An 'Outcome Mapping' approach was applied retrospectively to five diverse, highly collaborative research projects aimed at poverty reduction. Designed to help plan for, clarify, and document intended and actual changes in behaviour, actions, and relationships of groups and organisations that directly influence a project's intended beneficiaries, Outcome Mapping enabled the authors to identify and describe the strategies and actions that played important roles in the innovations achieved.
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.
Latin America has historically been a vanguard of agroecology. In Nicaragua, an agroecological transition is occurring, with three decades of building a groundswell based on the farmer-to-farmer movement and the recent institutionalization of agroecology in national law. Yet, problems remain with agroecology’s diffusion. We introduce the Technological Innovation Systems approach to examine systemic barriers to the agroecological transition and cycles of blockages caused by barriers’ interactions.
This paper draws from interviews with (1) US farmers who have adopted automated systems; (2) individuals employed by North American firms that engineer, manufacture, and/or repair these technologies; and (3) US farm laborers (immigrant and domestic) and representatives from farm labor organizations. The argument draws from the literature interrogating the fictional expectations that underlie capitalist reproduction, reading it through a distributed (ontological) lens.
Connecting science with policy has always been challenging for both scientists and policy makers. In Ghana, Mali and Senegal, multi-stakeholder national science-policy dialogue platforms on climate-smart agriculture (CSA) were setup to use scientificevidence to create awareness of climate change impacts on agriculture andadvocate for the mainstreaming of climate change and CSA into agriculturaldevelopment plans.
During May 2010 the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) hosted two events related to knowledge management (KM): The Knowledge Share Fair for Latin America and the Caribbean, funded by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and a regional meeting of the Knowledge Management for Development (KM4Dev) community. The Fair was attended by 200 professionals from more than 70 organizations and 18 countries and showcased more than 40 experiences related to KM in agriculture, development and food security.
In this article is presented an emergent capacity development approach that the authors have developed through participatory action research in Peru and Ecuador, which they call ‘systemic theories of change’ (STOC), for organisational capacity development. They argue that capacity development should be understood as systemic learning. The STOC approach promotes reflection about how we as individuals, organisations, and broader social groups and societal configurations, understand how change occurs.
The inadequate linkage of knowledge generation in agricultural research organizations with policy-making and economic activity is an important barrier to sustainable development and poverty reduction. The emerging fields of sustainability science and innovation systems studies highlight the importance of “boundary management” and “innovation brokering” in linking knowledge production, policy-making, and economic activities. This paper analyzes how the Papa Andina Partnership Program, based at the International Potato Center, functions as an innovation broker in the Andean potato sector.
El presente estudio muestra las principales características socio-productivas de la red agroalimentaria mencionada, la identificación de etapas, agentes y actividades (primarias y de soporte), y el análisis de los mecanismos que la gobiernan; para lo cual se empleó una metodología sistémica que permitió caracterizar la mencionada red, y en donde se determinó que presenta ventajas como la inclusión de mujeres a la etapa productiva, y el sentido de asociatividad de procesadores y distribuidores
Este artículo analiza algunos conceptos sobre el desarrollo de cadenas de valor como un tipo de intervención que promueve el crecimiento agrícola y apunta a mejorar los ingresos de los productores mediante el fortalecimiento de los vínculos entre las empresas y los pequeños productores.