Purpose: This review paper presents an overview of changes in agricultural extension on a global scale and helps to characterise on-going developments in extension practice. Design/methodology/approach: Through a critique and synthesis of literature the paper focuses on global political changes which have led to widespread changes from production-…

Purpose: To reflect on the opportunities that a systems understanding of innovation provides for addressing gender issues relevant to women, and to provide some insight on how these might be tackled. Approach: Review of literature relating to gender issues and how they relate to achieving, on the one hand, equity and efficiency goals, and on the…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to describe and critically analyse recent advisory efforts and the prevailing discourses that have affected the advisory service in Sweden over the past 15 years. The focus is on those efforts that have had a declared aim to support farmers to become more competitive and viable. We also analyse why the…

Purpose: This article analyses the role, approach, issues and opportunities faced by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the promotion of agriculture in Timor Leste from independence through to the countrywide roll out of a public extension service in 2009. Design/methodology/approach: The research draws on semi-structured interviews with NGO…

Purpose: To present a description of recent developments in the Dutch green educational system (agriculture, living environment, food). The article builds on a previous 2006 contribution to "JAEE" where different scenarios for changes in green education were suggested. Design/methodology/approach: An analysis of policy documents from Dutch…

Purpose: This article reviews the experience of ICT applications as a tool for putting research derived knowledge into use for innovation in South Asia. Design/methodology/approach: The article uses the contemporary understanding of communication and innovation in reviewing the experience of ICTs in putting new knowledge into use in South Asia.…

Purpose: This article explores the views of Smallholder Marketing Cooperatives' (SMCs) leaders and staff, to gain insight about the particular roles SMCs play in facilitating smallholders' market access. Design/methodology/approach: The authors conceptualized and executed two international workshops in which participants from 42 SMCs from 24…

Purpose: Agricultural advisory services are perceived by many actors involved in rural development as a key driver behind innovation processes in agriculture. However, changes in national and global contexts cause dramatic changes in the orientation of advisory services, their organisation and their methods of intervention. This article aims to…

In this article, the practicability of introduction of computer multimedia as an educational tool was compared with the traditional approach for training sugarcane growers in ratoon management practices in three villages of Tamil Nadu state, India using pre-test, post-test control group experimental design. A CD-ROM was developed as a multimedia…

How do change agents deal with the diversity of farmers' attitudes towards the future of agriculture? How do they themselves cope with change and understand their role as change agents? We chose a comprehensive, action-training approach to answer such questions and worked with agents belonging to two different extension networks. The agents…

This study aims to analyze the potential and constraints of group-based extension approaches as an institutional innovation in the Vietnamese agricultural extension system. Our analysis therefore unfolds around the challenges of how to foster this kind of approach within the hierarchical extension policy setting and how to effectively shape and…

The study identifies institutions for organizing collective action among settled Fulani agro-pastoralists in southwest Nigeria and examines their functions, processes and tools for fostering collective action. Four Fulani communities were selected purposively in Ekiti State; data were collected from 55 settled pastoralists through informal…

The paper explored key factors that might lead to successful agri-environmental social learning and collective action in order to deliver landscape-scale resource management within agri-environment schemes. Using the theory of collective action as an analytical framework the paper examined findings from in-depth interviews with 20 members of two…

This paper systematically rethinks the role of communication in innovation processes, starting from largely separate theoretical developments in communication science and innovation studies. Literature review forms the basis of the arguments presented. The paper concludes that innovation is a collective process that involves the contextual…

The paper examines social learning processes among organic farmers and explores the application of the Community of Practice (CoP) model in this context. The analysis employed utilises an approach based on the CoP model, and considers how, or whether, this approach may be useful to understand social learning among farmers. The CoP model is applied…