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FAO's Research and Extension Unit, headed by Karin Nichterlein, will be FAO's technical focal point for the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between FAO and three of Italy’s main research institutions in the areas of food, environment and technology. The purpose of the MoU, signed in Rome on the 23 June 2015, is to provide a framework for collaboration with the overall goal of assisting developing countries in enhancing the sustainability of the food production and nutrition.
Through this new partnership, countries will benefit from the expertise of Italy's National Research Council (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - CNR), the Council for...
Two members of FAO's Research and Extension Unit (Karin Nichterlein and Andrea Sonnino) have co-authored with two additional experts in agricultural innovation (Philipp Aerni and Stephen Rudgard) an article that has been recently published on the journal "Sustainability". The 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. Established by the G20 and facilitated by FAO's Research and Extension Unit, TAP is a multilateral dynamic facilitation mechanism, which fosters better coherence and greater impact of capacity development for agricultural innovation systems in tropical...
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.
The package has been developed as reference materials for trainers at regional or country...
The UN General Assembly declared 2014 to be the International Year of Family Farming and invited the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to facilitate implementation of the International Year, in collaboration with its partners.
Among its other initiatives for the International Year, FAO has worked with the Global Forum on Rural Advisory Services (GFRAS) in setting the spotlight on rural advisory services for family farms. This has been done by jointly organizing two recent side events on the topic – in Buenos Aires on 26 September 2014 during the 5th GFRAS Annual Meeting and in Rome on 27 October 2014 during the Global...
The Moderator's Summary (130 KB) of the FAO e-mail conference on “Approaches and methodologies in ex post impact assessment of agricultural research: Experiences, lessons learned and perspectives” was published in September 2014, providing an easily readable synthesis of the main discussion points and conclusions.
Over 600 people subscribed to this 4-week long conference, which ran from 5 May to 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...