Theme 1
The bio-physical and societal challenges relating to sustainable agricultural and rural development generate new knowledge needs and call for different ways of support to learning and innovation. New collective dynamics for generating and sharing knowledge and innovations and thus AKIS (Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems) emerge.
Theme 1 aims at exploring:
a) the bridging of science and farmers’ practices (transdisciplinarity) especially with a view to public good issues and the role of advisory services, and
b) the several facets of systems thinking in learning and innovation, in both the conceptual and in the practical sense.
Topics include the current state of systems thinking, strategies and interventions as well as barriers and enablers relating to knowledge sharing and innovation generation in diverse AKIS configurations; organizational forms, methods, tools (and respective constraints) used to promote innovation and collective learning and action; emerging advisors’ roles and needs for capacity building and training, etc.
In this respect, both more conceptually oriented, but also country studies and case studies are welcomed.
In Theme 1 the following workshops will be held.
- Workshop 1.1
- Actor-driven or instrument-driven: does it make a difference?
- Workshop 1.2
- Evaluation of policy schemes supporting innovation and advisory services: new concepts, methodologies and case studies
- Workshop 1.3
- Innovation Platforms as Drivers of Institutional Change
- Workshop 1.4
- The development of more entrepreneurial farming systems and the move towards a more farm-level approach to innovation and learning.
- Workshop 1.5
- Returning to the farming and food systems as they are - action and phenomenon based learning as prerequisite for transdisciplinarity
- Workshop 1.6
- Linking scientists and farmers, research and application - methods of on-farm research projects in livestock sciences
- Workshop 1.7
- Collaborative learning to solve problems and develop innovations in complex systems: focus on methodologies
- Workshop 1.8
- Knowledge & innovation brokers: lubricating knowledge development & innovation in networks
- Workshop 1.9
- Farmland (bio-)diversity in the hands and minds of farmers: Farming systems approaches to landscape protection and biodiversity preservation
