This paper reviews a recent donor-funded project concerning the introduction of post-harvest technology to poor hill farmers in India. Rather than conform to conventional development aid projects of either a “research” or an “interventionist” nature, it combines both approaches in a research-action program, which has more in common with a business development approach than a formal social science one. An important conclusion is that the work (and apparent success) of the project is consistent with an understanding of development that emphasizes the importance of innovation systems.
Innovation system approach offers an holistic, multidisciplinary and comprehensive framework for analyzing innovation process, the roles of science and technology actors and their interactions, emphazing on wider stakeholder participation, linkages and institutional context of innovation and processes. This paper was aimed to: 1. review the concept of innovation system; 2. appraise the application to agriculture and its relevance and 3. analyze the policy implications for agricultural extension delivery in Nigeria.
The Papa Andina network employs collective action in two novel approaches for fostering market chain innovation. The participatory market chain approach (PMCA) and stakeholder platforms engage small potato producers together with market agents and agricultural service providers in group activities to identify common interests, share market knowledge and develop new business opportunities.
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.
This paper identifies market failures that limit agricultural R&D for Africa and other resource-poor environments, and proposes a way to complement existing institutions with cash prizes for the dissemination of successful new technologies adopted by low-income farmers. The proposed prize institution would use agronomic experiments and farm surveys to document the value of innovations after their initial diffusion, and offer payments in proportion to estimated social benefits in target regions.
The history of agricultural research and development (R&D) has never been static. Its philosophies, concepts and principles continue to change and to impact on present-day practices. It is imperative to understand and draw lessons from the old and new perspectives, which inform agricultural R&D processes and policy formulation in developing countries. The interest of this paper is, therefore, to draw relevant lessons that can explain the dynamics,of the innovation systems at the grassroots in sub-Saharan Africa in particular.
This report has the aim of contributing to the PRO AKIS overall goal of exploring and identifying the possibilities, conditions and requirements of rural networks to enhance the farmers’ ability to create, test, implement and evaluate innovation in cooperation with other actors.In particular, the report presents two cases: the Small Fruit Cluster (SFC) and the Drosophila Suzukii Monitoring (DSM) network. The SFC is a nationwide, multi-actor network composed of several actors, interacting in the small fruit sector in Portugal.
This book represents the proceedings of the FAO international technical conference dedicated to Agricultural Biotechnologies in Developing Countries (ABDC-10) that took place in Guadalajara, Mexico on 1-4 March 2010. A major objective of the conference was to take stock of the application of biotechnologies across the different food and agricultural sectors in developing countries, in order to learn from the past and to identify options for the future to face the challenges of food insecurity, climate change and natural resource degradation.
This policy brief consolidates lessons learned from an in-depth literature review on small-scale farmer (SSF) innovation systems and a two-day expert consultation on the same topic, hosted in Geneva by Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) in May 2015. This review draws together published literature on the evolution of the concept, how on-farm innovation systems function in practice, and the roles of outside actors in supporting them.
The present report is based on the authors' visits to Bolivia, Honduras and Nicaragua, during June-August 2004 in order to develop an initial understanding of innovation processes and identifying stakeholders working with national innovation processes. It also review the experiences of the invited Latin American participants in the 7th Global Conference of Competitiveness Institute (entitled "Building Innovative Clusters for Competitive Advantage") in September 2004 and finally presents suggestion for further activities.