Research, Reorganized

Agricultural research is changing. In order to have a greater impact, research must be relevant to a greater variety of farmers in different contexts, while being both applicable and adaptable.

Ways must also be found to solve institutional constraints, which are very often beyond the researchers’ sphere of control. Policies can be changed to allow community seed production, better connections established between maize producers and traders, extension systems strengthened or willing agro-dealers found to commercialize new seeds.

With this in mind, MAIZE CRP has been working with KIT (the Royal Tropical Institute) to strengthen the way four pilot projects work with – and incorporate feedback from – other stakeholders to tackle these two issues: the relevance and adaptability of research and institutional constraints. The pilot projects are SIMLEZA, SIMLESA, MasAgro and CSISA.

Between 29 September and 2 October 2014, researchers involved in these four projects came together in Amsterdam to share their challenges and results of the work done so far within this initiative. This short video tells us a bit more about their work together, and what they see as the next steps in this collaboration.

See the final version here: https://youtu.be/dhCg23kHkBQ