Recherche & vulgarisation

Publications

Oct 2015
Information about extension and new methodologies for implementation is often scattered and presented in complex academic language. Practitioners, who often have very limited time and/or may only have basic formal education, find it difficult to make use of this information. The Global Good Practices Initiative aims to bridge this gap by providing information about extension approaches and methods in easy-to-understand formats.

Publication disponible en: English
Sep 2015
Rural advisory services (RAS) can play an important role in addressing gender inequalities. However, RAS programmes have often fallen short of expectations to design and implement relevant services to help rural women and men achieve food security and generate more income. This paper is based on an examination of a broad selection of existing literature on gender-sensitive RAS. It looks at gender-differentiated barriers in access to RAS and explores the challenges of effectively targeting women family farmers when delivering these services.

Publication disponible en:
Aug 2015
The Farm Business School (FBS) was developed to assist extension workers, public or private, to more effectively work with farmers to provide them with the skills to respond to market demands. This publication comprises a collection of training materials that include: i) an orientation programme for policy makers and programme managers, ii) a short training (1 day or 7 days) for facilitators to set up and run farm business schools, (iii) a handbook aimed at providing guidance to trainers to design and implement the programme, and iv) a manual of training exercises.

Publication disponible en:
Apr 2015
The study reflects on previous World Bank and FAO reports that made the general recommendation to set both research and extension investment targets in developing countries at 1% of agricultural gross domestic product (AgGDP). In order to define proxies for country-specific extension investment targets, authors developed an extension investment model (EIM) based on socio-economic macro-indicators (poverty, undernourishment, access to information and population density) and a method to define estimates for cost increases related to climate change.

Publication disponible en: English
Apr 2015
Apr 2015
Jan 2015
This paper provides a summary of the results obtained from three regional needs assessments of Capacity Development (CD) initiatives undertaken by the Tropical Agriculture Platform (TAP) and its partners. The surveyed tropical regions were Southeast Asia, Central America and Sub-Saharan Africa. The findings reveal a mismatch in all three regions between the external supply of primarily individual CD and the actual demand for institutional CD.

Publication disponible en:
Jan 2015
This publication represents a synthesis of assessments of national agricultural innovation systems in countries of Central Asia, South Caucasus and Turkey.

Publication disponible en: English
Nov 2014
The Research and Extension Unit provided key inputs in the researching and writing of the State of Food and Agriculture 2014. The report analyses family farms and the role of innovation in ensuring global food security, poverty reduction and environmental sustainability. It argues that family farms must be supported to innovate in ways that promote sustainable intensification of production and improvement in rural livelihoods.

Publication disponible en: English
Sep 2014
Over 600 people subscribed to this 4-week long conference, which finished on 1 June 2014. They posted 109 messages which came from people living in 38 different countries - 58% were posted by people living in developing countries. Most discussions focused on issues related to micro-level impact assessment (typically looking at the impacts of a specific research project in one part of a country) rather than macro-level impact assessment (typically looking at the impacts of investments in agricultural research, or one of its sectors, at the national level).

Publication disponible en: English