A Multi-Criteria Scorecard Methodology for the Diagnosis of Agricultural Innovation Systems

Agricultural innovation is an essential component in achieving the SDG and accelerating the transition to more sustainable and resilient farming systems across the world. Innovations generally emerge from collective intelligence and action, which requires effective agricultural innovation systems (AIS). An AIS perspective has been widely adopted, but the analysis of AIS, especially at country level, remains a challenge. The need for and potential of a diagnostic tool for AIS analysis is currently receiving attention in the global agricultural policy debate. To a limited extent country-level data on AIS properties are available, but considerable gaps exists for systematic and comprehensive assessments. Existing aggregated data are often unspecific and fail to capture more system-and action-oriented properties. This requires that a tailored tool needs to be developed, which can enable countries to robustly and accurately assess characteristics of their AIS, while being relatively simple and low-cost to use. In this context, existing tools in other domains can provide important lessons. Mature assessment protocols exist for the evaluation of sustainability in agriculture, such as for example FAO's guidelines for Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture (SAFA) and the corresponding diagnostic tool called Sustainability Monitoring and Assessment RouTine (SMART). On that basis, the prospects of a multi-criteria scorecard methodology for the diagnosis of AIS are examined more closely

This paper was presented at the Conference of the International Consortium on Applied Bioeconomy Research (ICABR) at The World Bank, Washington DC