ABSTRACT
Global development agendas have put farming systems research back at the centre of agricultural R&D, particularly with respect to smallholder, rainfed production systems. Adaptation to climate change, payment for ecosystem services, and agro-ecological intensification under growing resource constraints 1 all have farming systems at the core of their R&D strategy. Farming systems can be closely integrated with livelihood strategies and as such can be easily extended into such areas as vulnerability/resilience, rural poverty, nutrition and gender equity, that are outcomes for which a singular commodity or natural resource management (NRM) focus are too limited in achieving. The latter maps directly into performance monitoring and results frameworks that are increasingly being applied to investments in agricultural R&D and allows research programmes to directly track intermediate impact on such development objectives.
