A growing variety of public and private agricultural advisory services are available today, leading to increasingly ‘pluralistic service systems’ (PSS) where advisory services are provided by different actors and funded from different sources. This is generally regarded as an important step forward, as it steers away from relying on purely state-led or privatised service systems. PSS hold the potential to overcome constraints related to funding, staffing and expertise, and to make advisory services more demand-driven.
In this paper it is assessed the types of knowledge networks utilised by small-scale farmers in four case studies (located in Bulgaria, Poland, Portugal, and the United Kingdom). We focus on knowledge acquired to inform three new activities being undertaken by study participants: agricultural production, subsidy access and regulatory compliance, and farm diversification (specifically agritourism).
In this paper, presented at the 12th European IFSA Symposium (Workshop: "Generating spaces for innovation in agricultural and rural development") in 2016, the authors assess the integration of new entrants to small-scale farming into agricultural knowledge and innovation systems (AKIS), in four study sites located on Europe’s periphery (Bulgaria, Poland, Portugal, and the United Kingdom).
Smallholder farmers across the Global South increasingly need to adapt their farming activities to fast-paced changes, for example, in climate, policy and markets. In many places, public and private agricultural extension services support technological change through trainings and the dissemination of information. The effectiveness of extant ex-tension (advisory) methodologies is, however, challenged by the difficulty of reaching a large and growing clientele with highly diverse information needs.
West Africa’s smallholders are dynamic and innovative and, if given the opportunity, could easily and sustainably double or treble their productivity. This would have a huge impact on the region’s food security and economic growth. The Convergence of Sciences programme has spent the past decade exploring new pathways for agricultural innovation that focus on enabling smallholders to capture opportunity.
Nowadays, there are a number of projects tackling on challenges around which this study is based. For instance, the ultimate goal of the current project SKIN is to create a permanent stakeholders’ association on short food supply chain (SFSC) that works on the joint economic growth of the agricultural sector through the exchange of local food practices and through coaching sessions stimulating innovation. It creates a European network of best practices in SFSC that addresses the fragmentation of knowledge in the agricultural sector and supports bottom-up innovation initiatives.
On l’ignore souvent, mais l’agriculture familiale produit l’essentiel de l’alimentation consommée en Afrique de l’Ouest. Or son rôle n’est pas reconnu ni son potentiel soutenu par les politiques publiques.Les chapitres thématiques de cette publication explorent cinq champs d’innovation : « Améliorer la production », « Créer de la valeur par la transformation », « S’organiser pour agir et peser », « Maîtriser les marchés » et « Accéder au financement ».
La façon donc les organismes de recherche et d'appui aux agriculteurs participent aux processus de développement de l'agriculture et du monde rural fait l'objet de débats. Ceux-ci portent à la fois sur la compréhension des besoins réels des agriculteurs et sur les formes de coordination entre les différents acteurs de la production de connaissances traduisibles en actions. Nous proposons d'illustrer cette problématique à partir d'un programme de coopération franco-argentin Innovaciones, Desarrollo, Exploitationes Agropecuarias, Sociedad local (IDEAS), engagé en Argentine en 1995-1996.
Los servicios de extensión rural han contribuido al desarrollo agropecuario, sin embargo existe una brecha entre el conocimiento disponible y su adopción por parte de los agricultores, que dichos servicios no han logrado disminuir de manera sustancial. Por esta razón, el objetivo de este estudio fue analizar las tendencias de la investigación en extensión rural, que permitan identificar enfoques que contribuyan al planteamiento de recomendaciones para un servicio de extensión rural orientado al desarrollo de capacidades de autogestión de las comunidades rurales.
The shift to industrial agriculture in Europe brought along a range of environmental and social externalities. This led policy makers, researchers and civil servants to consider and explore the potential of diversified farming systems (DFS) to address current problems in agriculture. However, because of multiple obstacles adoption of these DFS by farmers is not obvious. In this study we investigate the case of agroforestry (AF) systems in Flanders, where a government incentive scheme initiated in 2011, did not lead to the expected uptake of AF systems by farmers.