The review describes the diversity of innovation and relates it to agro-food sector. It also sheds light on different innovation models and explores their contribution to framing agro-food sustainability transitions. There are many variations in the use of the term ‘innovation’. Typical distinctions encountered in the literature are incremental vs. radical innovation and product vs. process vs. organizational innovation. A significant feature of the development of modern innovation thinking has been a gradual broadening of innovation scope as well as more attention to sustainability.
Recently, innovation has become a very important issue, as it provides a strategic advantage for organizations to outperform competition and remain agile in the environment. Additionally, knowledge management is considered to be a strong support for innovation. However, few studies examine the role of human resource management in fostering knowledge capability which leads more innovation in the organizations. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of knowledge management components in organizational innovation among agricultural extension experts in Khuzestan Province.
The frequency and severity of uncertain rainfall and climate extremes are projected to increase across many parts of the world. Access to rainfall forecasting information becomes an essential and critical resource that smallholder farmers should use to take advantage of good rains and avoid its adverse effects. In many smallholder farming communities, the reliability and accuracy of the scientific information is questionable and therefore not adequately used to make informed farming decisions.
This chapter tries to establish a connection between the low level of innovation and inventions in Africa and the absence of indigenous knowledge in teaching, learning and research across the continent. It starts by exploring the fundamental tenets of innovation and proceeds to look at the relationship between innovation and indigenous knowledge.
Recent discourse in the field of participatory agricultural research has focused on how to blend vari- ous forms and intensities of stakeholder participation with quality agricultural science, moving beyond the simple ‘‘farmer-first’’ ideology of the 1980s and early 1990s.
Ethiopian agriculture is changing as new actors, relationships, and policies influence the ways in which small-scale, resource-poor farmers access and use information and knowledge in their agricultural production decisions. Although these changes suggest new opportunities for smallholders, too little is known about how changes will ultimately improve the wellbeing of smallholders in Ethiopia. The authors of this paper examine whether these changes are improving the ability of smallholders to innovate and thus improve their own welfare.
How effective are multi-stakeholder scenarios-building processes to bring diverse actors together and create a policy-making tool to support sustainable development and promote food security in the developing world under climate change? The effectiveness of a participatory scenario development process highlights the importance of “boundary work” that links actors and organizations involved in generating knowledge on the one hand, and practitioners and policymakers who take actions based on that knowledge on the other.
Efficient water allocation for sustainable irrigated agriculture has become a growing concern, especially in transboundary river basins where the competition between upstream and downstream countries is substantially increasing. In this paper, the Diyala basin, one of the most water-stressed basins shared between Iraq and Iran, was used as an example case study. The water-stress situation is projected to get worse in the foreseeable future, as climate change adversely altered runoff at a time when demand for water is witnessing remarkable growth.
Innovations in the agri-food sector are needed to create a sustainable food supply. Sustainable food supply requires unexpectedly that densely populated regions remain food producers. A Dutch innovation program has aimed at showing the way forward through creating a number of practice and scientific projects. Generic lessons from the scientific projects in this program are likely to be of interest to agricultural innovation in other densely populated regions in the world.
According to the authors of this paper, actual methods of scaling are rather empirical and based on the premise of ‘find out what works in one place and do more of the same, in another place’. These methods thus would not sufficiently take into account complex realities beyond the concepts of innovation transfer, dissemination, diffusion and adoption. As a consequence, scaling initiatives often do not produce the desired effect.