This short note discusses the innovation platforms in their potential functions and benefits, with references to southern Africa countries. The initial consideration is that, although appropriate technologies and farming strategies to increase production in small-scale crop-livestock systems exist, farmers often have little or no incentive to invest in these.

The study explored the nature of innovation response capacity and the building of policy-relevant innovation capacity in the context of livestock-related emergencies in East Africa.

In this paper, results from a study on the use of improved coffee production technology schemes among smallholder coffee producers in three prominent coffee producing regions in Honduras are presented. The impact of various schemes (trajectories) in which different agents influence the producers’ decision to use new technologies was analyzed. In particular, there are differences in the influence of a) private coffee buying organizations and b) government and public development agencies on the innovation behavior of coffee growers.

This workshop paper relates to the consultation organized by the Global Forum for Agricultural Research (GFAR), FAO of the UN (FAO), Asia-Pacific Association of Agricultural Research Institutions APAARI), International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). Consultation held at ICRISAT, Hyderabad, India, in December 2009. The paper focuses on the application of the ICTS in agriculture and agricultural development and includes the summary of workshop outputs and pre-workshop Think Pieces.

This handbook is designed as a script for training courses in facilitation and transformational change management. It seeks to create a greater understanding of complex adaptive systems, kindle a new understanding of facilitation and leadership, and give readers a set of practical tools.