Presentation highlights:
- Farms are small firms, which all produce the same commodities. Each is too small to affect the price.
- For smallholder farmers to stay in business they have to surf the waves of innovation and keep growing
- The Business Model of Agronomy (BMA)dominates mainstream thinking about agricultural development but it cannot support a sustainable global food system
- Eventually BMA runs out of steam, as actual yields catch up with potential ones (yield gaps close)
- The market fails when it comes to food security, sovereignty and safety, poverty, and sustainability
- Sustainable intensification is an oxymoron (no win-win but trade-offs)
- Convergence of Science-Strengthening Innovation Systems (CoS-SIS) programme undertook scoping and diagnostic studies to identify entry point that reflect priority constraints / opportunities of smallholders (very often institutional issue)
About Niels Röling:
Born in Amsterdam, 1937. MSc rural sociology (minor ag. economics), Wageningen University. PhD in Communication, Michigan State University (1970). Nigeria (1963-’67), the US (1967-’70), and Kenya (1971-’73). Joined Communication and Innovation Studies at Wageningen, retired professor in 2002. 2002-2014 Management Committee of Convergence of Sciences (CoS) action research programme in Benin, Ghana and Mali.
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