If you are a research or innovation manager or a funder of innovation in the agrifood sector, in the private or public sphere, these Principles are for you. Investment in research and innovation today will shape the agrifood systems of the future. The choices that you make during an innovation process will affect the future benefits and drawbacks of the innovations you help to create: for example, what types of people gain and lose, and what the effects are on the environment. Too often, these choices are not made consciously, and important issues are overlooked until it is too late.
In this blog, Bhuvana N and Aditya K S argue that to achieve sustainable transformation of global food systems, there is a need to promote systems thinking at all levels, research, extension, education and policy.
Extension and advisory services (EAS) play a key role in facilitating innovation for sustainable agricultural development. To strengthen this role, appropriate investment and conducive policies are needed in EAS, guided by evidence. It is therefore essential to examine EAS characteristics and performance in the context of modern, pluralistic and increasingly digital EAS systems. In response to this need, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has developed guidelines and instruments for the systematic assessment of national EAS systems.
Extension and advisory services (EAS) play a key role in facilitating innovation processes, empowering marginalized groups through capacity development, and linking farmers with markets. EAS are increasingly provided by a range of actors and funded from diverse sources. With the broadened scope of EAS and the growing complexity of the system, the quantitative performance indicators used in the past (for example related to investment, staffing or productivity) are no longer adequate to assess the performance of EAS systems.
Investment in research and innovation today will shape the agrifood systems of the future. The choices that you make during an innovation process will affect the future benefits and drawbacks of the innovations you help to create: for example, what types of people gain and lose, and what the effects are on the environment. Too often, these choices are not made consciously, and important issues are overlooked until it is too late.
The global impacts of the climate crisis are becoming ever clearer, and natural resources and ecosystems are being depleted. Despite some progress, hunger and poverty persist, and inequalities are deepening. The world is realizing that unsustainable high external inputs and resource-intensive industrialized systems pose a real danger of biodiversity loss, increased greenhouse gas emissions, shortages of healthy food, and the impoverishment of dispossessed peasants around the world.
In the rapidly changing context of agri-food systems, extension and advisory services (EAS) are expected to provide new roles and services that go well beyond the traditional production-related technology transfer. Consequently, pluralistic EAS systems with diverse actors have emerged with diverse actors, including private and civil society organisations. These multiple EAS actors must adopt innovative entrepreneurship models if they are to act proactively and respond to the increasing diversity of farmers’ demands while staying independent and sustainable.
This note is a preview on the agricultural innovation systems (AIS) assessment methdology which is being tested in the nine countries of the European Union-funded TAP-AIS DeSIRA project. It presents the rationale, the steps, ethe expected outputs and outcomes.
Assessing or understanding the agriculture innovation system (AIS) is an essential step to better understand the needs, new skills and functions needed by the actors and the system. To accelerate the uptake of innovation and progress towards eradicating poverty, there is an urgent need for well-coordinated, demand-driven, and market-oriented information, knowledge, technologies and services.