The French Ministry of Agriculture has called for agro-ecological transitions that reconcile farming and the environment. In this review, we examine the transformations of farmers and AKIS (Agriculture Knowledge Innovation System) actors’ work during agro-ecological transitions, and argue that the content, organization, and aim of farmers’ work are influenced by agricultural training, agricultural development, and discussions between peers, research, and regulations. Our main findings concern those transformations. The first finding was that there is an increasing expression of local particularities (situated ecological processes, micro-climates, etc.) and farmers’ singularities (e.g., relationship with nature). These particularities challenge AKIS players’ forms of organization and intervention, which used to be built on generic knowledge. Our second finding was that AKIS players have to consider their action as one potential contribution to the development of farmers’ experience: Their interventions become part of the flow of the farmer’s activities. The question for AKIS players is then: How can farmers’ own discovery of their natural and technical environment from new perspectives be facilitated? Thirdly, we found that transformations of work are systemic: The “doing”, the knowledge applied, and the values and norms to which subjects refer change. Facilitating transition can no longer be considered as a problem of knowledge availability. Fourthly, production of agronomic knowledge and ways in which it is disseminated are being challenged. Not only does knowledge have to be certified by scientific norms and methods, it has also to be valued by actors if it is to have an impact. The prescriptive relationship of science and AKIS players towards farmers is likewise challenged. This review raises many questions: Do agro-ecological transitions contribute to reorienting the development of farmers’ activity? Are agro-ecological transitions conducive to the development of sustainable farm work? What transformations of AKIS players’ work are needed to better support agro-ecological transitions?
The privatization of agricultural research and extension establishments worldwide has led to the development of a market for services designed to support agricultural innovation. However, due to market and systemic failures, both supply side and demand side parties in this...
The nature of the issues around which Agricultural Research for Development (ARD) partnerships are formed requires a different way of conceptualizing and thinking to that commonly found in many agricultural professionals. This brief clarifies the components of a system of...
Innovation system approach offers an holistic, multidisciplinary and comprehensive framework for analyzing innovation process, the roles of science and technology actors and their interactions, emphazing on wider stakeholder participation, linkages and institutional context of innovation and processes. This paper was aimed to:...
The process of knowledge brokering in the agricultural sector, where it is generally called agricultural extension, has been studied since the 1950s. While agricultural extension initially employed research push models, it gradually moved towards research pull and collaborative research models....
This study introduces a framework for managing information flow in innovation systems. An organisation's capacity to receive information, to share it with others and to learn from it is assumed to be the key factor that shapes the flow patterns and, hence,...
