Adoption and Adaptation of Natural Resource Management Innovations in Smallholder Agriculture: Reflections on key Lessons and Best Practices
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Date
2007-12-05Author
Bekele, A
Shiferaw, A.
Okello, Julius
Ratna, V Reddy.
Type
ArticleLanguage
enMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Many smallholder farmers in vulnerable areas continue to face complex
challenges in adoption and adaptation of resource management and conservation strategies.
Although much has been learned from diverse experiences in sustainable resource man-
agement, there is still inadequate understanding of the market, policy and institutional
failures that shape and structure farmer incentives and investment decisions. The policy
and institutional failures exacerbate market failures, locking smallholder resource users
into a low level equilibrium that perpetuates poverty and land degradation. Improved
market access that raises the returns to land and labor is often the driving force for adoption
of new practices in agriculture. Market linkages, access to credit and availability of pro-
poor options for beneficial conservation are critical factors in stimulating livelihood and
sustainability-enhancing investments. Future interventions need to promote joint innova-
tions that ensure farmer experimentation and adaptation of new technologies and careful
consideration of market, policy and institutional factors that stimulate widespread small-
holder investments. Future projects should act as ‘toolboxes’, giving essential support to
farmers to devise complementary solutions based on available options. Addressing the
externalities and institutional failures that prevent private and joint investments for man-
agement of agricultural landscapes will require new kinds of institutional mechanisms for
empowering communities through local collective action that would ensure broad partic-
ipation and equitable distributions of the gains from joint conservation investments
URI
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10668-007-9132-1#page-1http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/61425
Citation
Environ Dev Sustain (2009) 11:601–619Publisher
University of Nairobi Agricultural Economics