Scaling up biocontrol innovations in Africa

为了确保不断增长的人口的粮食安全和可持续生计，非洲农业需要进行变革，以提高生产力和对气候变化和虫害的适应能力。粮食系统依赖于数百万小农的生产，如何接触到他们并促进农场改进是一个普遍的挑战和巨大的机遇。我们的小组将探索如何改进农场创新，重点是通过安全、廉价和环境友好的改进来控制作物病虫害。我们将确定采用生物防治创新的国家背景，它们与其他耕作做法的兼容性，以及倡导该部门农业政策发展的潜力。我们将确定这些创新在哪里成功应用的经验教训，以及阻止这些生物控制创新推广的依赖于国家的问题。我们将研究在地方、地区和国家农业实践和政策方面支持创新的方式。该组将探索如何提高农民对生物防治实践的接受程度，以及如何优化知识交流。该群组将在NM-AIST开发的成功模式的基础上，发展农民-农民联网和知识共享，并探讨如何利用移动电话技术加强这一模式。这一基础将有助于确定第2阶段的研究问题和方案。项目目标将通过综合目前关于生物防治方法的知识和理解、其成功和局限性以及积极开发交流知识的工具来实现。为此，我们将与农民和其他关键利益攸关方合作，共同设计适当的机制，分享信息并赋予农民权力。至关重要的是，我们将从一开始就让预期的“最终用户”参与我们方案的开发，以便能够与那些从我们的研究成果中受益的人共同设计新的方法。能否成功提供新的作物保护解决方案，关键取决于潜在用户在整个方案中的积极参与。我们的项目将探索如何从许多偏远的小农农场收集信息，以及如何将新技术瞄准最有益的地方。

To ensure food security and sustainable livelihoods for a growing population, African agriculture needs to undergo transformational change to increase productivity and resilience to climate change and insect pests. The food system depends on production by millions of smallholder farmers and how to reach them and facilitate farm improvements is a generic challenge and a tremendous opportunity. Our cluster will explore how to improve on-farm innovation, focusing on the biocontrol of crop pests with safe, cheap and environmentally friendly improvements. We will identify the country-dependent context for the adoption of biocontrol innovations, their compatibility with other farming practices, and the potential to advocate for agricultural policy developments in this sector. We will identify the lessons learned where these innovations have been applied successfully and the country-dependent issues that prevent the upscaling of these biocontrol innovations. We will examine ways in which the innovations can be supported in relation to local, district and national agricultural practices and policies.The cluster will explore how to improve uptake of biocontrol practices by farmers and how to optimise knowledge exchange. The cluster will develop farmer-farmer networking and knowledge sharing, building on a successful model developed by NM-AIST, and explore how this can be enhanced using mobile phone technology. This foundation will help to define the research questions and programme of Stage 2.Project goals will be achieved through a synthesis of the current state of knowledge and understanding about biocontrol approaches, their success and limitations and by actively developing communication tools for knowledge exchange. To do this we will engage with farmers and other key stakeholders to co-design appropriate mechanisms for sharing information and empowering farmers. Crucially, we will, from the outset, involve the intended "end-user" in the development of our programme so that new approaches can be co-designed with those benefiting from our research outcomes. Success in delivery of new crop protection solutions is critically dependent on active engagement of potential users throughout the programme. Our project will explore how to gather information from many remote smallholder farms and how to target new technologies to places where they are of maximum benefit.