The Farmer Field School (FFS) approach has been very successful and witnessed a strong expansion in many areas beyond crop production. Notwithstanding this success, the adoption of FFS in national extension often remains problematic and FFS activities have often been implemented in the margin of national institutions with strong reliance on donor funding. The creation of an enabling environment for institutional support is essential for expanding the effort, improving quality, and strengthening impact and continuity of the FFSs.
This paper draws lessons from selected country experiences of adaptation and innovation in pursuit of food security goals.
This paper synthesizes Component 2 of the Regoverning Markets Programme. It is based on 38 empirical case studies where small-scale farmers and businesses connected successfully to dynamic markets, doing business with agri-processors and supermarkets. The studies aimed to derive models, strategies and policy principles to guide public and private sector actors in promoting greater participation of small-scale producers in dynamic markets. This publication forms part of the Regoverning Markets project.
This report is organized into nine chapters. Chapter one provides the introduction to the report. Chapter two presents alternative approaches to agribusiness development and chapter three discusses the role of agribusiness incubators. Chapter four discusses the challenges of agribusiness incubators and chapter five presents a typology of agribusiness incubators. Chapter six elaborates on the evolution of incubators over time. Chapter seven presents the analysis of impact and cost-benefits. Chapter eight summarizes good practices and lessons learned.
The agriculture sector has been and will continue to be important for poverty alleviation efforts in Indonesia. Indonesia was very successful in increasing agriculture productivity during the 1970s and up to the early 1990s, but productivity stagnated during most of the 1990s, partly as a result of declining public investments. Public spending on agriculture has increased significantly in the last decade, but a large share of that spending has been allocated to subsidizing private inputs.
Indonesian agriculture is at a crossroads. Supporting the livelihood of millions of Indonesians, it needs to underpin renewed and robust growth of the economy; and be a key component of the Government's poverty alleviation strategy. The challenge for the future is to reinvigorate productivity gains among rural producers, and provide the foundation for long run sustainability of these productivity gains. Productivity gains are key to farmer income growth, and for this rebuilding the research and extension systems that have seen a marked deterioration in recent years will be critical.
Farmers in Asia like to grow cassava because the crop will tolerate long dry periods and poor soils, and will produce reasonable yields with little inputs. Most farmers realize, however, that cassava production on slopes can cause severe erosion, while production without fertilizer inputs may lead to a decline in soil productivity. Research has shown that cassava yields can be maintained for many years with adequate application of fertilizers, and that there are various ways to reduce erosion.
This booklet is the third in the CIAT in Asia Research for Development series. It was based on the experiences of researchers and farmers working with the AusAID-funded Forages for Smallholders Project (FSP) in Southeast Asia from 1995 to 1999. This project was a partnership of smallholder farmers, development workers and researchers who were using participatory approaches to developing forage technologies on farms.
Following their first formation in Indonesia over 25 years ago, Farmer Field Schools (FFS) have served as a “proof of concept” of how transformative learning can help governments, donors and development stakeholders achieve development objectives. The FFS approach, which has now been used in more than 90 countries by more than 12 million small farmers (FAO, 2016), not only creates a space in which the practical needs of smallholders to solve production-related issues can be addressed but also fosters personal and community-level transformation through empowerment.
This document is accompanyng the volume Public Agricultural Research in an Era of Transformation: The Challenge of Agri-Food System Innovation (available in TAPipedia here), which provides some of the groundwork in answering the question of how the CGIAR system and other public agricultural research organisations should adapt and respond to an era of transformation framed by the SDGs.