Deadline 15 December 2024
Members of the INTERFACES team, Dr. Theodore Asimeng (IDOS) and Benjamin Abugri (FARA) are planning multiple panels at next year’s ECAS Conference under the title:
“From agricultural knowledge to innovation and adoption: empowering smallholder farmers”
Please find the abstract below and submit your proposal via this link.
In can you have any questions you may contact Dr. Theodore Asimeng via mail (Theodore.Asimeng@idos-research.de).
Knowledge on agriculture and food systems covering resource availability, soil health, crop and animal productivity, pest and disease management, labour, markets, prices and costs, nutrition and food safety, is crucial for developing innovative solutions to enhance these systems. At the stage of primary production, improving the lives of farmers and fostering ecological sustainability are gaining particular attention.
Innovations such as conservation agriculture, integrated soil fertility management, or new alternative rice production methods have been developed using much knowledge. However, smallholder farmers who contribute about 80% of crop production in sub-Saharan Africa and still provide more than 50% of total employment adopt innovations much less quickly and intensely than larger farmers. Factors such as specific resource requirements attached to the innovation adoption itself, additional requirements to reorganise farms and farming practices beyond the direct innovation, and limitations from socio-cultural reasons hinder smallholders’ adoption of innovations. Smallholders, therefore, require tailored support systems.
Since the journey from agricultural knowledge to practical innovation and adoption involves a multi-step process where research, technology and farming processes converge to improve productivity and ensure sustainability, this panel unites experts from various disciplines – from agricultural sciences, and engineering, to social sciences – to discuss measures for strengthening innovation systems and adoption among African smallholder farmers. This will focus on three key challenges: (i) mainstreaming Indigenous knowledge through participatory processes (ii) promoting gender-responsive innovations, and (iii) fostering youth-specific solutions.
