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.
In order to bring about sustainable transformation and business orientation into the Indian Agriculture sector, there have been schematic interventions to promote unique forms of social capital for farmers, called Farmer Producer organizations (FPOs). Many stakeholders, particularly NGOs, are involved in promoting and handholding these FPOs in a target-driven mode by promoting a large number of such institutions across the country.
India is witnessing dwindling gains from agriculture for the smallholder farmers because of high cost of inputs, changing climate impacting production, fluctuating market prices of outputs, and weak delivery of services at the last mile. The value share of farmers in the commodity supply chain needs to be increased to ensure that farming remains a remunerative livelihood option. There has to be a wider acceptance of the fact that the country needs partnerships among multiple players with complementary knowledge and expertise for its agricultural development.
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) financed the second Cordillera Highland Agricultural Resource Management Project (CHARMP2), in areas where poverty is most severe among indigenous peoples in the highlands of the Cordillera Region in northern Philippines. The aim is to reduce poverty and improve the livelihoods of indigenous peoples living in farming communities in the mountainous project area. The indigenous peoples consist of many tribes whose main economic activity is agriculture.
The creation of Competitive Research Grants (CRGs) is globally recognized as an institutional innovation for improving the effectiveness of agricultural research. Unlike block grants for research, CRGs are expected to bring in many top-quality proposals from a wide range of actors, selecting the best out of them and thus getting more value for money.
In India, Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) are considered as the most preferred institutional mechanism for enhancing productivity and income of farmers. This is based on the resounding success of a few farmer collectives that have aggregated their produce to realise better incomes. However, when efforts were made to scale up this interesting model across the country, several challenges emerged.
The Guidance Note on Operationalization provides a brief recap of the conceptual underpinnings and principles of the TAP Common Framework as well as a more detailed guide to operationalization of the proposed dual pathways approach. It offers also a strategy for monitoring and evaluation as well as a toolbox of select tools that may be useful at the different stages of the CD for AIS cycle.
The Conceptual Background provides an in-depth analysis of the conceptual underpinnings and principles of the TAP Common Framework. It is also available in French and Spanish.
Every year, farmers in sub-Saharan Africa suffer from unacceptable levels of crop loss as a result of plant health problems, threatening their food security, income and livelihoods. This working paper shares lessons from Plantwise, an initiative to improve smallholder farmers’ access to plant health services in Uganda so that they can improve their yields, increase their incomes and improve their food security and livelihoods. The working paper presents lessons from almost ten years of experiences in implementing plant clinics in Uganda.
Le document de synthèse fournit une synthèse des concepts et des principes du cadre commun développé dans le cadre de la Plate-forme pour l'agriculture tropicale (TAP). L'objectif du Cadre Commun de la TAP est de promouvoir une meilleure cohérence et un impact plus fort du renforcement des capacités (RC) en soutien aux systèmes d'innovation agricole (AIS) sous les tropiques. Développé en 2015 à travers un processus hautement participatif, il a été convenu que le Cadre devrait fournir des bases conceptuelles et des indications pratiques.