This review aims to identify key issues and opportunities needed to bring current Agricultural Education and Training (AET) systems up to the needed capacity. This paper first looks at the opportunities identified in the preliminary research. Next the paper looks at some of the many pitfalls learned from previous AET work that should be avoided moving forward. Lastly the paper gives a brief explanation for some of the key areas that the preliminary research identified as requiring further research and study in a modern day context. 

The first part of the working document on the global strategy brings together the ideas of some 40 experts involved in gender and participatory research who took part in the workshop ‘Repositioning Participatory Research and Gender Analysis in Times of Change’ in Cali, Colombia (June 16–18, 2010).The workshop participants firmly believe that gender responsive participatory research (GRPR) offers some of the most powerful and useful approaches for achieving sustainable development, including alleviating poverty, improving well being, achieving sustainable levels of natural resource use, and

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.

Net-Map is an interview-based mapping tool that helps people understand, visualize, discuss, and improve situations in which many different actors influence outcomes. By creating Influence Network Maps, individuals and groups can clarify their own view of a situation, foster discussion, and develop a strategic approach to their networking activities.

This Module is the first in a series of four that address capacity development competencies in FAO. It is intended to provide FAO staff and consultants with a basic understanding and knowledge of Capacity Development (CD), reflecting the international debate as well as FAO’s perspective on CD. It also provides some key concepts for adopting changes in responsibilities, behaviours and attitudes that are consistent with FAO’s new role in CD. 

Although much has been written about climate change and poverty as distinct and complex problems, the link between them has received little attention. Understanding this link is vital for the formulation of effective policy responses to climate change. This paper focuses on agriculture as a primary means by which the impacts of climate change are transmitted to the poor, and as a sector at the forefront of climate change mitigation efforts in developing countries.

In recent years the there has been an increasing recognition of the potential of the innovation systems concept to provide new ways of making more effective use of agricultural research and improve its impact on socially desirable outcomes. This paper documents the experiences of a group of researchers in India who experimented with this framework and tried to operationalise its principles in project design. The paper comments on some of the implications of using this approach and the challenges it presents for implementers of agricultural research projects in developing countries.

This review's objectives were to examine the structure and performance of the agricultural research and extension systems (public and private) at the central and provincial levels, identify successes as well as constraints to improving the system s effectiveness for fostering innovation, and propose options for further policy and institutional development, drawing on lessons from international experience. The review focused principally on nonplantation crops, although its main recommendations apply across the agricultural sector.

Although Sub-Saharan Africa has some of the worst nutrition indicators in the world, nutrition remains a low priority on the policy agendas of many African governments. This despite the fact that proven interventions are known and available and that investment in them is considered a cost-effective strategy for poverty reduction. This case study is one in a series seeking to understand (1) what keeps African governments from committing fully to reducing malnutrition, and (2) what is required for full commitment.

By late in the twentieth century, scientists had succeeded in manip- ulating organisms at the genetic level, mainly by gene transfer. The major impact of this technology has been seen in the spread of geneti- cally modified (GM) crops, which has occurred with little controversy in some areas and with fierce controversy elsewhere. GM crops raise a very wide range of questions, and I address three areas of particular interest for anthropology and its allied fields.