This document describes several real-life examples that illustrate some of the different ways in which the GFRAS network adds value to the work of local actors and ongoing initiatives, with the aim of benefiting the lives and livelihoods of smallholder farmers around the globe.

The Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services (GFRAS) is about enhancing the performance of agricultural extension and advisory services to better serve farming families and rural producers, thus contributing to improved livelihoods in rural areas, the sustainable reduction of hunger and poverty, and working towards reaching the Sustainable Development Goals. Rural advisory services (RAS) help to empower farmers and integrate them more fully in systems of agricultural innovation.

Human nutrition is vital for agriculture. Many smallholder farmers are food-insecure and suffer chronic or acute forms of malnutrition. This can permanently harm the physical and cognitive growth of children, while reducing productivity as household members are less able to carry out agricultural work.

Agriculture is vital for human nutrition. Nutrition has long been considered mostly a health issue. However, agriculture plays an essential role in ensuring nutritional wellbeing not only for rural populations, but also for society as a whole.Beyond producing food in sufficient quantity, agri-food systems should also:

• provide diversified, safe and nutritious foods;
• improve rural incomes and resilience, and thus enhance access to healthy diets;
• make foods that contribute to healthy diets available and accessible at national and sub-national levels.

To this end, we must build the capacities of farmers, agriculture extensionists, consumers and others, encourage innovation, investments and enabling policies, and address gender issues. Nutrition-sensitive agriculture (NSA) uses a food-based approach to agricultural development to make the global food system produce better nutritional outcomes.

The publication is a part of the FAO work to assist the member countries in reforming their national Extension and Advisory Services (EAS). It highlights the main elements and provide concrete guidelines for the policy makers to coordinate pluralism in extension and advisory services (EAS), i.e. ensuring that multiple EAS providers from public, private sector and NGOs/donors, provide quality services that contribute to national agricultural priorities and wellbeing of rural producers, collaborate and exchange information to maximise synergies and minimise gaps and duplications.

A group of extension programming staff, specialists, and directors as well as leaders in the field of agriculture collaborated at the International Conference on Agricultural Extension: Innovation to Impact, jointly organized by the National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management (MANAGE), and Michigan State University (MSU) Extension, East Lansing, Michigan, U.S.A, at MANAGE, Hyderabad, India. This book, Innovations in Agricultural Extension, was imagined at the conference. Authors from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, India, Mozambique, Nepal, Nigeria, and the United States of America contributed to the book, eventually co-published in 2021 by MANAGE and MSU Extension. Its 20 chapters cover a wide range of topics such as an overview of agricultural extension, community outreach and advisory services, case studies of agricultural programs and initiatives, community and government engagement, information and communication technology, agritourism, entrepreneurship, and professional development, among others.

This book showcases best practices in extension with the goal that extension professionals are inspired by and learn from programming examples across the globe.

Agricultural Development: New Perspectives in a Changing World is the first comprehensive exploration of key emerging issues facing developing-country agriculture today, from rapid urbanization to rural transformation to climate change. In this four-part volume, top experts offer the latest research in the field of agricultural development. Using new lenses to examine today’s biggest challenges, contributors address topics such as nutrition and health, gender and household decision-making, agrifood value chains, natural resource management, and political economy. The book also covers most developing regions, providing a critical global perspective at a time when many pressing challenges extend beyond national borders. Tying all this together, Agricultural Development explores policy options and strategies for developing sustainable agriculture and reducing food insecurity and malnutrition. The changing global landscape combined with new and better data, technologies, and understanding means that agriculture can and must contribute to a wider range of development outcomes than ever before, including reducing poverty, ensuring adequate nutrition, creating strong food value chains, improving environmental sustainability, and promoting gender equity and equality.

The shock of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has disrupted food systems worldwide. Such disruption, affecting multiple systems interfaces in smallholder agriculture, is unprecedented and needs to be understood from multi-stakeholder perspectives. The multiple loops of causality in the pathways of impact renders the system outcomes unpredictable. Understanding the nature of such unpredictable pathways is critical to identify present and future systems intervention strategies. Our study aims to explore the multiple pathways of present and future impact created by the pandemic and “Amphan” cyclonic storm on smallholder agricultural systems. Also, we anticipate the behaviour of the systems elements under different realistic scenarios of intervention. We explored the severity and multi-faceted impacts of the pandemic on vulnerable smallholder agricultural production systems through in-depth interactions with key players at the micro-level. It provided contextual information, and revealed critical insights to understand the cascading effect of the pandemic and the cyclone on farm households. We employed thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with multiple stakeholders in Sundarbans areas in eastern India, to identify the present and future systems outcomes caused by the pandemic, and later compounded by “Amphan”. The immediate adaptation strategies of the farmers were engaging family labors, exchanging labors with neighbouring farmers, borrowing money from relatives, accessing free food rations, replacing dead livestock, early harvesting, and reclamation of water bodies. The thematic analysis identified several systems elements, such as harvesting, marketing, labor accessibility, among others, through which the impacts of the pandemic were expressed. Drawing on these outputs, we employed Mental Modeler, a Fuzzy-Logic Cognitive Mapping tool, to develop multi-stakeholder mental models for the smallholder agricultural systems of the region. Analysis of the mental models indicated the centrality of “Kharif” (monsoon) rice production, current farm income, and investment for the next crop cycle to determine the pathways and degree of the dual impact on farm households. Current household expenditure, livestock, and soil fertility were other central elements in the shared mental model. Scenario analysis with multiple stakeholders suggested enhanced market access and current household income, sustained investment in farming, rapid improvement in affected soil, irrigation water and livestock as the most effective strategies to enhance the resilience of farm families during and after the pandemic. This study may help in formulating short and long-term intervention strategies in the post-pandemic communities, and the methodological approach can be used elsewhere to understand perturbed socio ecological systems to formulate anticipatory intervention strategies based on collective wisdom of stakeholders.

Scaling of innovations is one of the key goals of the new CGIAR 2030 Research and Innovation Strategy and an important driver of the One CGIAR process, which is aimed at stronger integration of its capabilities, knowledge, assets, and people. These policy briefs were developed by CGIAR Science Leaders and scaling specialists to provide guidance for the design and implementation within the CGIAR initiatives around the world. They highlight scaling principles, approaches and tools as well as key terms of relevance to support food system transformation.

Scaling of innovations is one of the key goals of the new CGIAR 2030 Research and Innovation Strategy and an important driver of the One CGIAR process, which is aimed at stronger integration of its capabilities, knowledge, assets, and people. These policy briefs were developed by CGIAR Science Leaders and scaling specialists to provide guidance for the design and implementation within the CGIAR initiatives around the world. They highlight scaling principles, approaches and tools as well as key terms of relevance to support food system transformation.

Scaling of innovations is one of the key goals of the new CGIAR 2030 Research and Innovation Strategy and an important driver of the One CGIAR process, which is aimed at stronger integration of its capabilities, knowledge, assets, and people. These policy briefs were developed by CGIAR Science Leaders and scaling specialists to provide guidance for the design and implementation within the CGIAR initiatives around the world. They highlight scaling principles, approaches and tools as well as key terms of relevance to support food system transformation.

Scaling of innovations is one of the key goals of the new CGIAR 2030 Research and Innovation Strategy and an important driver of the One CGIAR process, which is aimed at stronger integration of its capabilities, knowledge, assets, and people. These policy briefs were developed by CGIAR Science Leaders and scaling specialists to provide guidance for the design and implementation within the CGIAR initiatives around the world. They highlight scaling principles, approaches and tools as well as key terms of relevance to support food system transformation.