Dairy farmers in the northern regions of New Zealand expressed widespread dissatisfaction with the performance and persistence of their pastures following drought conditions in 2007/08. Farmers were becoming disillusioned with the practice of renewing pasture as a means to introduce modern perennial ryegrass cultivars in their paddocks. This paper describes the formation and operation of an innovation network, consisting of private and public sector actors, that was formed in 2010 to improve the quality and consistency of advice provided to farmers.
The focus of this paper is on how the institutional arrangements within the on-farm sector of the New Zealand dairy industry influence industry participants and encourage them to be innovative, in the context of industry productivity goals. The authors will present and discuss an approach to policy systems analysis that facilitates shared understanding between system participants and enables strategies for change to be identified.
Primary Innovation is a five year collaborative initiative demonstrating and evaluating co-innovation, a systemic approach to innovation addressing complex problems, in five ‘innovation projects’ (active case studies) in different agricultural industries. In defining the elements of co-innovation, Primary Innovation has emphasised nine principles which guide activity in the innovation projects.
This paper describes a process for stimulating this engagement to develop a shared understanding of systemic problems, challenge prevalent institutional logics, and identify individual and collective actions that change agents might undertake to stimulate system innovation. To achieve this the process included (i) multiple actors from the agricultural innovation systems, (ii) steps to prompt reflexivity to challenge underlying institutional logics, (iii) an iterative process of practical experimentation to challenge current practices, and (iv) actions to encourage generative collaboration.
This study identifies systemic problems in the New Zealand Agricultural Innovation System (AIS) in relation to the AIS capacity to enact a co-innovation approach, in which all relevant actors in the agricultural sector contribute to combined technological, social and institutional change. Systemic problems are factors that negatively influence the direction and speed of co-innovation and impede the development and functioning of innovation systems. The contribution in the paper is twofold.
In this paper its argued that when flexibly applied and adapted to capture dynamics typical in systems innovation projects, the Log Frame Approach (LFA) ( and logical frameworks have considerable utility to support evaluation for both learning and accountability, and for identifying and addressing institutional logics, which leads to system innovation.
In this article it is analysed the results of applying a co-innovation approach to five research projects in the New Zealand primary sector. The projects varied in depth and breadth of stakeholder engagement, availability of ready-made solutions, and prevalence of interests and conflicts. The projects show how and why co-innovation approaches in some cases contributed to a shared understanding of complex problems. Our results confirm the context-specificity of co-innovation practices
This Charter defines the general conditions and obligations of the Tropical Agriculture Platform (TAP) and its Partners, and sets forth the governance structure for voluntary cooperation by TAP Partners.
Based on three regional needs assessments, a strategic Action Plan has been formulated and adopted by the Partner Assembly of the Tropical Agriculture Platform (TAP), held in China in September 2013. It defines the outcomes, outputs and activities of TAP, which are considered instrumental for facilitating effective and sustainable Capacity Development for Agricultural Innovation Systems in tropical areas.
This paper provides background information and introduce the topics of the conference "Innovation systems for food security and nutrition: understanding the capacities needed". Organized by the Tropical Agriculture Platform, the conference aimes at bringing together the issues of capacity development, agricultural innovation, and food security and nutrition with the objective of developing recommendations for policy-making.