Training Manual on Good Agricultural Governance: A Resource Guide Focused on Smallholder Crop Production

Good governance is a concept that is difficult to realize in its totality even in countries with strong institutions and an entrenched culture of democratic governance backed by sound political systems. It remains more of an ideal to which countries strive to come as close as possible by focusing efforts on bridging the gap between what is achievable and where they are now.

This task is particularly daunting for developing countries with fragile institutions, weak regulatory frameworks and inadequate administrative capacities. The increasing emphasis by development partners on good governance in project assistance is aimed at nudging countries to improve governance so that resources spent produce value and the benefits of development assistance reach the target beneficiaries as intended.

This resourced guide is a follow up of the recommendations of the expert consultation on small-farmer-focused good governance in crop sector agriculture organized by FAO regional office for Asia and the Pacific from 28 to 30 November 2010. It has been designed as a resource guide for training senior level officials in the public sector agricultural services and for elected representatives responsible for the design, reform, and implementation of policies, laws, regulations and the allocation of resources in the management of their country’s agriculture and rural development sector. The target audience also includes senior level managers in the non-state sector – non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society organizations (CSOs), producer organizations, the private sector – involved in the provision of public goods and services.

The guide comprises nine chapters. Each chapter is written as a separate module designed to meet a specific number of learning objectives. It consists of lecture materials for presentation and work sheets for group exercises to assess learning outcomes (provided in the Annex). Group exercises have been designed in the manual as a tool for the training facilitator to evaluate how well training participants understand the content and are able to apply the acquired knowledge in problem solving.