This Economic and Sector Work paper, “Enhancing Agricultural Innovation: How to Go Beyond the Strengthening of Research Systems,” was initiated as a result of the international workshop, “Development of Research Systems to Support the Changing Agricultural Sector,” organized by the Agriculture and Rural Development Department of the World Bank in June 2004 in Washington, DC.
Este libro, originalmente un documento de trabajo económico y sectorial del Banco Mundial, se inició como resultado de un taller internacional,“Desarrollo de sistemas de investigación para el apoyo a un cambiante sector agrícola”, que fue organizado por el Departamento de Agricultura y Desarrollo Rural del Banco Mundial en junio de 2004 en Washington, DC.
The Sourcebook is the outcome of joint planning, continued interest in gender and agriculture, and concerted efforts by the World Bank, FAO, and IFAD. The purpose of the Sourcebook is to act as a guide for practitioners and technical staff inaddressing gender issues and integrating gender-responsive actions in the design and implementation of agricultural projects and programs. It speaks not with gender specialists on how to improve their skills but rather reaches out to technical experts to guide them in thinking through how to integrate gender dimensions into their operations.
This sourcebook contributes to identifying, designing, and implementing the investments, approaches, and complementary interventions that appear most likely to strengthen Agricultural innovation systems (AIS) and to promote agricultural innovation and equitable growth. It emphasizes the lessons learned, benefits and impacts, implementation issues, and prospects for replicating or expanding successful practices. The information in this sourcebook derives from approaches that have been tested at different scales in different contexts.
This paper presents findings of an explorative case study that looked at 22 organisations identified as fulfilling an intermediary role in the Kenyan agricultural sector. The results show that these organisations fulfill functions that are not limited to distribution of knowledge and putting it into use. The functions also include fostering integration and interaction among the diverse actors engaged in innovation networks and working on technological, organisational and institutional innovation.
The agricultural innovation systems approach emphasizes the collective nature of innovation and stresses that innovation is a co-evolutionary process, resulting from alignment of technical, social, institutional and organizational dimensions. These insights are increasingly informing interventions that focus on setting up multi-stakeholder initiatives, such as innovation platforms and networks, as mechanisms for enhancing agricultural innovation, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
In the systems perspective on innovation, co-operation between several different types of actors is seen as key to successful innovation. Due to the existence of several gaps that hinder such effective co-operation, the scientific and policy literature persistently points at the need for intermediary organizations to fulfill bridging and brokerage roles. This paper aims to provide an overview of the insights from the literature on such ‘innovation brokers’, and to contribute to the literature by distilling lines of enquiry and providing insights on one of the lines identified.
The purpose of this article is to investigate effective reformism: strategies that innovation networks deploy to create changes in their environment in order to establish a more conducive context for the realization and durable embedding of their innovation projects. Using a case study approach, effective reformism efforts are analyzed in a technological innovation trajectory related to the implementation of a new poultry husbandry system and an organizational innovation trajectory concerning new ways of co-operation among individual farms to establish economies of scale.
Most cocoa farmers in Ghana do not adopt research recommendations because they cannot afford the cost, therefore, yields are low. Integrated pest management (IPM) technologies that rely on low external inputs were tried with a group of farmers. The technologies included using aqueous neem seed extracts to control capsids; removing diseased pods to reduce blackpod incidence; controlling mistletoes, epiphytes, weeds; and managing shade. Although yields increased significantly, adoption was constrained by technical, social and economic factors.
The purpose of this paper is to provide forward-looking recommendations for linking agriculture and nutrition by looking back over the 40 years since both nutrition and rural development began at the Bank in 1973. This paper sets out to explore whether what is currently being suggested has been attempted in the past; in what circumstances, with what sort of support or commitment, by what actors, and with what results.