This chapter examines the current state of agricultural extension reforms and their linkages to the agricultural research system reforms in India and identifies the policy options and strategic priorities for making it relevant, responsive, and efficient. It explores how the National Agriculture Research Systems (NARS) responded with its own set of reforms that were sought to increase its relevance and its linkages to the extension system reforms.
Agricultural Extension Reforms in South Asia: Status, Challenges, and Policy Options is based on agricultural extension reforms across five South Asian countries, reflecting past experiences, case studies and experiments. Beginning with an overview of historical trends and recent developments, the book then delves into country-wise reform trajectories and presents several cases testing the effectiveness of different types (public and private) and forms (nutrition extension, livestock extension) of extension systems.
This report synthesizes findings from seven country scoping studies on gender-responsive approaches to rural advisory services (RAS) in Africa. The studies, which were conducted in (Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Sudan, and Uganda), were meant to identify existing policies, programmes, approaches, and tools into which gender considerations had been injected, and then to provide them as RAS to farmers, with specific focus on women and youth
This report, drawing on a rapid desk-based review, seeks to outline the potential role of Afican Advisory Services (AAS) in addressing climate change and explores how far AAS in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are able to respond to climatic and other pressures. Recommendations are outlined, indicating how AFAAS can help AAS to understand climate change better and become more ‘adaptive’ in their responses
This Final report identifies best-fit practices, and makes recommendations on how to target women advisory service providers in capacity development programmes.
Transforming a centrally planned system of agricultural production to one where individual farmers are accorded choice in crop mix and land use management practices is much more than a structural change. Embedded within this process is a fundamental shift in how knowledge is generated, disseminated and adopted. Upon dissolution of the Soviet Union, one immediate priority was the privatization of state farms and thereby relaxation of policies for collective production.
The transition to a market for agricultural research and knowledge-intensive services presents various challenges for actors in the agricultural knowledge infrastructure, on both the demand side (end users of innovations such as farmers, and the government) and the supply side (providers of research and knowledge-intensive services). New organizational arrangements try to bring together supply and demand in the agricultural knowledge infrastructure. This thesis is about such new organizational arrangements
This book aims to identify the characteristics of innovative farmers and suggests policy strategies to encourage agricultural innovations. The analysis shows that agricultural innovations are taking place in Turkey and various public and private stakeholders contribute to the development and adoption of innovation in agriculture. Agricultural enterprises and cooperatives, clusters of innovation, non-governmental organizations, research institutes, government, and international institutions play an important part in the collaborative effort to create and disseminate innovation.
The need of Farmer Producer organizations (FPo) was felt to overcome the problems of unorganized small farmers who lack access to resources and services. FPos emerged as an interface between small farmers and the external world by providing forward and backward linkages, giving them required voice, market access, bargaining power, economy of scale and better prices. Among different tangible and intangible benefits, marketing related benefits like access to different market channels, decrease in risk, decrease in transaction cost, economy of scale etc.
Agricultural policies in sub-Saharan Africa have paid insufficient attention to sustainable intensification. In Uganda, agricultural productivity has stagnated with aggregate increases in crop production being attributed to expansion of cultivated land area. To enhance sustainable crop intensification, the Ugandan Government collaborated with stakeholders to develop agricultural policies using an evidence-based approach. Previously, evidence-based decision-making tended to focus on the evidence base rather than evidence and its interactions within the broader policy context.