pertaining to “good practices” for organizing and forming Agricultural Innovation Platforms in the Lake Kivu Pilot Learning Site, covering three countries (Uganda, Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo) with widely differing social political environments to address agricultural development challenges.
The Centre for Development Research (CDR), in collaboration with local partnership managed by the Bangladesh Agricultural University worked to establish a platform (i.e. a participatory rural video centre) that acts upon fostering rural women’s capacity for agricultural innovation in the north-west and north-east region of Bangladesh. In this paper, the authors elaborate principles of establishing the centre, and some evidences on Farmers’ Participatory Research (FPR) in the community.
This paper examines how the different institutional innovations arising from various permutations of linkages and interactions of ARD organizations (national, international advanced agricultural research centres and universities) influenced the different outcomes in addressing identified ARD problems.
This paper takes a closer look at innovation systems, including the various actors involved, their interrelationships, and governance mechanisms. Innovation systems operate at different levels, in terms of structure, functioning, and performance at the national level, and from two different angles: as a macrostructure that involves different functions and key organizations working on these functions, and as the composite of different innovation networks comprising individuals and local and national organizations.
Research, extension, and advisory services are some of the most knowledge-intensive elements of agricultural innovation systems. They are also among the heaviest users of information communication technologies (ICTs). This module introduces ICT developments in the wider innovation and knowledge systems as well as explores drivers of ICT use in research and extension