Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Smallholders in Asia and Africa are affected by increasingly complex national and global ecological and economic changes. Agricultural innovation and technology shifts are critical among these forces of change and integration with services is increasingly facilitated through innovations in institutions. Here we focus mainly on innovation opportunities for small farmers, with a particular emphasis on marginalized small farm communities. The chapter elaborates on the concept of the ‘small farm’ and offers a synthesis of the findings of all the chapters in this volume. The contributions have reconfirmed that sustainable intensification among smallholders is not just another optimization problem for ensuring higher productivity with less environmental impact. Rather it is a complex task of creating value through innovations in the institutional, organizational and technological systems of societies.

There is increasing consensus that institutional innovations are just as important for development as technological innovations. Polycentric systems are social systems of many autonomous decision centers operating under an overarching set of rules. The rural poor hold positions in polycentric systems, which are marginalized as a result of poverty, exclusion and degraded environments. Horizontal and vertical position changes by means of technological and institutional innovations within polycentric systems create escape routes from marginality. Productivity growth in agriculture through technological innovations is one way to enhance the wellbeing of the rural poor. Sustainable productivity growth, however, also requires institutional innovations. This contribution shows pathways for escaping marginality by means of technological and institutional innovations in polycentric systems.

Achieving food and nutrition security (FNS) is a priority in developing countries. One of the key routes to achieve a resilient global food system and improved FNS requires a reorientation of relevant policies. Among them, policies associated with the creation, adoption and adaptation of technologies, knowledge and innovations and with their related institutional adjustments are key factors to counter the complex and evolving challenges of the global food system. In line with this notion, the objectives of this chapter are severalfold. First, we discuss the main features of innovations for FNS. Second, we describe the impact of innovations on FNS using the examples of new platform and traditional technology. Third, this chapter elaborates on the views of a variety of stakeholders concerning the impacts of technological and institutional innovations, as well as the future priorities of FNS innovation.

Innovation, creativity and novelty-seeking are being driven by particular states of mind and unique, differentiated socio-cultural needs. This chapter identifies the conditions that drive innovation and when the capacities that enable innovation might get marred in individuals. The focus here is on understanding the behavioral characteristics of the inventor and the psychological mechanisms that guide innovation. Creativity could be a starting point for innovation; the question as to whether this is a necessary condition, and further whether it is a sufficient or insufficient one, is looked into from a managerial, legal and, most importantly, psychological standpoint. A number of perspectives from within psychology that have attempted to address the dynamics that guide creativity and innovation are discussed. Finally, the chapter poses questions that are a primer for addressing psychosocial quandaries around innovations as a mechanism for change for the rural poor.

The rural poor are marginalized and restricted from access to markets, public services and information, mainly due to poor connections to transport and communication infrastructure. Despite these unfavorable conditions, agricultural technology investments are believed to unleash unused human and natural capital potentials and eleviate poverty through productivity growth in agriculture. Based on the concept of marginality, we develop a theoretical model which shows that these expectations for productivity growth are conditional on human and natural capital stocks and transaction costs. Policy recommendations for segment and location specific investments are provided. Theoretical findings indicate that adjusting rural infrastructure and institutions to reduce transaction costs is a more preferable investment strategy than adjusting agricultural technologies to marginalized production conditions.

BRAC is a global leader in creating large-scale opportunities for the poor. This chapter describes how small farmer innovations are being developed by BRAC Agriculture and Food Security program. In collaboration with the Government and the International Agricultural Research Centers, the program aims to achieve food security and reduce hunger and malnutrition through increased environmentally sustainable agricultural production systems. The research focus is on cereal crops (rice and maize), vegetables and oilseeds. The program is currently implementing several innovative projects targeted at small farmers. BRAC is the largest market player, especially in hybrid seed (rice and maize) production and distribution in Bangladesh, and is gradually expanding to other countries, including Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Nepal and Haiti.

Agricultural innovation systems require strong linkage between research and extension organizations in particular, and among the various actors engaged in the agricultural sector in general. In the context of Ethiopia and the Amhara regional state, the agricultural research and extension system is characterized by a large number of actors in a fragmented and underdeveloped innovation system, resulting in very low national and regional innovation capacities. Farmers are generally viewed as passive recipients of technology. As a result, research outputs do not reach farmers and remain shelved in research centers. Instead, research and extension need to take place within interlinked, overlapping and iterative processes. This chapter reviews past initiatives to bring about integration among these actors to identify areas for improvement.

There is a considerable shortage of improved seed in Ethiopia. Despite good reasons to invest in this market, private sector investments are not occurring. Using an institutional economics theoretical framework, this chapter analyzes the formal Ethiopian seed system and identifies transaction costs to find potential starting points for institutional innovations. Analyzing data from more than 50 expert interviews conducted in Ethiopia, it appears that transaction costs are high along the whole seed value chain and mainly born by the government, as public organizations dominate the Ethiopian seed system, leaving little room for the private sector. However, recent direct marketing pilots are a signal of careful efforts towards market liberalization.

The rapid spread of mobile phones across the developing world offers opportunities to improve service delivery for smallscale farmers. International and local companies have already started to capitalize on these opportunities although many mobile phone-enabled services are still at an early stage. Kenya has emerged as a leader in m-service development in Sub-Saharan Africa. This chapter assesses the key factors that have helped the local innovation scene to emerge and reviews existing agricultural m-services that provide Kenyan farmers with access to information and learning, financial services, and input and output markets. The potential impact of m-services is illustrated with the example of the price and marketing service M-Farm. Finally, the chapter assesses current mobile technology trends to offer an outlook on potential future applications.

The generation of innovations has traditionally been attributed to research organizations and the farmer’s own potential for the development of innovative solutions has largely been neglected. In this chapter, we explore the innovativeness of farmers in Upper East Ghana. To this end, we employ farmer innovation contests for the identification of local innovations. Awards such as motorcycles function as an incentive for farmers to share innovations and develop new practices. The impact of Farmer Field Fora is evaluated by matching non-participants to participants using propensity scores of observable characteristics. The results indicate that farmers do actively generate and test innovative practices to address prevalent problems. Moreover, this innovative behavior can be further stimulated by Farmer Field Fora, which were tested to significantly and positively affect innovation generation.