Little is known about effective ways to operationalize agricultural innovation processes. The authors of this article use the MasAgro program in Mexico (which aims to increase maize and wheat productivity, profitability and sustainability), and the experiences of middle level ‘hub managers’, to understand how innovation processes occur in heterogeneous and changing contexts. Their research shows how a program, that initially had a relatively narrow technology focus, evolved towards an innovation system approach.
This report sets out the synthesis of work carried out within the framework of the Sahel and West Africa Club (SWAC) Secretariat Initiative on “The family economy and agricultural innovation: towards new partnerships”. The initiative aimed to stimulate analyses, collect field data and case studies that encourage debates between regional actors, with a view to informing the development of regional policies and actions in order to promote and strengthen producer access to agricultural innovation, where most producers are anchored in the family economy.
Food insecurity and the weak position of smallholders in food value chains are key challenges in many low- and middle-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In order to increase food security and make agricultural value chains more inclusive, donors, governments and researchers increasingly stimulate partnerships between multiple actors, in which knowledge exchange, joint learning and knowledge co-creation play a central role in reducing the time lag between research findings and their translation into practical outcomes.
Innovation platforms are groups of individuals or stakeholder representatives with different backgrounds and interests. They come together to diagnose problems, identify opportunities, and find ways to achieve their goals. When innovation platforms are set up by development projects, their processes are usually facilitated by the support organization.
In the past 50 years, the application of synthetic nitrogen (N) fertilizer to farmland resulted in a dramatic increase in crop yields but with considerable negative impacts on the environment. New solutions are therefore needed to simultaneously increase yields while maintaining, or preferably decreasing, applied N to maximize the nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) of crops. In this review, we outline the definition of NUE, the selection and development of NUE crops, and the factors that interact with NUE.
This paper presents a qualitative case study of a US based beef co-operative integrated to a VBSC. Was used an analytical framework of viability, sustainability and resilience to analyse impacts at farm-level. Our analysis highlights a number of positive effects on farm-level viability, sustainability and resilience including improvements to market orientation and price stability, among others which provide crucial insights for beef PO development in Ireland.
The objective of the article is to show how quality tools help the management of the supply chain in the agricultural sector, in this way quality management of the supply chain will improve operating results in companies that produce asparagus. The company is located in Trujillo, Peru; where the managers of each area were interviewed to determine the practices that will be used in the agribusiness sector.
This paper estimates the farm level impact of producer organizations’ (PO) membership in Slovakia and the effectiveness of support provided to POs under the EU Rural Development Programme (RDP). The study employ the Propensity Score Matching and Difference in Differences econometric approach on a database of large Slovak commercial farms for 2006 and 2015. First, our results show that belonging to a PO improves the economic performance of farms in Slovakia.
Smallholder producers in sub-Saharan Africa are often unable integrate into markets and access high-value opportunities by effectively participating in global chains for high-value fresh produce. Using data from a survey of large avocado farmers in Kenya, this study examines the determinants and impacts of smallholder-producer participation in avocado export markets on labor inputs, farm yields, sales prices, and incomes, using a switching regression framework to control for selection effects
The report specifically analyses the NIS in Peru and Colombia in the coffee and dairy sectors due to their economic importance for both countries and the large percentage of small producers in these sectors. In order to analyse the NIS, we have utilised an innovations systems approach to form the analytical framework. This framework focuses on four main areas – understanding the actors in the NIS, their roles and attitudes, the patterns of interaction of these actors, and the enabling environment with a focus on small producer inclusion.