The increasing demand for agricultural commodities is a major cause of tropical deforestation. However, pressure is increasing for greater sustainability of commodity value chains. This includes the demand to establish new crop plantations and pasture areas on already deforested land so that new forest clearing for agriculture is minimized. Where tree crops are planted as part of agroforestry systems on deforested land, this amounts to a form of re-agro-forestation which can generate environmental benefits in addition to crop production.
This book discusses innovation problems and opportunities for family farming in the different regions of the American continent, as well as the role of hemispheric, regional and national agrifood research systems. Likewise, it provides a description of the main innovation actions and projects promoted by IICA, and the main success cases over recent years.
Timely availability of reliable information on weather conditions, agro-advisories, and market information can help to minimize losses in agriculture. This paper presents a scientific and integrated approach to identify areas of high agriculture vulnerability to climate change and availability of ICT services for dissemination of Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) information in the vulnerable areas. This study was illustrated for India where the majority of the population depends on agriculture for their livelihoods, and this sector is highly vulnerable to climate change.
In this paper, a novel method to collect symptoms of the disease, as observed by the farmers, using a mobile phone application has been presented. A cumulative composite risk index (CCRI) obtained from more than one existing disease forecast models is validated from the actual late blight queries received from the farmers. The main contribution of the paper is a protocol that combines the symptoms based diagnostic approach along with the plant disease forecasting models resulting in detection of Potato late blight with higher accuracy.
Rural Advisory Services (RAS) are increasingly recognised as critical to agricultural and rural development. They provide rural communities with wide range of skills and knowledge and facilitate their interactions among the different actors to help them access support and services required for improving their livelihoods. Family Farmers are one of the important clients of RAS as they are the most predominant type of farmers worldwide.
In this book, the authors assessed the role of biotechnology innovation for sustainable development in emerging and developing economies. This book compiles studies that each illustrate the potential, demonstrated value and challenges of biotechnology applications for sustainable agricultural innovation and/or industrial development in a national, regional and international context.
En este artículo se procura identificar, describir y comparar la concepción de extensión rural que guía a nivel subjetivo las prácticas de extensión de técnicos que trabajan en diez diferentes países latinoamericanos, para luego comparar estas concepciones con los modelos y lineamientos de extensión propuestos por la bibliografía. Para esto, primero se describen distintas concepciones de extensión que han tenido importancia en América Latina a lo largo de la historia, luego se presenta la metodología de investigación utilizada, presentándose por último los resultados a los que arribó
Con las nuevas demandas de la sociedad hacia las organizaciones de investigación para contribuir con mayor énfasis a los procesos de innovación, comienza a configurarse una nueva visión sobre el rol de la extensión en el conjunto de procesos innovadores.
Agricultural transformation and development are critical to the livelihoods of more than a billion small-scale farmers and other rural people in developing countries. Extension and advisory services play an important role in such transformation and can assist farmers with advice and information, brokering and facilitating innovations and relationships, and dealing with risks and disasters.
Recent research on agricultural innovation has outlined social networks’ role in diffusing agricultural knowledge; however, so far, it has broadly neglected the socio-spatial dimensions of innovation processes. Against this backdrop, the authors applies a spatially explicit translocal network perspective in order to investigate the role of migration-related translocal networks for adaptive change in a small-scale farming community in Northeast Thailand.