Well-designed and supported innovation niches may facilitate transitions towards sustainable agricultural futures, which may follow different approaches and paradigms such as agroecology, local place-based food systems, vertical farming, bioeconomy, urban agriculture, and smart farming or digital farming. In this paper we consider how the existing agricultural innovation systems (AIS) approach might be opened up to better support the creation of innovation niches. We engage with Innovation Ecosystems thinking to consider the ways in which it might enhance efforts to create multi-actor, cross-sectoral innovation niches that are capable of supporting transitions to sustainable agricultural systems across multiple scales. While sharing many similarities with AIS thinking, Innovation Ecosystems thinking has the potential to broaden AIS by: emphasizing the role of power in shaping directionality in innovation platforms or innovation communities that are connected to niches and their interaction with regimes; highlighting the plurality of actors and actants and the integral role of ecological actants in innovation; and offering an umbrella concept through which to cross scalar and paradigmatic or sector boundaries in order to engage with a variety of innovation systems affecting multifunctional agricultural landscapes and systems. To this end, an Agricultural Innovation Ecosystems approach may help design and support development of transboundary, inter-sectoral innovation niches that can realize more collective and integrated innovation in support of sustainability transitions, and help enact mission oriented agricultural innovation policy.
La FAO a adopté une approche multidimensionnelle pour aider les exploitants familiaux pauvres à faire face aux difficultés qu’ils rencontrent au quotidien et renforcer leur capacité de création de revenus, afin de réduire la pauvreté rurale. La FAO aide les...
Le semis direct est un système de production fondé sur le non-travail du sol. Il intègre une série de pratiques agricoles qui permettent de protéger les sols cultivés de l’érosion, de réduire les consommations de carburants, voire d’augmenter les rendements....
Cette publication offre de nombreux exemples concrets détaillant différentes manières de réengager les jeunes dans le secteur agricole. Elle montre à quel point des programmes éducationnels sur mesure peuvent offrir aux jeunes les compétences et la perspicacité nécessaires pour se...
La publication de ce numéro double consacré à l’agriculture familiale marque un tournant de l’histoire de la revue Défis Sud. Depuis vingt ans, votre revue a resserré son projet éditorial sur les questions agricoles et de développement rural. Défis Sud...
Agricultural innovation in low-income tropical countries contributes to a more effective and sustainable use of natural resources and reduces hunger and poverty through economic development in rural areas. Yet, despite numerous recent public and private initiatives to develop capacities for...