The paper explores the implications of rural livelihood diversity for agricultural innovation policies. It summarises literature on the nature of rural poverty, with particular emphasis on the relative roles of farm and non-farm income. It also reviews the various roles, direct and indirect, that agricultural innovation can play in rural poverty reduction. Finally, it uses an agricultural knowledge and information systems (AKIS) perspective to argue for a differentiated approach to targeting agricultural innovations, based on an analysis of rural assets.
Innovation learning platforms have their roots in the agricultural innovation systems (AIS) approach. AIS emphasizes a systems view of agricultural innovations and conceptualizes an innovation system as all individuals and organizations that keep on interacting in producing and using knowledge and the institutional context of knowledge sharing and learning. Research creates knowledge and technology; but innovation process goes further to include putting that knowledge into use.
Every year, farmers in sub-Saharan Africa suffer from unacceptable levels of crop loss as a result of plant health problems, threatening their food security, income and livelihoods. This working paper shares lessons from Plantwise, an initiative to improve smallholder farmers’ access to plant health services in Uganda so that they can improve their yields, increase their incomes and improve their food security and livelihoods. The working paper presents lessons from almost ten years of experiences in implementing plant clinics in Uganda.
How much do poor rural households rely on environmental extraction from natural ecosystems? And how does climate variability impact their livelihoods? This paper sheds light on these two questions with household income data from the Poverty and Environment Network pantropical data set, combined with climate data for the
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.
There have been numerous episodes of widespread adoption of improved seed and long-term achievements in the development of the maize seed industry in Sub-Saharan Africa. This summary takes a circumspect view of technical change in maize production. Adoption of improved seed has continued to rise gradually, now representing an estimated 44 percent of maize area in Eastern and Southern Africa (outside South Africa), and 60 percent of maize area in West and Central Africa. Use of fertilizer and restorative crop management practices remains relatively low and inefficient.
This paper aims to develop a vision statement for the agricultural sector that may then guide the future investments in Chile's agricultural innovation system, A joint and shared perspective on how the sector might look and what role agricultural innovation should play in getting there is a prerequisite for any effective strategy. But developing such a vision is not only a function of what the country wants: it also depends on the context in which Chile's agricultural sector will find itself.
On 15 November 2012, as part of the IFAD East and Southern Africa regional meeting in Addis Ababa, ILRI was asked to convene and facilitate a 1 hour session on ways that CGIAR and IFAD could collaborate. The session drew on contributions from different CGIAR centres; it involved speakers from ILRI, IWMI and ICARDA. It provided a very good, but short, opportunity to make connections between some CGIAR staff and IFAD and project staff; several individual follow up conversations were triggered.
Agricultural innovation systems are complex, multi-layered, and can be difficult to define and analyse. In this paper, we provide examples of ‘systems analysis’: describing the context, what was done, and how the outcomes informed broader research and development activities. The five cases describe analyses of: i) agricultural systems in North-West Vietnam; ii) household food security in Central Vietnam; iii) agricultural innovation systems in Central Africa; iv) wheat commodity systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, and v) the national agricultural research system in Papua New Guinea.
This paper is a case study of capacity strengthening activities carried out at the Agricultural Research Corporation in Sudan between July 2008 and March 2011. These activities were undertaken through the project ‘Strengthening Capacity for Agricultural Research and Development (SCARDA)’ which was implemented in the East and Central Africa region by the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in East and Central Africa.