Feeding an additional three billion people over the next four decades, along with providing food security for another one billion people that are currently hungry or malnourished, is a huge challenge. Meeting those goals in a context of land and water scarcity, climate change, and declining crop yields will require another giant leap in agricultural innovation. The aim of this paper is to stimulate a dialogue on what new approaches might be needed to meet these needs and how innovative funding mechanisms could play a role.
The purpose of this issues paper is to provide an overview of the issues, numbers, disputes, and approaches so that contributors to SOW11 can share a common framework and consider how the innovations they describe fit into the larger international discourse. The paper is structured as follows: • Section 2 describes diverse perspectives on food security that emphasize global supply chains to feed middle-class populations in cities; smallholder farmers who still supply much of the world; and smallholder farmers who are relatively disengaged in commercial markets.
This paper illustrates already practiced models and strategies of high impact innovations around the world with particular respect to India. The shown examples of innovative businesses were selected based on four criteria reflecting their innovative character. Firstly, innovations need to fulfil a value for the life of people which exceeds the mere use of the product. Secondly, it requires good quality products or service for an affordable price even for lower income groups.
With the rapid pace of climate change and its impact on food security and livelihoods, climate-smart agriculture is one strategy aiming to help farmers adopt more sustainable farming practices. This study looked at farmers’ adoption of agricultural innovations and the role of social networks in the process.
The problem being addressed during this session of the Second Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD2), which was held in Punta del Este, Uruguay, in 2012, is how we can bring together the needed diversity – of stakeholders and approaches – and understand better a number of multidimensional and complex questions such as: How can we inform stakeholders on alternative future scenarios and debate the desirability, consequences, winners and losers of diverse scenarios? How to better combine quantitative analyses with qualitative arguments?
Extension services are a keystone of information diffusion in agriculture. This paper exploits a large randomized controlled trial to track diffusion of a new technique in the classic Training and Visit (T&V) extension model, relative to a more direct training model. In both control and treatment communities, contact farmers (CFs) serve as points-of-contacts between agents and other farmers. The intervention (Treatment) aims to address two pitfalls of the T&V model: i) infrequent extension agent visits, and ii) poor quality information.
The purpose of this paper is to provide forward-looking recommendations for linking agriculture and nutrition by looking back over the 40 years since both nutrition and rural development began at the Bank in 1973. This paper sets out to explore whether what is currently being suggested has been attempted in the past; in what circumstances, with what sort of support or commitment, by what actors, and with what results.
Depuis plusieurs décennies, les pays de l’Afrique de l’Ouest se sont investis dans le développement et la diffusion des innovations agricoles dans le but d’accroître la productivité agricole et la production vivrière en particulier. Plusieurs mécanismes et approches ont été développés à cet effet en vue d’une utilisation efficace de ces innovations agricoles par les producteurs.
El presente documento se elabora de conformidad a lo requerido en los términos de referencia de la Consultoría “Situación de la institucionalidad de apoyo a la innovación comercial de la agricultura familiar y de los procesos de gestión comercial de la agricultura familiar en Chile”, la cual hace parte del Proyecto IICA/FONCT “Innovaciones institucionales para el apoyo a la gestión de procesos comerciales de la agricultura familiar (AF) y su vinculación con los mercados”.
This working paper provides the following text as a abstract: