The authors aimed at knowing how different learning methods, such as video shows and workshops, change farmers’ knowledge, attitudes and practices about botanical pesticides. This paper explains how video engages men and women farmers in spreading botanical pesticides across 12 villages in Bogra District, north-western Bangladesh.The authors conducted ex ante and ex post surveys among farmers from November 2009 to September 2010. For data analysis, the authors used t-test and McNemer and Wilcoxon sign rank tests.
In this paper, findings suggest that the uptake of social media is still in an early, exploratory phase associated with modest opportunities and relevant limitations of Web 2.0 mediated multi-stakeholder collaboration. Notably, there are gaps in giving and receiving feedback which are intrinsic to dyadic communication as well as innovation processes.
In Bangladesh, strengthening agricultural innovation calls for facilitation of interactive communication and a wide range of mediation tasks within (and between) stakeholders operating in different social spheres. This paper examines how a public-sector agricultural extension agency has attempted to change its roles in implementing a major agricultural extension project in order to strengthen agricultural innovation.
Recent experiences in participatory video-making raise the question of how best to use this medium for enhancing local seed innovation systems. Embedded in a mini-process of participatory action research, two styles of participatory video—scripted and scriptless—were tested and assessed together with farmers and facilitators in Bogra District, Bangladesh.
Multi-actors networks are increasingly used by farmers to link between them and to be interactively connected with other partners, such as advisory organizations, local governments, universities, and non-farm organizations. Given the importance assigned to the agricultural innovation by EU resorting to the networking between the research chain actors and the farmers, a strong focus on enhancing the creation of learning and innovation networks is expected.
The report synthesises the research conducted under the PRO AKIS project for the topic "Designing, implementing and maintaining agricultural/rural networks to enhance farmers’ ability to innovate in cooperation with other rural actors".
This report has the aim of contributing to the PRO AKIS overall goal of exploring and identifying the possibilities, conditions and requirements of rural networks to enhance the farmers’ ability to create, test, implement and evaluate innovation in cooperation with other actors.In particular, the report presents two cases: the Small Fruit Cluster (SFC) and the Drosophila Suzukii Monitoring (DSM) network. The SFC is a nationwide, multi-actor network composed of several actors, interacting in the small fruit sector in Portugal.
In this paper, presented at the 12th European IFSA Symposium (Workshop: "Generating spaces for innovation in agricultural and rural development") in 2016, the authors assess the integration of new entrants to small-scale farming into agricultural knowledge and innovation systems (AKIS), in four study sites located on Europe’s periphery (Bulgaria, Poland, Portugal, and the United Kingdom).