Application of innovation platforms to catalyse adoption of conservation agriculture practices in South Asia

Abstract

Conservation agriculture-based sustainable intensification (CASI) is a package of practices that could improve the sustainability of smallholder farm productivity and profitability. However, existing extension systems are unable to facilitate widespread adoption to have the impact necessary to meet food security and livelihood requirements. This paper examines the utility of 'Innovation Platforms' (IPs) as a tool to catalyse adoption of CASI for smallholder farmers in South Asia and generate opportunities for rural micro-entrepreneurship in areas with high rates of poverty, small farm sizes and complex labour markets. We established 37 village-level and five District-level IPs across the Eastern Gangetic Plains of Nepal, Bangladesh, and India. IPs allowed widespread uptake of CASI with benefits to smallholder farmers, input and output suppliers, and enabled extension systems to be more efficient. There was variability across locations with different modes of IPs established, building on existing farmer or community youth groups, and enabling micro-entrepreneur business opportunities. IPs were effective in developing trust in communities, among stakeholders, empowering rural youth and women through direct engagement. Ensuring strong ownership was key. Further work is needed to provide opportunities for high-level policy support to assist IPs to have a wider impact in supporting large-scale adoption of CASI.

Rural Entrepreneurship: An Analysis of Current and Emerging Issues from the Sustainable Livelihood Framework

“…Refers to the skills to do and the knowledge acquired (Chambers and Conway 1992;Scoones 1998;Serna et al 2015) Lack of capacities and knowledge for rural entrepreneurship (Chirambo 2019;Brown et al 2021;Dixit and Sakunia 2022) Social Is related to the formal and informal connections that shape social cooperation (Shaw 2017;Apine et al 2019;Jaramillo-Gutierrez et al 2021) Lack of horizontal and vertical integration for rural entrepreneurship (Futemma et al 2020;Deka et al 2021;Ekanem et al 2021)…”

“…Poverty alleviation, the second relevant topic, could be achieved with a combined effort of government, society, and academia to build a sustainable system (Dixit and Sakunia 2022), in which rural entrepreneurship plays a critical role in alleviating extreme poverty (Sutter et al 2019), and where social business companies can grow access to economic resources, income opportunities, and beneficial products and services (Humberg and Braun 2014). Likewise, the incidence of poverty could be reduced through innovation platforms for smallholder farmers (Brown et al 2021), the participation of NGOs (Amofah et al 2021), and the stimulation of endogenous power of rural households to generate positive livelihood acceleration (Deng et al 2020), and the combination of land system reform and policy innovation to provide a rural land consolidation (Wang et al 2021). Poverty alleviation, the second relevant topic, could be achieved with a combined effort of government, society, and academia to build a sustainable system (Dixit and Sakunia 2022), in which rural entrepreneurship plays a critical role in alleviating extreme poverty (Sutter et al 2019), and where social business companies can grow access to economic resources, income opportunities, and beneficial products and services (Humberg and Braun 2014).…”

“…Rural youth represent the future food sovereignty of a nation by being the natural successors of family farming businesses; however, rural youth show a decline in farming (Igwe et al 2020) and face risks of abandoning agriculture due to lack of land access, income uncertainty, and dependence on chemical fertilizers (Ningrum 2018). Rural youth have the potential to make unique contributions to business development (de Guzman et al 2020), enabling micro-entrepreneur business opportunities (Brown et al 2021). Therefore, multiple efforts could provide sustainable employment to the youth in villages (Dixit and Sakunia 2022) by offering a regular and sustainable self-employment opportunity to the unemployed rural youth (Choudhury and Sarma 2020), and creating efficient and market-oriented jobs for the youth (Chakravarty et al 2021).…”

“…Kumari and Eguruze 2022) (Dixit and Sakunia 2022) (Brown et al 2021) (Chakravarty et al 2021)(Futemma et al 2020) (Mahesh et al 2020)(Mahesh et al 2020) (Amofah et al 2021)(Mishra 2021) (Rajendran and Indapurkar 2020)(Gangadhar 2020) (Mishra et al 2020) (Nwosu et al 2019) (Oteng-Ababio et al 2019) (Ningrum 2018) (Hetherington et al 2017) (Muhamad et al 2017) (Bhandari 2017) (Laeis and Lemke 2016) (Baskaran and Mehta 2016) (Addinsall et al 2016) (Samal et al 2016) (Zhu et al 2015) (Ojo et al 2015) (Humberg and Braun 2014) (Bradley et al 2013) (Mahale et al 2011) (Anand and Josse 2002) (Anand and Josse 2002) Governance and institutions It includes the topics of governance, institutions, participation, culture, context and communities, technology. (Kumari and Eguruze 2022) (Otoijamun et al 2021) (Brown et al 2021) (Deka et al 2021) (Ekanem et al 2021) (Chakravarty et al 2021) (Futemma et al 2020) (Futemma et al 2020) (Mahesh et al 2020) (Joshi et al 2019) (Chirambo 2019) (Li et al 2019) (Hetherington et al 2017) (Shaw 2017) (Laeis and Lemke 2016) (Baskaran and Mehta 2016) (Addinsall et al 2016) (Schraeder et al 2015) (Huttunen 2012) (Ashby et al 2009) (Sati and Juyal 2008) (Cahn 2008) (Mbaiwa 2004) Livelihood growth It includes the topics of poverty alleviation, trade, migration, market, and opportunities.…”

Selecting methods of agricultural extension to support diverse adoption pathways: a review and case studies

“…Another reported advantage of multi-actor approaches to technological development is in building relationships, trust and social capital among end-users, scientists, and developers (Sewell et al 2014;Calliera et al 2021;Brown et al 2022), contributing to greater knowledge and skills among all participants and generation of new ideas (Sewell et al 2014). Scientists are often called on to lead or contribute to these approaches (Ingram et al 2020), expanding their professional profile into roles as coordinators and facilitators.…”