Global Agricultural Experts to Gather in Nairobi
By Staff Writer
NAIROBI---Confronting the challenge of ensuring that smallholder farmers can access a treasure trove of agricultural innovations — respond to urgent demands to rapidly boost food production and improve their income—high level officials, experts, farmers and development partners from around the world will gather in Nairobi later this month to breathe new life into the neglected sector of agriculture extension and advisory services.
“Innovations in Extension and Advisory Services: Linking Knowledge to Policy and Action,” will bring together more than 20 Ministers of Agriculture and some 400 leading global experts in agriculture development November 15-18 at the Hilton Hotel in Nairobi. This major international conference seeks to bolster faltering support for government agencies, private operators, and individuals who collectively provide a critical link in the field between agriculture knowledge holders and policy makers and millions struggling smallholder farmers, in developing countries and more particularly in Africa.
Agriculture extension and advisory services are viewed as essential to equipping farmers with the information, knowledge, confidence, tools and technologies they need to meet a daunting challenge: doubling food production on over the next few decades to keep pace with rapidly rising populations—even as climate change radically alters growing conditions. The African continent needs special attention.
The Nairobi meeting will focus on mobilizing the national, regional and global knowledge networks needed to help farmers choose from a wide spectrum of productivity-enhancing and other innovations and access resources for meeting market requirements to compete in a constantly changing globalized world. These include cultivating new, high-yield crop varieties; enriching depleted soils; improving livestock productivity and care; adding value and increasing incomes through better market access; and adapting to rising temperatures, decreased rainfall and other stresses induced by climate change.
Delegates will re-assess current practices—and past success and failures—in four interrelated areas: Policy, Capacity Development, Tools and Approaches, and Learning Networks.