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Upscaling Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) entails changing the behavior, strategies and agricultural practices of millions of agricultural producers. Extension and Advisory Services (EAS) can play a very important role in upscaling CSA, but they need to be better organised to do so. This paper explores how EAS should be organized to support the upscaling of CSA by drawing lessons for EAS from four successful cases namely: natural resource management, crop management, varietal improvement and weather insurance. It used the Innovation Management Framework which identifies three elements that are critical for innovation: functions, actions and tools.
Occasional papers on innovation in...
Ce fascicule fait partie d’une série d’outils pédagogiques simples concernant les activités clés des boutiques d’intrants (BI). Il permet aux organisations de producteurs (OP) et aux gestionnaires des boutiques d’utiliser des outils pour améliorer la gestion ou décider de la mise en place de l’activité. Depuis des décennies, les paysans nigériens sont confrontés aux problèmes de la faiblesse des rendements des cultures vivrières. C’est dans ce contexte que la FAO, en partenariat avec le Gouvernement nigérien, appuie l’intensification agricole par la filière des intrants agricoles au Niger et le renforcement des capacités des OP. Les BI font partie de cette...
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) strongly pursue poverty and food security goals. One of its indicators calls for increased investment, including investments for agricultural research and extension services, etc. This paper is based on a model developed by the authors to calculate the investment requirements for agricultural and rural extension and advisory services (EAS) based on macro-economic data of developing countries. The model reveals significant differences in average investment requirements in different regions and shows the additional EAS costs related to climate change and other areas that currently lack investment.
Occasional papers on innovation in family farming
Communiqué from FAO Side Event, 3 October 2016 7th GFRAS Annual Meeting, 3–7 October 2016, Limbé, Cameroon
Based on extensive literature review, the paper provides an overview of the current state of knowledge on “inclusive pluralistic service systems”, examining the need for demand-driven service provision, the diverse providers and approaches to service delivery, and the policy considerations and institutional challenges constraining the operation of inclusive PSS.
Report of FAO Expert Consultation, HQ, Rome, May 2016
This paper presents a synthesis of the expert consultation deliberations, and highlights a set of key messages and policy recommendations on the main themes of accountability, coordination, financing mechanisms and scaling of inclusive PSS.
Capacity development interventions in support of agricultural innovation are more effective when based on systematic and participatory assessments of existing skills and capacity needs. Recognizing that, an instrument has been developed in the context of the Capacity Development for Agricultural Innovation Systems (CDAIS) project. It consists of a capacity scoring tool that allows assessing innovation capacities, identifying strengths and weaknesses and monitoring capacity changes over time.
Occasional papers on innovation in family farming
Following their first formation in Indonesia over 25 years ago, Farmer Field Schools (FFS)1 have served as a “proof of concept” of how transformative learning can help governments, donors and development stakeholders achieve development objectives. The FFS approach, which has now been used in more than 90 countries by more than 12 million small farmers (FAO, 2016), not only creates a space in which the practical needs of smallholders to solve production-related issues can be addressed, but also fosters personal and community-level transformation through empowerment.
This multi-media production shows the positive outcome of an integrated pest management (IPM) initiative to control olive pests in the hills surrounding Canino, a small town in central Italy. The case of Canino was analysed in the context of IMPRESA, a project funded by the European Union to assess the impact of research on EU agriculture in which FAO participated. IMPRESA concluded that IPM was instrumental in increasing olive productivity and reducing pesticide use, ultimately bolstering environmental protection and improving the livelihoods of olive growers in Canino.
"Les boutiques d’intrants et leurs organisations de producteurs doivent encore être renforcées pour devenir des micro-entreprises rurales performantes dans le système d’approvisionnement en intrants aux petits producteurs"