In a new blog post, Jim Sumberg suggests how the discipline of Farming Systems Research (FSR), pioneered in the 1970s, could be revived with new thinking. With agriculture once again high on the development agenda, and with new ambitions, actors and alliances, a systems-oriented research approach has much to offer.

An approach that recognises the 3Ds - 'directionality', distribution and diversity - of pathways to sustainability, he argues, could breathe new life into an old discipline.

• The 3Ds - a new idea for farming systems research? Jim Sumberg, 3 May 2013

A new blog post by Jim Sumberg, Young People and Agrifood theme convenor, explores evidence based policy, and what it means when the 'evidence' is incomplete, misleading or absent.

He suggests that, when this is the case, perhaps the most important thing for policy makers in this position is to establish and maintain a general direction of travel. The assumption that, in these cases, good policy making is all about objective, technical (‘evidence-informed’) choice amongst competing policy approaches and instruments is no longer at centre stage.

• When evidence is thin, policy makers should learn from ancient mariners Jim Sumberg, 4 April 2013

is likely to be’, which provides a picture (or more likely multiple, partial and contested pictures) of key structures, institutions, alliances, power relations, drivers, trends, outcomes, dynamics and pathways within a particular sector or policy area. Here there is a critical role for historical evidence as it allows for some understanding of what might be thought of as the ‘baseline of change’.

A new book, available as a free download (Zip file, 18MB), is the culmination of a considerable amount of new and important research on seed systems, both within Ethiopia and across Africa.

Defining Moments in the Ethiopian Seed System draws together a large collection of papers presented at the ‘International Conference on Sustainable Seed Systems in Ethiopia: Challenges and Opportunities’, hosted by the Ethiopian Institute of Agriculture Research, Addis Ababa, in June 2011. It provides insights into the latest innovations in seed system research and development, the evolving role and performance of the formal and informal seed sectors and the potential for their integration and, significantly, the political economic and institutional factors shaping national and regional seed policy and processes.

Demonstrating 'impact' has become a strong imperative for those involved in agricultural research. But this pressure has led to some large-scale claims for techniques that have only been tested at farm level.

In a new blog post, Jim Sumberg examines the risks of this trend, and how such claims come to be accepted among researchers and farmers.

• Blog: Contested agronomy: low-level evidence, high-level claims by Jim Sumberg

Agricultural policy makers in Africa are now being dragged into the era of ‘evidence-based’ policy (EBP) making. But the quality and availability of evidence in some countries - and debates about what even counts as evidence - create some interesting challenges.

FAC researchers Jim Sumberg, John Thompson and George T-M Kwadzo explore how the question plays out in Ghana in the chicken industry.

• Read the article on the FAC blog

A new article by FAC researcher Stephen Whitfield looks at the challenges of using agricultural statistics as an evidence base for agricultural policy making in Africa.

'Success stories' in African agriculture, such as the Africa Rice Centre's New Rice for Africa (NERICA), which are based on such 'evidence', are critically considered.

In response, the need for a more open and inclusive understanding of what 'evidence' is is identified, an idea that inevitably and necessarily brings more people (and their evidence bases) into the policy process.

• Whitfield, S. (2012) Evidence-based agricultural policy in Africa: Critical reflection on an emergent discourse, Outlook on Agriculture 41(4), 249-256

Photo: NP GRiSP Uruguay 42 from CIAT's photostream on Flickr