The European Innovation Partnership for agricultural productivity and sustainability (EIP-AGRI), which can be perceived as a platform based on interaction among farmers, researchers, and advisors/extensionists, represents a useful tool for a better understanding of applied innovation processes.
Multi-actors networks are increasingly used by farmers to link between them and to be interactively connected with other partners, such as advisory organizations, local governments, universities, and non-farm organizations. Given the importance assigned to the agricultural innovation by EU resorting to the networking between the research chain actors and the farmers, a strong focus on enhancing the creation of learning and innovation networks is expected.
Although innovation is understood to encompass much more than R&D, science continues to be an essential ingredient. In particular translation, adaptation and ‘valorisation’ of research results, the responsiveness of research to users’ needs and improved access to results are all regarded as important in achieving a more sustainable European agriculture. These challenges can be addressed in a number of ways including increased collaboration, networking, transdisciplinary research and co-operation between researchers and practitioners.
This report explores the role of rural networks in enhancing innovation processes, questioning the features of the agricultural/rural networks could enhance farmers’ ability to co-innovate in cooperation with other actors. The prospect of this investigation is also to provide interesting and significant experiences that constitute examples for the ‘European Innovation Partnership’ by increasing farmers’ capacities to create, test, implement and evaluate innovations in cooperation with other rural actors.
Starting with background information, the report presents a summary of the plenary presentations of the workshop, which includes a brief on the post-conflict and protracted crisis environment in the 15 participating countries (Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo Brazzaville, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Ethiopia, Uganda, Central African Republic, Chad, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Liberia, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan). Some countries like Afghanistan qualified all in one as conflict, post-conflict and protracted crisis country.
The latest comprehensive research agenda in the Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension was published in 2012 (Faure, Desjeux, and Gasselin 2012), and since then there have been quite some developments in terms of biophysical, ecological, climatological, social, political and economic trends that impact farming and the transformation of agriculture and food systems at large as well as new potentially disruptive technologies.
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.
This paper investigates the introduction of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in Canino's area (Italy), from an agricultural innovation system (AIS) perspective focusing on the roles of the innovation actors and the innovation impact pathway. The IPM research in Canino was conducted with a wide range of actors including research, advisory services, producer cooperatives and the private sector in a favourable policy environment facilitating the fast and wide adoption of IPM.
The profound changes in European policy for farms advisory services (FAS) require a period of experimentation and results observation before the new CAP 2021-2027. This paper focuses on Measure 2 of Rural Development Programme (RDP) 2014-2020. The paper is focused on the description of case studies in three Italian regions: Campania, Emilia-Romagna and Veneto. Different Measure 2 – sub-measure 2.1 models are analyzed through a qualitative approach, using a conceptual framework adapted by Birner et al. (2009).
This working paper represents work‐in‐progress of the CBFC project (Community‐based Fish Culture in Seasonal Floodplains and Irrigation Systems), a research project supported by the Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF), with the aim of increasing productivity of seasonally occurring water bodies through aquaculture.The project has been implemented in Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Mali and Vietnam, where technical and institutional options for community based aquaculture have been tested. The project began in 2005 and was completed in March 2010.