Innovation and accelerating technological advancement are widely credited with improving global quality of life, though far more evidence of positive impact can be found in resource-rich populations. For decades, innovation and diffusion theory has been regularly applied in agricultural development interventions with the goal of reducing poverty and improving livelihoods through technological adoption and behavior change, but adoption rates remain stubbornly low in resource-poor communities and many smallholders remain impoverished and marginalized. Many working in development attribute persistent poverty in the Global South, at least in part, to limited local innovative capacity. Despite growing recognition that participation is critical to achieving sustainable solutions to poverty and environmental degradation, there is a persistent perception on the part of research and innovation firms based in the Global North that end-users in the Global South are receivers and adopters of innovation, rather than innovators themselves. Here I review existing literature to explore the roots and impacts of top-down transfer-of-technology approaches to development and contrast their motivations, methods, and impacts with those of alternative approaches to innovation. I also present a case study illustrating an alternative approach that employed savings-led microfinance as a platform for empowerment and participatory innovation, as well as how in-depth interviews were used to integrate smallholder perspectives on the intervention and on smallholder decision making in general. The results indicate not only that active smallholder participation and the support of enabling environments in agricultural communities are critical to the success of development programming, but also that farmer-centered innovation systems improve the usability, attractiveness, and likelihood of technology use in resource-poor communities and can reduce the financial risks that often accompany adoption. Such approaches may also have a significant empowerment aspect in allowing space for smallholders to be innovators, rather than just adopters of technology.

This important book is the re-titled third edition of the extremely well received and widely used Agricultural Extension (van den Ban & Hawkins, 1988, 1996). Building on the previous editions, Communication for Rural Innovation maintains and adapts the insights and conceptual models of value today, while reflecting many new ideas, angles and modes of thinking concerning how agricultural extension is taught and carried through today. Since the previous edition of the book, the number and type of organisations that apply communicative strategies to foster change and development in agriculture and resource management has become much more varied and this book is aimed at those who use communication to facilitate change in agriculture and resource management. Communication for Rural Innovation is essential reading for process facilitators, communication division personnel, knowledge managers, training officers, consultants, policy makers, extension specialists and managers of agricultural extension or research organisations. The book can also be used as an advanced introduction into issues of communicative intervention at BSc or MSc level.

This important book is the re-titled third edition of the extremely well received and widely used Agricultural Extension (van den Ban & Hawkins, 1988, 1996). Building on the previous editions, Communication for Rural Innovation maintains and adapts the insights and conceptual models of value today, while reflecting many new ideas, angles and modes of thinking concerning how agricultural extension is taught and carried through today. Since the previous edition of the book, the number and type of organisations that apply communicative strategies to foster change and development in agriculture and resource management has become much more varied and this book is aimed at those who use communication to facilitate change in agriculture and resource management. Communication for Rural Innovation is essential reading for process facilitators, communication division personnel, knowledge managers, training officers, consultants, policy makers, extension specialists and managers of agricultural extension or research organisations. The book can also be used as an advanced introduction into issues of communicative intervention at BSc or MSc level.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- CONTENTS -- List of abbreviations -- List of contributors -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Knowledge politics in development-oriented agronomy -- 2 On the movement of agricultural technologies: packaging, unpacking and situated reconfiguration -- 3 South-South cooperation and agribusiness contestations in irrigated rice: China and Brazil in Ghana -- 4 GM crops 'for Africa': contestation and knowledge politics in the Kenyan biosafety debate -- 5 Systems research in the CGIAR as an arena of struggle: competing discourses on the embedding of research in development -- 6 One step forward, two steps back in farmer knowledge exchange: 'scaling up' as Fordist replication in drag -- 7 When the solution became a problem: strategies in the reform of agricultural extension in Uganda -- 8 Sweet 'success': contesting biofortification strategies to address malnutrition in Tanzania -- 9 Crops in context: negotiating traditional and formal seed institutions -- 10 Laws of the field: rights and justice in development-oriented agronomy -- 11 A golden age for agronomy? -- References -- Index

This book provides an innovative framework to analyze the process of industrial upgrading and diversification, a key feature of economic development. Based on this framework, it provides concrete advice to development practitioners and policy makers on how to unleash a country's growth potential.