How do innovations move from the edges to the core of what an organization does? For maximum impact, innovations must cease to be innovative and become institutionalized and normalized.
Mission-Oriented Innovation Policies (MOIPs) are one approach that can advance the required transformations. As our colleague Philippe Larrue noted in a 2021 paper, MOIPs are "a co-ordinated package of policy and regulatory measures tailored specifically to mobilise science, technology and innovation in order to address well-defined objectives related to a societal challenge, in a defined timeframe".
Over the past few decades, some countries in Asia have been more successful than others in addressing poverty and malnutrition. The key question is what policies, strategies, legislation and institutional arrangements have led to a transformed agricultural sector, effectively contributing to poverty alleviation and addressing malnutrition. The great majority of national policymakers within and outside the Asia-Pacific region are keen to understand the causes of agricultural development and transformation in successful countries in Asia.
In Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR), agricultural innovation has the potential to improve livelihoods of farmers and rural people, improve food and nutrition security, and allow for sustainable management of natural resources. In order to enable innovation, a well-functioning national Agriculture Innovation System (AIS) should encourage better coordination among the different stakeholders, including national organizations and the private sector.
Cambodia’s development is strongly influenced by growth in the agriculture sector. In this context, the modernization of agriculture has been highly regarded by the government as a long-term strategy to transform traditional labour-based agriculture into technology-based and with that to effectively enhance the country’s further regional integration within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. In support of this strategic vision, a participatory assessment of the Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS) was conducted in coordination with the General Department of Agriculture (GDA) and su
The privatization of agricultural advisory and extension services in many countries and the associated pluralism of service providers has renewed interest in farmers’ use of fee-for-service advisors. Understanding farmers’ use of advisory services is important, given the role such services are expected to play in helping farmers address critical environmental and sustainability challenges. This paper aims to identify factors associated with farmers’ use of fee-for service advisors and bring fresh conceptualization to this topic.
This report summarizes studies conducted in a framework of TAP-AIS project implemented by FAO’s Research and Extension Unit, and funded by the European Union as a component of the European Union initiative on “Development Smart Innovation through Research in Agriculture” (DeSIRA).
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.
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.