The two strategic documents for the future of Europe post 2020 (Green Deal) and agriculture in Europe (From Farm To Fork) recognize the important role of knowledge and innovation systems in accelerating change towards food sustainability. Researchers and advisors, together with the other actors of the Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System, have the mandate to cooperate more closely to support all on this transition path. This includes stronger and more structured networking, increased information sharing and using digital tools to this effect.
In recent years, the agricultural industry has been experiencing an ever-increasing application of information and communication technologies globally. This new revolution has been touted to impact efficiency and productivity in the agricultural extension services within the agriculture sector. Notwithstanding this, empirical research need to be carried out amongst its users in the sector to ascertain these assertions.
Evaluation provides effective feedback for development plans and programs. In this respect, it is of utmost importance to ensure that the outputs of agricultural extension and education projects are compatible with the ones expected. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to evaluate agricultural extension model sites approach from actors’ perspectives and to analyze their gaps via the context, input, process, and product (CIPP) evaluation model.
The creation of commercialization opportunities for smallholder farmers has taken primacy on the development agenda of many developing countries. Invariably, most of the smallholders are less productive than commercial farmers and continue to lag in commercialization. Apart from the various multifaceted challenges which smallholder farmers face, limited access to extension services stands as the underlying constraint to their sustainability.
This paper seeks to understand what influences research and extension professionals’ intentions to use AIS approaches and to explore how this can inform implementation and design of more effective AIS. We applied the Reasoned Action Approach through focus groups and structured questionnaires with research and extension professionals from government and non-government organisations in Sierra Leone, where AIS approaches are not widely used although increasingly institutionalised in policy.
Conventional approaches to agricultural extension based on top–down technology transfer and information dissemination models are inadequate to help smallholder farmers tackle increasingly complex agroclimatic adversities. Innovative service delivery alternatives, such as field schools, exist but are mostly implemented in isolationistic silos with little effort to integrate them for cost reduction and greater technical effectiveness.
ICT-driven digital tools to support smallholder farmers are arguably inevitable for agricultural development, and they are gradually evolving with promising outlook. Yet, the development and delivery of these tools to target users are often fraught with non-trivial, and sometimes unanticipated, contextual realities that can make or mar their adoption and sustainability. This article unfolds the experiential learnings from a digital innovation project focusing on surveillance and control of a major banana disease in East Africa which is being piloted in Rwanda.
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) proposes environmental policies developed around action-based conservation measures supported by agri-environment schemes (AES). High Nature Value (HNV) farming represents a combination of low-intensity and mosaic practices mostly developed in agricultural marginalized rural areas which sustain rich biodiversity. Being threatened by intensification and abandonment, such farming practices were supported in the last CAP periods by targeted AES.
The concept of an innovation system is used to understand how innovation contributes to economic growth. However, innovation systems do not evolve evenly in different parts of the world. This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the emergence of innovation systems in the context of developing countries. It uses the Rwandan case, where agriculture is a dominant socio-economic sector with high innovation potential. It explores how stakeholder interactions and policies contribute to the emergence of an agriculture innovation system in Rwanda.
Food systems are at a crossroads. Profound transformation is needed to address Agenda 2030 and to achieve food security and nutrition (FSN) in its four dimensions of availability, access, utilization and stability, and to face multidimensional and complex challenges, including a growing world population, urbanization and climate change, which drive increased pressure on natural resources, impacting land, water and biodiversity. This need has been illustrated from various perspectives in previous HLPE reports and is now widely recognized.