Apart from the introduction and conclusion, the contents of this book are organised around a number of case studies, grouped into two main chapters.
Society’s learning capacity in the field of sustainable land resource management is at stake and more emphasis on knowledge management is needed to guarantee that the accumulated knowledge is shared in such a way that the right actors have appropriate knowledge at the right time to take the best decisions. Efficient policies governing structures for national and regional knowledge management need to be formulated and the working procedures of the various actors in the field need to be defined more sharply.
Accordingly to the authors It is beyond the scope of this chapter to empirically explore the determinants of the commercialization of agriculture and its impact on poverty; so instead, they will present and discuss some empirical evidence on topics that remain hotly debated regarding commercialization and poverty. In Sect. 12.2, it is investigated how smallholder farmers in northern Vietnam have been affected by the recent food price volatility with respect to their income and consumption levels, while in Sect.
To augment youth employment, the Government of India has launched a number of skills training programs. This paper deals with participation in and the impact of one of these programs [Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushal Yojana (DDUGKY)] located in rural Bihar, one of India’s poorest states. The analysis is based on data collected in mid-2016 and compares trained participants with non-participants who applied for the scheme but eventually did not attend
In this paper, the authors review the conditions that have been undermining sustainable food and nutrition security in the Caribbean, focusing on issues of history, economy, and innovation. Building on this discussion, we then argue for a different approach to agricultural development in the Small Island Developing States of the CARICOM that draws primarily on socioecological resilience and agricultural innovation systems frameworks.
This book is about the challenges and practical realities of building the capacity to innovate. It describes the experiences of the Research Into Use (RIU) programme, a five-year, multi-country investment by DFID that aimed to extract development impact from past investments in agricultural research. Specifically, it explores different approaches through which innovation capacities were built.
Seed is the starting point of plant life, and hence the most fundamental input of agriculture. A seed system that assures the availability of the desired quality of seed to the producer at the right time is indispensable for his farming enterprise. In the case of the potato crop, the seed most commonly used is strictly speaking no seed, but a tuber. The constraints and opportunities in seed potato systems in East Africa are of a combined social, economic and technical nature.
The book documents a diversity of approaches for and results from the development of innovation processes (endorsing the definition proposed by FARA) through a review of twelve agricultural platforms in sub-Saharan Africa. These cases are far from exhaustive but nevertheless bring up a wealth of experiences. The authors do not pretend to present a model or template for the perfect innovation platform. To the contrary – they do not believe this is possible.
This research explores the role of innovation platforms and how they relate to IAR4D and the innovation system perspective, with treatment both at the theoretical and case study level (Africa). The chapters of the book take up several sticky issues and engage with them critically: policy pathways, gender equity and inclusion, and knowledge and information sharing. The introductory chapter provides context on food crops, food security and the importance of women in production, processing and trade.
This review studied a selection of projects from the Research Into Use (RIU) Africa portfolio: the Nyagatare maize platform in Rwanda; the cowpea platform in Kano state, Nigeria; the pork platform in Malawi, the Farm Input Promotions (FIPS) Best Bet in Kenya, and the Armyworm Best Bet in Kenya and Tanzania. For each of the selected projects, assessments were made on how it changed the capacity to innovate, the household level poverty impact, whether the intervention off ered value for money, and what were the main lessons learned.