Agriculture developments have revolutionized the overall agricultural practices however, the small farmers are still suffering as they were not able to cope with the fast-paced changes. Thus, it still poses a threat to their survival. The study has attempted to explore how the environment can motivate a small farmer to adopt the agriculture extension. The study also examined how environment stimulates the intrapreneurship of a small farmer. For this purpose, data was collected from the farmers of Thailand and Smart-PLS was used for data analysis.
The agricultural Internet of Things (Ag-IoT) paradigm has tremendouspotential in transparent integration of underground soil sensing, farm machinery,and sensor-guided irrigation systems with the complex social network of growers,agronomists, crop consultants, and advisors. The aim of the IoT in agriculturalinnovation and security chapter is to present agricultural IoT research and paradigmto promote sustainable production of safe, healthy, and profitable crop and animalagricultural products.
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.
Recent research on agricultural innovation has outlined social networks’ role in diffusing agricultural knowledge; however, so far, it has broadly neglected the socio-spatial dimensions of innovation processes. Against this backdrop, the authors applies a spatially explicit translocal network perspective in order to investigate the role of migration-related translocal networks for adaptive change in a small-scale farming community in Northeast Thailand.
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.
Agricultural information is transferred through social interactions; therefore, ties to agricultural informants and network structures within farmers’ local neighborhoods determine their information-gathering abilities. This paper uses a spatial autoregressive model that takes account of spatial autocorrelation to examine such network connections, including friendship networks and advice networks, upon farmers’ knowledge-gathering abilities during formal agricultural training.
Agricultural machinery manufacturers historically referred to the intermediate players for selling, maintenance, customer service and/or training of equipment appear to interact with farmers and end-users. Intermediate players have therefore faced the burden to master the technology, in constant evolution, and the associated training needs at the interface between sophisticated equipment and the end-user and its sociological characteristics (age, education, background, etc.).
A decline in public sector extension services in developing countries has led to an increasing emphasis on alternative extension approaches that are participatory, demand-driven, client-oriented, and farmer centered. One such approach is the volunteer farmer-trainer (VFT) approach, a form of farmer-to-farmer extension where VFTs host demonstration plots and share information on improved agricultural practices within their community. VFTs are trained by extension staff and they in turn train other farmers.
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).
Con las nuevas demandas de la sociedad hacia las organizaciones de investigación para contribuir con mayor énfasis a los procesos de innovación, comienza a configurarse una nueva visión sobre el rol de la extensión en el conjunto de procesos innovadores.