The privatization of agricultural advisory and extension services in many countries and the associated pluralism of service providers has renewed interest in farmers’ use of fee-for-service advisors. Understanding farmers’ use of advisory services is important, given the role such services are expected to play in helping farmers address critical environmental and sustainability challenges. This paper aims to identify factors associated with farmers’ use of fee-for service advisors and bring fresh conceptualization to this topic.
The importance of extension services in helping smallholder farmers to address the many challenges of agricultural production cannot be over-emphasized. However, relatively few studies have been conducted that investigate how the capacities of agricultural extension agents can be built to more effectively assist smallholder farmers in managing climate risks and impacts. As climate change is a key threat to smallholder food production, addressing this issue is increasingly important.
In recent years, the agricultural industry has been experiencing an ever-increasing application of information and communication technologies globally. This new revolution has been touted to impact efficiency and productivity in the agricultural extension services within the agriculture sector. Notwithstanding this, empirical research need to be carried out amongst its users in the sector to ascertain these assertions.
Evaluation provides effective feedback for development plans and programs. In this respect, it is of utmost importance to ensure that the outputs of agricultural extension and education projects are compatible with the ones expected. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to evaluate agricultural extension model sites approach from actors’ perspectives and to analyze their gaps via the context, input, process, and product (CIPP) evaluation model.
A central concern about achieving global food security is reconfiguring agri-food systems towards sustainability. However, historically-informed trajectories of agri-food system development remain resistant to a change in direction. Through a systematic literature review, the authors identify three research domains exploring this phenomenon and six explanations of resistance: embedded nature of technologies, misaligned institutional settings, individual attitudes, political economy factors, infrastructural rigidities, research and innovation priorities.
Two major agricultural transformations are currently being promoted worldwide: digitalisation and ecologisation, that include different practices such as organic farming and sustainable intensification. In literature and in societal debates, these two transformations are sometimes described as antagonistic and sometimes as convergent but are rarely studied together. Using an innovation system approach, this paper discusses how diverse ecologisation pathways grasp digitalisation in the French agricultural sector; and do not discriminate against organic farming.
CONTEXT
Big data applications in agriculture evolve fast, as more experience, applications, good practices and computational power become available. Actual solutions to real-life problems are scarce. What characterizes the adoption of big data problems to solutions and to what extent is there a match between them?
OBJECTIVE
We aim to assess the conditions of the adoption of big data technologies in agricultural applications, based on the investigation of twelve real-life practical use cases in the precision agriculture and livestock domain.
METHODS
La plateforme d’innovation (PI) est une approche multi-acteurs pour des solutions aux problèmes complexes. Elle est d’actualité en Afrique Subsaharienne confrontée à de nombreux défis agricoles. Cette étude utilise une perspective systémique pour comprendre le processus de génération et de diffusion d’innovation relative à la post-récolte du riz local au Bénin. La collecte des données quantitatives et qualitatives a été faite avec des questionnaire et guides d’entretien auprès de 300 femmes étuveuses de riz, membres de la PI à Malanville, et sélectionnées de façon aléatoire et stratifiée.
Depuis 2011, le programme de recherche du CGIAR sur le Changement Climatique, l’Agriculture et la Sécurité alimentaire (CCAFS) soutient la mise en œuvre d’une agriculture intelligente face au climat (AIC) au Sénégal à travers le développement et la mise à l’échelle de technologies et pratiques AIC avec l’Institut Sénégalais de Recherches Agricoles (ISRA). Dans ce cadre, le CCAFS a mis en œuvre de 2019 à 2021, un projet de « développement de chaînes de valeur et paysage climato-intelligents pour accroitre la résilience des moyens de subsistance en Afrique de l’Ouest ».
A fragmented digital agriculture ecosystem has been linked to the slow scale-out of digital platforms and other digital technology solutions for agriculture. This has undermined the prospects of digitalizing agriculture and increasing sectoral outcomes in sub-Saharan African countries. We conceptualized an aggregator platform for digital services in agriculture as a special form of digital platforms that can enhance the value and usage of digital technologies at the industry level. Little is known about how such a platform can create value as a new service ecology in agriculture.