Conventional approaches to agricultural development have tended to regard innovation as the product of research, and have viewed the dissemination of research results as a largely linear process from researchers to extension and then to farmers through a “transfer of technology” process. Agricultural research has focussed on technical issues, while it is now increasingly recognised that social and institutional innovations, together with an enabling policy environment, can be as important as technology in improving rural livelihoods.

NRI has been involved in work that:

• enables farmers to test and evaluate their own and other’s innovations through participatory approaches (e.g. joint learning with farmers in Southern Ethiopia.);
• works with private enterprise to develop innovations relevant to the needs of rural stakeholders (e.g. warehouse receipt systems in sub-Saharan Africa, microfinance services in Afghanistan, private delivery of extension services in Uganda, and rural input shops in northern Tanzania);
• uses a variety of media channels and partnerships to disseminate information and to develop skills (including the skills of farmers in articulating their demands); and
• identifies the policy changes, capacity development and institutional changes needed to improve innovation systems and make them pro-poor.

It is easy to forget the poor, such as these fishermen in Yemen, in moves towards commercialisation of natural resources. Instead their needs must be explicitly included at the design stage. © University of Greenwich

NRI has been at the forefront of the practical application, refinement and institutionalisation of farmer participatory approaches to agricultural innovation and making agricultural research more client-led and relevant to farmers’ needs.

 

New approaches promote the active involvement of farmers in innovation processes, and develop or build on partnerships between farmers, the private sector, NGOs and government organisations to produce solutions that can respond quickly to markets and to localised situations. The Agricultural Innovation Systems approach draws on the innovation systems concept used by researchers to explain patterns of past economic performance in industrialised countries and participatory research and community empowerment approaches that have been developing since the 1970s. The innovation systems approach emphasises the linkages between actors, covering the spectrum from producers through processing and marketing to consumers, and re-orientates research towards development outcomes. An example is NRI’s work (in partnership with ICRISAT) with stakeholders in Nepal to improve livelihoods through the integration of new chickpea production systems.

NRI has been at the forefront of the conceptual development of the agricultural innovation systems approach, through involvement in forums such as the World Bank workshops on innovation in 2004 and 2007.

NRI has been involved in operationalising innovation systems approaches through facilitating partnerships and linkages between farmers organisations and other actors; and helping to ensure the social acceptability, sustainability and community benefits of innovations in different parts of the developing world (e.g. farmer research groups in Tanzania, micro-finance self-help groups in Afghanistan and bio-pesticides production in Nepal).

Lack of trade finance is a common constraint to agricultural development in Africa, and solving it requires innovative institutional arrangements. The Warehouse Receipt System (WRS) is an agricultural marketing innovation, which encompasses trade finance, based on inventory collateralisation and warehouse receipts, and provides smallholder producers and other players with opportunities to access lucrative markets with shortened marketing chains. Producers may also be given training covering production through to marketing. NRI has been promoting WRS to develop agricultural markets, especially grain, coffee, cotton and other durable crops. Since the 1990s, we have studied different WRS models worldwide, and have promoted a model in various African countries that is accessible to smallholder farmers as well as large-scale players such as traders and processors. In Zambia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe banks are now familiar with lending to producer groups on the basis of warehoused stocks, and default on repayments has been minimal.

The benefits of WRSs are illustrated by primary coffee producer groups in Tanzania that were able to access remunerative markets through retaining ownership of their coffee (stored and cured by curing factories) up to the auction point of sale. Similarly, cotton producers in Tanzania and Uganda earned higher incomes than producers outside the WRS, by grading their lint and cotton seed and thereby selling it for higher prices. In some seasons, producer groups were able to directly negotiate deals with cotton exporters, based on the credibility of the warehouse receipts issued by warehouse managers.

Establishment of WRSs has stimulated further innovations by producers and service providers. For example, in Tanzania members of one cotton producers group substantially increased the planted area and yields between 2002/03 and 2005/06; and in Zimbabwe, a system which allows coffee producers to access production credit enabled one group to increase both yields and quality. In Zambia, service provider innovations have included the piloting of a Weather Indexed Insurance scheme; and a fertiliser company introducing some of its farmers to the WRS, thereby establishing a linkage between marketing and productivity-enhancing input supplies.

An effective Agricultural Innovation System requires a cadre of professionals with a new skill set and mind set (markets, agribusiness, intellectual property law, rural institutions, rural microfinance, facilitation, system analysis, conflict management…). This implies the need for research and development organisations to re-skill, and the need for the reform of University curricula to include innovation systems principles, skills and case studies.

Facilitating understanding between producers and traders is a component of effective innovation systems, as here in north-east Afghanistan © University of Greenwich

NRI is working to assist the re-skilling and re-orientation of agricultural R&D organisations in Africa to develop and support multi-stakeholder partnerships, through programmes such as SCARDA (Strengthening Capacity for Research and Development in Africa); and to reform the curriculum for agricultural advisory services in Uganda, with Makerere University, to meet the challenge of providing graduates with the skills and attitudes required to facilitate successful agricultural innovation. Through links with pan-African and regional research organisations, NRI is also influencing the policy environment to create more conducive conditions for agricultural innovation.

NRI is also facilitating links between local and national levels and between extension and research that enable multi-stakeholder partnerships to flourish and to draw on information and services to make them effective. An example is a project called “Linking the demand and supply of agricultural information for smallholder farmers” conducted in partnership with research and extension services, NGOs and farmer groups in Uganda.

Farmer groups in Arua District of Uganda building a store for their produce so that they can market on a collective basis. © University of Greenwich

This project identified constraints to information flows both to and from farmers through a range of intermediaries, including the private agricultural advisory service providers (http://www.naads.or.ug/publicationLists.php?category=Linking%20Newsletters). The work has influenced policy on the format and content of dissemination materials, and the training of private service providers so that they are better able to facilitate and serve the needs of different types of farmers throughout the value chain, from production through processing to marketing.

Agricultural innovation systems thinking is evolving. NRI is contributing to that evolution at both intellectual and practical levels, and is interested in partnerships with southern and northern partners that would assist that process.

Useful links and publications:

• www.innovationafrica.net
• www.prolinnova.net
• www.innovationstudies.org
• Douthwaite B. 2001. Enabling Innovation: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Fostering Technological Change. London and New York: Zed Books.
• Pound B. 2007. Widening the Definition of Capacity to Respond to the Innovations Systems Approach. Paper presented at the RUFORUM Biennial Conference on “Building Scientific and Technical Capacity through Graduate Training and Agricultural Research in African Universities”, held at the Sun ‘N’ Sand Hotel, Malawi: 23-27 April 2007. Chatham, UK: Natural Resources Institute
• Waters-Bayer A, van Veldhuizen L, Wongtschowski M and Wettasinha C. 2006. Recognizing and enhancing local innovation processes. Paper presented at the Innovation Africa Symposium, Kampala, 21-23 Nov 2006. PROLINNOVA. (Paper can be accessed through www.innovationafrica.net)
• World Bank. 2007. Enhancing Agricultural Innovation: how to go beyond the strengthening of research systems.  Washington: World Bank. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTARD/Resources/EnhancingAgInnovationebook.pdf