The African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS), a not-forprofit continental body was conceptualized for the promotion of efficient and effective Agricultural Advisory Services (AAS) in Africa. The continental body is to provide a central platform to facilitate lesson learning and information sharing amongst African countries to develop a pool of best fit knowledge, skills, technologies and experiences for easy access by users with the overall aim of improving rural livelihoods.

Participatory Impact Pathways Analysis (PIPA) is a practical approach to planning, monitoring and evaluation, developed for use with complex research-for-development projects. PIPA begins with a participatory workshop where stakeholders make explicit their assumptions about how their project will make an impact, and produce an ‘Outcomes logic model’ and an ‘Impact logic model’. These two logic models provide an ex-ante framework of predictions of impact that can also be used in priority setting and ex-post impact assessment.

In the remote upland regions of Laos many farming families live in relative poverty, relying on subsistence agriculture. Farmers need effective extension services to provide advice on commercial and technical options to supplement traditional practices and improve their livelihoods. One of these options is small-scale livestock production. However, the quality and quantity of extension staff working in livestock production is limited. Improving the knowledge and skills of extension staff working with upland ethnic minorities is a key goal of the Lao Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.

Economic development and the successful transformation ofagriculture have been at the core of impressive change in countriessuch as China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina. This transformation has relied on substantial and effective investment inagriculture, and, in particular, building capacity in all aspects of agricultural change – from technology development and transfer through infrastructural development and the processing of agricultural commodities into consumer products.

The transition to a market for agricultural research and knowledge-intensive services presents various challenges for actors in the agricultural knowledge infrastructure, on both the demand side (end users of innovations such as farmers, and the government) and the supply side (providers of research and knowledge-intensive services).  New organizational arrangements try to bring together supply and demand in the agricultural knowledge infrastructure. This thesis is about such new organizational arrangements

All over the world, one of the main purposes of extension is to increase the level of living standards of the rural family through non-formal education. Extension has a very crucial role to play in sustainable development and organic agriculture. For that reason, extension activity is implemented by different institutions. Extension systems worldwide are operated by governmental (86%) and non-governmental (14%) organizations. In this paper, allelopathy is accepted as a technology to implement for weed control and biological control of other useful traits.

Most of today’s information services on the web are designed for PC users. There are few services fit to be accessed by mobile devices. In the countryside of China, most of the mobile phone users can not access the Internet. For this reason, was developed a General Agriculture Mobile Service Platform. The Platform is designed to make these information services fit to be accessed by mobile users, and to make those mobile phone users can use these services without Internet connection.

To give more attention to the normative character of sustainable development, the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature, and Food Quality requested for a participatory approach to evaluate Dutch agriculture, which was characterized by stakeholder workshops, dialogue, and learning. This article describes and reflects on this approach, using the Fourth Generation Evaluation framework developed by Guba and Lincoln (Fourth generation evaluation, 1989).

Participatory varietal selection (PVS) is a recent approach increasingly being used in developing countries to make the farmers choose the best suited variety for their locality. Sugarcane Breeding Institute, Coimbatore implemented this participatory approach in M.R.K. Cooperative Sugar Mills Ltd., Sethiathope, Tamil Nadu during 2002 to 2006. Participatory rural appraisal and agro-eco system analysis were done with the participation of farmers to assess the situation and identify the needs of sugarcane growers.

Agroforestry (AF) systems have been the focus of numerous research and development projects in southern Africa, yet their adoption rate generally remains low. Employing on-farm, participatory research techniques in southern Malawi, was compared the suitability of three AF-based systems that relay crop the dominant staple, maize (Zea mays), with the perennial legumes Sesbania sesban, Tephrosia vogelii, and Cajanus cajan (pigeonpea).