The paper explores the implications of rural livelihood diversity for agricultural innovation policies. It summarises literature on the nature of rural poverty, with particular emphasis on the relative roles of farm and non-farm income. It also reviews the various roles, direct and indirect, that agricultural innovation can play in rural poverty reduction. Finally, it uses an agricultural knowledge and information systems (AKIS) perspective to argue for a differentiated approach to targeting agricultural innovations, based on an analysis of rural assets.
This report is concerned with the ‘who?’ ‘what?’ and ‘how?’ of pro-poor extension. It builds on the analytical framework proposed in the Inception Report of the same study (Christoplos, Farrington and Kidd, 2001), taking it forward by fleshing out the analysis with empirical information gathered from several countries during the course of the study (from primary data in Bolivia, Colombia, Nicaragua, Uganda and Vietnam, and from secondary sources in a range of other countries, including India), and drawing conclusions on the scope for action by governments and donors in a range of contexts.
This paper explores the use of actor-oriented approaches in natural resource-based development. It begins by reviewing the need to bring an analysis of actor linkages, coalitions and information flows higher on the agenda in planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Various tools which could assist in doing this are introduced and their use is illustrated in case studies of natural resource-based research and development (R&D) projects in Nepal and Bangladesh.
Presented at the ‘Building Livelihoods Resilience in a Changing Climate’ conference, Kuala Lumpur, 3-5th March 2011, this paper focuses on the Local Adaptive Capacity framework (LAC), developed under the Africa Climate Change Alliance Project (ACCRA), as an innovative initiative that attempts to move towards a better understanding of its core features through isolating five characteristics of adaptive capacity. Demonstrated through findings from field research across three African countries (Ethiopia, Mozambique and Uganda), this paper argues that frameworks for understanding and supporting
The Foresight project Global Food and Farming Futures final report provides an overview of the evidence and discusses the challenges and choices for policy makers and others whose interests relate to all areas that interact with the food system.
The State of Food and Agriculture 2014: Innovation in family farming analyses family farms and the role of innovation in ensuring global food security, poverty reduction and environmental sustainability. It argues that family farms must be supported to innovate in ways that promote sustainable intensification of production and improvements in rural livelihoods. Innovation is a process through which farmers improve their production and farm management practices.
The study describes the historic development of the Danish Agricultural Advisory Services (DAAS). This is the case of a national advisory system owned and managed by the farmer organizations and financed with public subsidies combined with farmer/user payments, gradually developed to full user payment. The links and relations between the empowerment of farmers and their organizations, their evolving roles in advisory systems, and the innovative financial mechanisms in extension, especially pull-mechanisms, are analyzed.
The Farmer Field School (FFS) approach has been very successful and witnessed a strong expansion in many areas beyond crop production. Notwithstanding this success, the adoption of FFS in national extension often remains problematic and FFS activities have often been implemented in the margin of national institutions with strong reliance on donor funding. The creation of an enabling environment for institutional support is essential for expanding the effort, improving quality, and strengthening impact and continuity of the FFSs.
Rural advisory services (RAS) can play an important role in addressing gender inequalities. However, RAS programmes have often fallen short of expectations to design and implement relevant services to help rural women and men achieve food security and generate more income. This paper is based on an examination of a broad selection of existing literature on gender-sensitive RAS. It looks at gender-differentiated barriers in access to RAS and challenges of effectively targeting women family farmers when delivering these services.
The first phase in the development of the Common Framework on Capacity Development for Agricultural Innovation systems (CD for AIS) consisted of the review of the existing literature, building up a repository of relevant documentation on agricultural innovation in general and AIS and CD for AIS. This report summarizes this first phase. In particular, Section 1 covers this brief introduction. Sections two and three focus on the review of relevant literature, presenting the methodology used and the structure of the repository itself.