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Not AvailableADVANCES in technology are a key to the future of agriculture as farmers strive to feed the world with limited natural resources. Agricultural development is largely driven by innovations in the entire value chain of different commodities. The type of innovation that ultimately makes the difference is the extent and intensity on farmers make their choices. Until recently, little attention was given to the farmers-led innovations, including technological, management, and institutional. It is now realized that there are numerous innovations, which yielded higher returns and made farming more economical and sustainable. A number of farm implements were also designed to enhance farm efficiency. It is an irony that the farmers-led innovations could not be popularized due to lack of awareness of other farmers. Also, the intellectual propriety rights on the innovation made by the farmers have often been ignored. It is therefore necessary to develop a platform for farmer-scientist interface to recognize the importance of farmer-led innovations and identify ways to commercialize those. This will require developing an inventory of farmer-led innovations, and validating and refining them by blending those with modern science so that these can be commercialized and out-scaled for sustainable agricultural growth and development. All farmer-led innovations are not technical, but they have socio-economic and institutional dimensions because farmers operate under constrained and uncertain environment and their livelihood depends on how smart choices they make. Farmers take initiatives at their own capabilities to overcome their problems. Challenged by the ever-changing environmental, policy and market situations, farmers’ innovations are a product of their informal experimentation and knowledge handed to them by their forefathers. Financial constraints force them to adopt low cost technologies. Their ability to innovate goes beyond production and improves networking, communication, institution building, information management, marketing, planning, accessing resources etc. in view of improving their agricultural and natural resource management activities. Diversity requires situation-specific practices. Farmers live and work under a wide range of ecological, climatic, economic and socio-cultural conditions, and the range of farming systems is similarly diverse, not just across regions or countries, but also within districts and even localities. Each farming system has its own dynamics, strengths, challenges and opportunities. Comparatively, research scientists are few and there is no way they can generate the variety of innovations and adaptations required. Therefore, it is desirable to develop location specific technologies. Local adaptation and locally specific development of options need to be key elements in any agricultural research and development strategy. Scientists can spend more time on refining/enhancing farmers’ led efforts to wider adoption of recommendations to suit local realities. Rapidly changing conditions require local capacities to adapt quickly. Innovations are not permanent neither are the conditions for farmers. This applies not only to those who practise agriculture under very diverse, complex and risk-prone conditions, but also to those affected by emergence of new pests and diseases, effects of climate change, and for to who see new opportunities opening up. The key to sustainability in farming lies in farmers’ capacity to adapt. Farmers have to adapt more quickly in the present context than in the past. Recognizing farmers’ innovation is a step towards encouraging this process and helping farmers find ways to adapt more quickly to ever changing bio-physical and socio-economic environment. The potential of farmers could not be realized fully because of several challenges: (i) lack of accommodative attitude of researchers, (ii) lack of adequate opportunity for farmers to decide on research priorities, (iii) lack of financial support, (iv) lack of peers support, and (v) illiteracy. In addition, researchers’ perspectives also create problems. Some researchers are not familiar with the concept of farmer innovation, some find it difficult to use the data scientifically, and others have limited knowledge of the concept. The key ingredients for livelihood improvement are not external inputs but rather labour, knowledge and local management capacities that enable people to manipulate skillfully the local resources for their own benefits. Most rural development efforts have failed to mobilize and enhance these internal inputs. The recent slogan given by ICAR – “Science with Farmer First” is very appropriate. It is necessary that farmer-led innovations are given due importance and are recognized for out-scaling or for further validation and large scale adoption for improving the livelihood of resource poor farmersNot Availabl