"CDAIS is interesting for us because it is improving how we operate”, explains Francisco Venda, president of the Sementes do Planalto seed cooperative based in Bailundo. “We work with many partners, and the new skills have proved invaluable.” Since 2016, CDAIS has been working with this group, helping them to identify and agree their priority needs, and take steps to overcoming them. But much is yet to be done, though the high levels of energy and enthusiasm will ensure that progress will continue long after the project has ended.
Chickpea is an important crop in Ethiopia, but yields and grain quality remain poor. To help unlock the full potential, CDAIS has supported the value chain around the northern city of Gondar since 2016, in partnership with the N2Africa project. As a result of new platforms, experience sharing and developing a combination of new organisational skills and behavioural change, research and extension support services stopped telling and started listening, and joined forces in innovating together with farmers.
To ensure food security, farmers must have access to quality seed, in adequate quantities. The government of Ethiopia acknowledges this, and has responded by investing in improving the seed sector. However, as this example shows, not all challenges can be overcome by technical training and new technologies alone. A large seed cooperative union was faced with a problem that seriously affected their very existence. And the solution was not technical.
Smallholder farmers the world over like to raise cattle if they can and those in Lao PDR are no exception. “Cattle are our savings bank,” says Mr Phokham Keomanivong, a member of the Ban Keun cattle production group. “If you need money for an emergency or a special event like a wedding or a funeral, you can always sell a cow. “As much as they love their traditions, Ban Keun farmers see the need to change their practices, and the CDAIS project is helping them do just that.
“I have seen my income grow since I started farming frogs and fish” says Bounlium Planethavong, “but other farmers need support to adopt the techniques I use.” The CDAIS project identified this innovation that increases and diversifies household income and nutrition by promoting the production of aquatic protein sources.
Well-designed and supported innovation niches may facilitate transitions towards sustainable agricultural futures, which may follow different approaches and paradigms such as agroecology, local place-based food systems, vertical farming, bioeconomy, urban agriculture, and smart farming or digital farming.
This paper presents and discusses a diagnostic framework to identify institutional processes in the creation of public-private partnerships (PPPs) for agricultural innovation. The diagnostic framework proposed here combines a conceptualisation of institutions with a conceptualisation of technology. We argue that a performative notion of institutions provides a better tool for institutional diagnostics than the common understanding of institutions as ‘rules of the game’.
This article reports on the long-term involvement of research agronomists in a design process of agricultural systems in a water catchment area. While agriculture is facing increasing challenges to meet current societal expectations, several studies in agronomy have focused on the design processes that allow farmers to change their agricultural systems.
En este artículo se analizó el sistema de agronegocios en el Perú en busca de identificar los factores, las herramientas, los procesos y las estrategias que han permitido la transformación de la agricultura familiar en negocios agroalimentarios.