Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: C20479
Notes:
Pages 127-150 in Joe Smith (ed.), The Daily Globe: environmenal change, the public and the media. Earthscan Publications Ltd., London, England. 263 pages.
Russell, Mark (author) and Morris, Pamala (author)
Format:
Paper
Publication Date:
2008-03-09
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 167 Document Number: C27986
Notes:
Presented at the 24th annual conference of the Association for International Agricultural and Extension Education at EARTH University, Costa Rica, March 9-15, 2008. 11 pages.
19 pages., via online journal., There are about 500 million small-scale farms in low-income countries on the planet. Farmers have been slow to adopt a threefold set of sustainable agronomic practices known as “conservation agriculture” (CA) that have been shown to double productivity. Our study of a novel CA project in Nicaragua, organized based on principles that counter convention, may point to improved ways of understanding and managing sustainable innovations in low-income countries. In particular, by connecting core ideas from the innovation literature to the literature that explores the role of intermediaries such as NGOs, our case study suggests that the efficacy of NGOs to facilitate the adoption of sustainable innovations by small-scale farmers in these settings may be enhanced if NGOs employ non-centrist approaches in order to address the critical uncertainties associated with such innovations. We discuss how our findings contradict some of long-standing arguments in the literature, and their implications for theory and practice.
