The slow rate of agricultural development in Africa can largely be blamed on lack of functional relationships between technology/innovation generation centers, local farming communities, financial institutions and markets. The result has been low penetration of promising innovations/technologies thus, low adoption levels and/ or partial adoption; and limited or no access to markets and financial services by farmers. In general, most of the innovation/technologies developed have not been extensively out-scaled; some of which are not even packaged in user friendly formats.
The provision of basic market information is a service that aims to increase the efficiency of agricultural markets and contribute towards overcoming basic issues of market failure based on asymmetrical access to information. However, debate on the need for long-term support to a market information system (MIS) continues. A quantitative and qualitative survey was undertaken to provide a measure of accessibility, usefulness and utility of the current MIS, and to access how this type of service may be financed and improved in the future.
Utilization of systems approach using multistakeholder process as modality of intervention has been increasingly experimented in agricultural research in tropical zones. Recent research findings indicated strong evidence of the positive contribution of research for development (R4D) and innovation platforms (IP) in increasing the impact of research for development interventions. However, specific factors of the process leading to higher impact yet to discovered.
The private sector’s presence in agricultural advisory services worldwide has been on the increase for over three decades. This trend has also been observed in the Mantaro Valley (Peru), in a context of dairy family farming. The objective of the communication is to analyse the modalities of advisory services privatization and assess the consequences of this privatization for the farmers and their livestock systems. Data were collected through input suppliers, different types of advisers and producers interviews.
This paper aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a participatory approach which has been applied by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) and Brazilian Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock (CNA) in aquaculture sector in Brazil.
In 2010 the Brazilian Government established a goal to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) by agriculture from 36.1 up to 38.9% in ten years (2010 -2020). To contribute for reaching part of this purpose in Tocantins State, Embrapa and other research and extension services partners have been conducting a project of technology transference on sustainable agricultural practices, including integrated crop-livestock-forestry (ICLF), since 2012.
In Pium, Tocantins state, Brazil, in 2012 Embrapa developed a technology transference project in partnership with the state?s rural extension service for the consolidation of low carbon emissions agriculture. The goal was to recover the degraded grasslands of the Trigueira farm (49°1'37.44"W and 10°24'58.84"S) with low cost using a crop-livestock system.
Family farms are by far the most numerous component of the agricultural sector in the Brazilian Amazon. However socially vital for the development of the region, these small landholdings' agricultural and cattle ranching activities frequently overdraw and degrade natural resources, threatening important ecosystem services. Predominant agricultural practices have been marked by shifting cultivation, with intense use of fire and low productivity, causing high rate of destruction of natural forests.
La innovación inclusiva es un proceso que involucra la coordinación de diversos actores en contextos específicos, en el cual las instituciones juegan un papel central en los procesos de aprendizaje e innovación colaborativa de la población de escasos recursos. Las preguntas centrales que se tratan de responder son ¿cómo construir procesos de innovación inclusiva? y ¿cómo influyen las instituciones en esos procesos?
En este artículo se aborda una doble paradoja que envuelve la gobernanza de los SIAL: por un lado, la emergencia de un consumidor que demanda productos específicos y con características propias de los territorios, involucrándose en formas de comercio justo y redes éticas de intercambio; pero por otro lado, las crecientes exigencias que se ciernen sobre el productor, para garantizar la autenticidad del producto y el cumplimiento de normas ambientales mediante mecanismos de certificación, la mayor de las veces ajenos al productor, provocan nuevas formas de desigualdad y asimetrías en la organ