Participation of actors is essential for achievement of the United Nation’s (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With respect to sustainable agriculture the UN has introduced a collaborative framework for food systems transformation encompassing: 1) food system champions identification; 2) food systems assessment; 3) multi-stakeholder dialogue and action facilitation; and, 4) strengthen institutional capacity for food systems governance. The last two actions are the focus of this thesis.
Over the past few decades, some countries in Asia have been more successful than others in addressing poverty and malnutrition. The key question is what policies, strategies, legislation and institutional arrangements have led to a transformed agricultural sector, effectively contributing to poverty alleviation and addressing malnutrition. The great majority of national policymakers within and outside the Asia-Pacific region are keen to understand the causes of agricultural development and transformation in successful countries in Asia.
Structural transformation of agriculture typically involves a gradual increase of mean farm sizes and a reallocation of labor from agriculture to other sectors. Such structural transformation is often fostered through innovations in agriculture and newly emerging opportunities in manufacturing and services. Here, we use panel data from farm households in Indonesia to test and support the hypothesis that the recent oil palm boom contributes to structural transformation. Oil palm is capital-intensive but requires much less labor per hectare than traditional crops.
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.
Technology and innovation are important in addressing complex problems in the agricultural sector in many developing communities. However, ways and mechanisms to integrate them in the agricultural sector are still a challenge due to the lack of clear pathways and trajectories. Value chains are seen as a strong policy instrument to increase profitability in the agricultural sector; there is also debate around whether value chains can be a potential option to organize technology and innovation trajectories in agriculture.
This toolbox has been developed to collate different tools and methods that can be used for food system analysis.
It is specifically based on systems thinking for food system analysis, with the aim to formulate actionable recommendations that can bring about systemic change.It describes both the process of a food system analysis, as well as a set of tools that can be used at different stages.
This report summarizes studies conducted in a framework of TAP-AIS project implemented by FAO’s Research and Extension Unit, and funded by the European Union as a component of the European Union initiative on “Development Smart Innovation through Research in Agriculture” (DeSIRA).
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.
This report provides an overview of the Tropical Agriculture Platform (TAP) since its inception in 2012, when it was officially launched by FAO at the first G20 Meeting of Agriculture Chief Scientists (MACS) in September 2012 in Mexico, until December 2018. The G20 Agriculture Deputies agreed on this stock taking exercise that started under the 2018 Argentinian G20 Presidency.
This exercise was done on the occasion of the G20 MACS meeting in April 2019 in Japan. Its purposes are the following: