Agricultural services for rural development

Rural development contributes to the eradication of poverty, which is one of the Millennium Development Goals. Agricultural innovation in the broad sense - a mixture of technological, social and institutional factors - is needed to enhance rural development. Knowledge service providers, in collaboration with other actors, are crucial in enhancing the performance of the rural innovation system.

A main challenge is to strengthen the agricultural knowledge and information system (AKIS) and in particular the agricultural research, extension and education systems. A key question is how knowledge-based service provision can become more demand-driven and how farmers themselves can become empowered actors in the agricultural innovation system.