In order for agricultural development to fulfill its potential role as a source of growth and reducer of poverty, it must be constantly renewed through knowledge and innovation. Getting resources into the hands of innovators and providing incentives for producers, agricultural service providers, and entrepreneurs to collaborate in developing and applying new methods and technologies is a priority among institutions concerned with agricultural knowledge.
Agricultural Innovation Marketplace - South-South Cooperation Beyond Theory provides a thorough discussion of the creation, the current status, and future of the Agriculture Innovation Marketplace (The MKTPlace), an international, open partnership aiming to contribute to agricultural development in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Using the recent success of Brazilian agriculture, this partnership seeks to learn from those achievements, financing and organizing projects in other developing countries.
Magdalena Blum, Extension Systems Officer (Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome), presented the topic of Agricultural Innovation Systems in Family Farming during the 3rd GFRAS Annual Meeting, "The Role of Rural Advisory Services in Agricultural Innovation Systems", 26-28 September 2012, Philippines.
The presentation focuses on main issues and results from the FAO e-conference on AIS in family farming (4 June - 1 July 2012),including the role for innovation brokers and the vexed issue of funding for brokering.
This report reviews recent trends in agricultural innovation systems (AIS) and discusses the impact of a wide range of policies on the creation and diffusion of innovation in the agricultural and agrifood sector. It suggests a framework for analysing the role of governments in fostering increased innovation, with a view to helping to identify practical actions that governments could take to improve productivity growth, sustainable use of resources, and resilience to future market developments in national and global agriculture and agri-food systems.
The government of Ethiopia gives great attention to agriculture and rural development for the country’s economy development. Dairy development is one of the components of agricultural development. To improve dairy production in certain locality, dairy producers should able to access and use appropriate knowledge for the particular problem at the right time. This research was conducted to assess agricultural knowledge management system and its challenges and opportunities of knowledge management processes in Bure district.
National governments, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, have limited budgets and are forced to make difficult funding decisions regarding the provision of social services and the support of agricultural programs. These provisions can play a critical role in rural incomes and agricultural production but due to data constraints, the effects of different types of social services on agricultural productivity in this region have not been analyzed in detail.
This report assesses trends in investments, human resource capacity, and research outputs in agricultural R&D -excluding the private (for-profit) sector- in LAC. It is an update of Stads and Beintema (2009), covering a more complete set of countries and focusing primarily on developments during 2006-2012/2013.
Kenya has emerged as a frontrunner in information and communication technologies (ICT) in Sub-Saharan Africa. The government has been actively supporting the ICT sector as one of the key drivers of economic growth. In addition to large international firms that are setting up offices in Nairobi, such as Nokia, IBM and Google, local start-ups have also been expanding rapidly.
América Latina, el Caribe y el mundo enfrentan una crisis que incluye, entre otras, dos dimensiones fundamentales: el dramático deterioro ambiental y la profunda debacle alimentaria. Dicha crisis se caracteriza por el acaparamiento, concentración y extranjerización de las tierras de los campesinos, de los indígenas originarios y de los afrodescendientes solo comparable con la que se dio durante la Colonia.
This report presents and reflects on the opportunities that new technological developments related to automation and precision agriculture (e.g. robotics) can offer to agriculture in developing countries. These technologies are mainly targeted to support farmers that struggle with the cost of labour when harvesting crops and to tackle the declining availability of manpower for general cropping operations.