Sustainable agriculture and resilient food systems require farmers to adopt agri-food innovations. Many development initiatives have promoted promising innovations, but achieving sustained adoption is challenging. Project interventions often witness fleeting uptakes, with many farmers reverting to traditional practices when project cycles are over. This “project syndrome” phenomenon is a well-known issue in agricultural development, where farmers’ adoption behavior is driven largely by project incentives rather than a genuine acceptance based on the potential benefits of the innovations, hindering widespread impacts and a desirable systemic change. It calls for a shift from a project-centric approach to a more transformative one that prioritizes farmers’ buy-in, stakeholder engagement, and co-execution of innovation processes and outcomes.
Authors: Adewole Olagoke & Menale Kassie
Contact address: olagoke@geobotanik.uni-hannover.de
Institution: Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, Germany
Twitter name of the institution: @jlugiessen
Twitter link: https://twitter.com/jlugiessen
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