The new challenges facing the European agricultural and rural sectors call for a review of the links between knowledge production and its use to foster innovation, and for a deeper analysis of the potential of the current Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS) to react to the evolving context. This paper highlights how the Italian AKIS places itself in the new emerging framework, with a particular emphasis on the incentives guiding the system and the experiences of monitoring and evaluating the national AKIS policy.
The innovation system perspective acknowledges the contributions made by all stakeholders involved in knowledge development, dissemination and appropriation. According to the specific agricultural production system, farmers adopt innovations, modify them or innovate on their own. This paper examines the role of farmers' experiments and innovations in Cuba's agricultural innovation system (AIS), identifies knowledge exchange encounters and describes some strategies implemented to institutionalize farmers' experiments and innovations.
More than 25 years after the first implementation of Farmer Field Schools (FFS), there is a rich corpus of evidence that participation in FFS improves farmers’ knowledge, skills, and competencies. On the other hand, several studies converge to show that FFS, by strengthening group action, have the potential to build-up social capital among participants and, thereafter, within local communities.
The privatization of agricultural research and extension establishments worldwide has led to the development of a market for services designed to support agricultural innovation. However, due to market and systemic failures, both supply side and demand side parties in this market have experienced constraints in effecting transactions and establishing the necessary relationships to engage in demand-driven innovation processes.
This short presentation, prepared for the 22nd European Seminar on Extension and Education (ESEE) in Wageningen (29 April 2015), summarizes the SOLINSA (Support Of Learning and Innovation Networks for Sustainable Agriculture) project and its objectives and describes the three features to enhance transition towards sustainable agriculture through learning & innovation: 1) Processes of co-evolution; 2) Joint Reflection; 3) Facilitation.
This paper provides a review of agronomic management practices supporting sustainable crop production systems and intensification, and testifying to developments in the selection of crops and cultivars. The paper also describes crop farming systems taking a predominantly ecosystem approach and it discusses the scientific application of this approach for the management of pest and weed populations.
The Asia-Pacific Association of Agricultural Research Institutions (APAARI) in collaboration with the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), Department of Agriculture (DOA), Thailand, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations – Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (FAO RAP), Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) and International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), organized a High Level Policy Dialogue (HLPD) on Investment in Agricultural Research for Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific on 8-9 December 2015 in Bangkok, Th
They were once the central element in state-funded research, but now the research bodies need to redefine their role as partners in the innovation process, responding more efficiently to the needs of society and businesses. In agriculture, the concept of innovation was dominated in the past by linear knowledge transfer in the form of new technologies that were essentially generated by public research (research institutes or universities), transferred to the agricultural extension services, and hence to the farmers for adoption.
Until recently, little attention has been paid to local innovation capacity as well as management practices and institutions developed by communities and other local actors based on their traditional knowledge. This paper doesn't focus on the results of scientific research into innovation systems, but rather on how local communities, in a network of supportive partnerships, draw knowledge for others, combine it with their own knowledge and then innovate in their local practices.
This presentation by the Iowa State University Extension (USA) is on agriculture and extension in the USA, focussing on challenges in ICT and emerging paradigms.