Innovation Fair
One of the objectives of the Symposium is to celebrate inspiring success stories of innovation and innovators. One of the ways that this will be done is through an Innovation Fair, which will showcase success stories of agricultural innovation for family farmers and/or by family farmers.
The Innovation Fair will explore how and why agricultural innovation happens and benefits family farmers. The Fair aims to increase the understanding of innovation in agriculture and its key role to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. For that purpose, success stories presented in the Fair will provide excellent examples of the key drivers that lead to successful innovation, without neglecting the obstacles and challenges that had to be faced and overcome before the innovations were brought into use. The cases will also show the impact that these agricultural innovations have made in people’s lives.
The selection of success stories aims to encompass and capture a broad range of innovations that are being used in the different agricultural sectors (crop, livestock, fisheries and aquaculture, forestry).
The success stories displayed are centred around four key challenges to which agricultural innovation has been used: climate change; sustainable natural resource management; food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition; and job creation, with a focus on youth. All in all, the Fair will provide a unique space to explore key questions and issues of agricultural innovation around the world.
Schedule
The launch of the Innovation Fair will take place on 21 November, the first day of the Symposium, from 12.30-14.00. Each success story will have a presenter and a dedicated space in the FAO Atrium. They will be available to discuss with participants about their innovation and success story, and talk in an informal way about the constraints they faced, as well as the drivers that led to innovation and success. Presenters will do the same from 12.30-14.00 on the second day, 22 November.
Selection of success stories
Most of the success stories came from a call for FAO staff to propose success stories of agricultural innovation based on their wide experience and knowledge in different fields of expertise and regions. The FAO Task Force for the Symposium selected the 20 most compelling and inspiring success stories.
They involve examples where agricultural innovations were directly applied by family farmers themselves, or where they were the indirect beneficiaries of a successful innovation. Most of the success stories selected for the Innovation Fair are not from FAO’s work.