Rural Advisory Services (RAS) are fundamental in supporting more than a billion small-scale farmers and other rural actors throughout the world (Nagarajan et al., 2020). These services assist them to deal with challenges and improve their livelihoods while increasing productivity and reducing hunger and poverty through innovation and strengthened capacities. Over the past ten years, digitalization in extension has received renewed worldwide interest, particularly with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has not only dramatically increased the availability and affordability of many online services, but it has escalated the urgency for the development and application of digital extension. Digitalization is considered the avenue to reach the 500 million smallholders that deserve better livelihoods and improved resilience against the adverse consequences of climate change and other environmental threats. As a contribution to the global discussion around this theme, the Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services (GFRAS) seeks to determine what kind of agricultural extension will be needed in the future to overcome today’s challenges.

The report is an in-depth look at the current status of non-tariff measures practiced in ASEAN countries with the view to their improvement in line with more open and efficient trade while ensuring food safety and adherence to food quality and health standards. The report offers an analysis drawn from relevant literature, trade and trade measures analysis up to 2019 (pre-COVID situation). The analysis serves as a baseline for a follow up analysis on intra-regional trade and trade facilitation measures in the context of COVID and the post-COVID environment.

Sustainable impacts at scale require the adoption of upgraded practices by large numbers of market actors and their continued usage of these practices in the long term. This behavioural change, in turn, is driven by actors’ capacities and incentives to adopt and sustain upgrades. A systems approach can help us understand the constraints that prevent market actors from changing their behaviour and thus improving their performance and the sustainability of the system in which they operate.

FAO (2022) This document includes three case studies from three continents and the good practices for promoting gender equality through RAS of the studied organizations as well as a collection of recommendations drawn from the good practices.

Large-scale male outmigration has placed new pressures on both men and women, especially regarding labour division in farm households and involvement in Water Users Associations (WUAs). This paper illustrates how the interplay between existing gender norms, male migration, remittances, and alternative sources of male labour influence women’s agency and WUA decision-making processes in Nepal. Despite official quotas aimed at promoting women’s participation in WUAs, some women prefer to monetise membership contributions rather than actively engage with the organisation. Others pursue strategic interests through changing WUA rules and, in the process, bringing about an adjustment of cultural norms. Women’s agency is derived not only from their knowledge of irrigation systems features and their ability to manage them; it is also related to their ability to learn new organizational skills and to apply them in the WUA context to negotiate and mobilise rules and resources. Women (re)shape their WUA involvement in conjunction with their farming strategies, their view of the WUA’s functionality, and whether they perceive the involvement as either an opportunity for productive engagement or as merely an increase in their already heavy workload.

Far away from the sensational prime time headlines and the trending hashtags and the reels, the real India lives in its humility and anonymity, facing its everyday challenges and winning its everyday victories. Transformative stories that are changing lives — for better or worse — are unfolding in India every day. Nearly all of them never make it to the mainstream media.

Using the lens of the theory of induced innovation, we reflect on the development of metrics for women’s empowerment and gender equality. The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), launched in 2012, was used to monitor women’s inclusion in agricultural sector growth. Demand by WEAI users and the supply of tools and methods from researchers shaped the ongoing evolution of the tool to a shorter version and to another that reflected what agricultural development projects deemed meaningful to judge project success. Eventual modifications reflected user demand: a greater interest in market inclusion and value chains stimulated the development of specialized modules for market inclusion. WEAI-related metrics have demonstrated the importance of women’s empowerment for development outcomes, helping governments and civil society organizations design and implement gender-sensitive agricultural development programs. Finally, the adoption of SDG5 on women’s empowerment and gender equality created a demand for a measure of women’s empowerment for use by national statistical systems. Whether such a metric will be adopted globally will depend on the demand from, and utility to, stakeholders as well as existing capacity, capacity-building efforts, a belief in the intrinsic value of women’s empowerment, and the commitment of resources to attaining this goal.

This policy brief was developed as part of a series of knowledge products under a Letter of Agreement between FAO and CGIAR Gender. CGIAR Gender was commissioned to write, copy edit and proofread. The graphic design will be carried out by an internal communications consultant. The knowledge products are commissioned by the Flexible Multi-Partner Mechanism 149 project. This brief is one of 4 policy briefs targeting specific sub-areas of relevance within the gender and climate change nexus. It is intended to assist policymakers and negotiators. From a policy perspective, creating, funding, and implementing gender-responsive and -transformative policies, regulations, and institutions are crucial to address gender inequalities and advance women’s empowerment in the context of a changing climate.