Farmers,institutions and technology in agricultural change processes: outcomes from Adaptive Research on rice production in Sulawesi,Indonesia

International agricultural research centres use approaches which aim to create effective linkages between the practices of farmers, introduced technologies and the wider environment that affects farming. This paper argues that such new approaches require a different type of monitoring as a complement to conventional approaches that tend to favour a quantitative assessment of adoption and impact at the farm level. In this context, we examined monitoring data from an Adaptive Research (AR) project highlighting complementary qualitative analysis. Our emphasis is to capture the improvisational capacities of farmers and to reveal social and institutional constraints and opportunities in a broader innovation system. Our approach provided clear insights into how rice farmers adjusted their practices and how actors involved linked (or not) with others in the innovation system. We also demonstrated how institutions such as policies, religious rituals or service provider arrangements pose conditions that establish or constrain practices aligned with introduced technologies. A broader perspective in monitoring AR therefore provides important additional insights into the factors which shape outcomes in farming communities. To expand outcomes, AR projects should also pay attention to designing and testing new institutional arrangements that create enabling conditions for agricultural innovation.     

Greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation potential from fertilizer manufacture and application in India

Crop management research is increasingly involving farmers in evaluating new technologies, identifying adoption constraints and opportunities for improving farm performance to produce more sustainable impact. ICRISAT and its partners worked with farmers in Malawi and Zimbabwe during the 1999/2000 and 2000/2001 seasons to evaluate a range of ‘best bet’ soil fertility and water management technologies and evaluate the impact of farmer participatory research. Although there was some variation in methods implemented at different sites, the study found that there is a basis for a comparison of methods. Community entry and participatory approaches that engage farmers in decision making throughout the research-development-diffusion-innovation process have higher setup costs compared to traditional ‘top-down’ approaches. But they improve efficiency, both in technology development and in building farmers' capacity for experimentation and collective learning. This results in the development of more relevant technologies, joint learning among farmers, researchers and extensionists and better impact. To make farmer participatory research projects more sustainable and introduce them on a wide scale, the study recommends that public and NGO investments be targeted to building district and village-level innovation clusters.     

Farmer participation in a climate-smart future: Evidence from the Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project

Smallholder agricultural carbon market projects have potential to achieve climate-smart agriculture (CSA), a “triple-win” for food security, climate change mitigation, and adaptation. Farmer participation is critical for achieving widespread impact, yet their adoption of sustainable land management practices is constrained by eligibility, willingness, and ability to participate. This research examines how the Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project enabled smallholder participation, with results emphasizing the importance of institutional conditions and farmers’ perceptions. Findings highlight the necessity of international collaborations and high levels of synergistic coordination. Building social capital and adopting participatory learning approaches are strategies that can increase participation and create inclusive climate-smart agriculture projects.     

Joint problem framing in sustainable land use research: Experience with Constellation Analysis as a method for inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge integration

Land use is an important field of interest regarding sustainability transformations. Research projects which deal with the multiple dimensions of sustainable land use usually apply an inter- and transdisciplinary design and are confronted with challenges of integrating heterogeneous knowledge.In this paper we refer to experience we had during the ELaN project, which followed a systemic approach by linking research on water and land management. Due to this relatively uncommon approach it was necessary to bring together scientists and practical actors as well as distributed knowledge from different areas of expertise. Considering the heterogeneity of the actors it was of great importance to establish a shared understanding of the research problem the project was to deal with during the initial phase. For this step the method of Constellation Analysis (CA) was applied: a visualisation and analysis tool which aims at joint problem framing by focusing on the dominant elements of a social-ecological problem and their relations in a discursive process. Due to the size of the project team and the necessity to involve a broad range of actors, a group of scientists led the iterative process and prepared CA drafts which were validated by practitioners. This design can be categorised as ‘consulting’ rather than ‘participatory’ transdisciplinarity. Proceeding this way can be seen as a compromise between more intense forms of transdisciplinary exchange and forms that are manageable when considering time and resource constraints in third-party funded projects.CA has proven to be a suitable tool for organising processes of mutual understanding between heterogeneous actors and fostering social integration in inter- and transdisciplinary research groups. In ELaN the main benefit of the process was an adjustment and enrichment of problem framing which was formulated in the project proposal thus contributing to integrated system knowledge as a basis for the interdisciplinary project consortium and involved practitioners. The insights gained during this process led to changes in the design of some of the sub-projects as well as the targeted end products. This experience confirms the importance of a structured process of joint problem framing in inter- and transdisciplinary projects, especially for thematic fields of such high complexity as land use research.     

浅析科研机构科研项目管理工作

我国提出实施创新驱动发展战略以来,科研事业的发展势头良好,科研项目管理也成为科技创新的一项重要工作内容。本文阐述了科研项目管理工作的概念及重要性,分析了科研项目管理工作对科研项目管理人员以及科研机构的要求,指出了科研项目管理工作中存在的问题,并给出了若干建议。     

Participatory determinants of innovation and their impact on plantain production systems in Cameroon

Current statistics question the capacity of food-crop production to meet the challenges of food security in Central Africa. However, for local food crops like plantain, the potential for improving productivity is very high. In response to this challenge, after identification of the most serious constraints, an interdisciplinary team used participatory research and action-research tools to try and speed up the adoption of technical innovation by farmers. The project began in 1990 in South-West Province and subsequently expanded to include 100 plantain producers and 60 extension technicians in the Central and Southern Provinces of Cameroon. The approach used produced satisfactory results as far as the adoption and dissemination of methods of multiplication and cleaning of planting material were concerned but there was resistance to new cropping practices involving intercrops and crop rotation. The project resulted in major technical changes in plantain production systems in Cameroon that not only increased productivity and food security but also reduced deforestation showing that sustainable intensification is possible in sub-Saharan Africa.     

Understanding how participatory approaches foster innovation

Adapting through innovation is one way for rural communities to sustain and improve their livelihoods and environments. Since the 1980s research and development organizations have developed participatory approaches to foster rural innovation. This paper develops a model, called the Learning-to-Innovate (LTI) model, of four basic processes linked to decision making and learning which regulate rate and quality of innovation. The processes are: creating awareness of new opportunities; deciding to adopt; adapting and changing practice; and learning and selecting. The model is then used to analyse four participatory approaches and the model is evaluated through the quality of insights generated. It shows that, while outwardly very different, the four approaches are built from combinations of 11 strategies. Most of these strategies are aimed at providing information about new opportunities and deciding whether to adopt, and give less support to the other two processes, thus suggesting one way the four participatory approaches can be strengthened. Beyond analysing participatory approaches, the model could be used as a framework for diagnosing the health of local innovation systems and designing tailor-made approaches to strengthen them.     

The importance of ecological and socio-technological literacy in R&D priority setting: the case of a fruit innovation system in Guinea,West Africa

The introduction of farmer participatory approaches over the past decades has to some extent improved the relevance and uptake of research results. While R&D prioritization increasingly involves more stakeholders, including the private sector, policymakers and civil society, building ecological literacy among all stakeholders is urgent, especially for sustainable agricultural development. A case study of an emerging fruit innovation system in Guinea, West Africa, highlights the challenges of supply- and demand-driven approaches to R&D prioritization. Shallow ecological knowledge and a blind faith in ‘modern’ technologies by scientists and farmers alike distort prioritization. Locally available, appropriate technologies are dismissed in favour of high technologies that are inaccessible to most smallholder growers. Strengthening the ecological literacy of all stakeholders may help to overcome this bias. On the other hand, building socio-technological literacy would allow innovation intermediaries, who typically act as brokers between the demand- and supply-side of technologies, to better understand the social and institutional contexts of technologies and how these affect potential uptake by poor farmers. Member centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) could use the notion of ecological and socio-technological literacy to better understand supply and demand of technology and to work more effectively with their partners towards pro-poor and sustainable agricultural development.     

A social networks approach for strengthening participation in technology innovation: lessons learnt from the Mount Elgon region of Kenya and Uganda

Participatory approaches to agricultural technology development have not yet fully lived up to their promise to incorporate farmer knowledge. This paper introduces a social networks approach (SNA) to improve participatory research processes for co-innovation. Drawing upon findings from a collaborative project developing conservation agricultural production systems for smallholders in western Kenya and eastern Uganda, the paper explores farmer support networks to improve participation in technological innovation and development. Key research themes include: identifying farmers’ agricultural production networks; the local articulation of agricultural production networks and mindsets; using networks to facilitate meaningful participation in technology development; and disadvantages and advantages of using a social network approach. The introduction of SNA improved participatory research by building external and internal legitimacy for determining who participates, discouraging participatory attrition, and providing a meaningful forum for participation of all stakeholders. As a result, the introduction of SNA is demonstrated to show strong promise for improving processes of participatory technology development in agriculture.     

从以专家为主导到以农民为主导的实地研究

参与式理念已经成功地应用于许多农业发展项目,在农业研究项目中我们尝试应用以农民为主导的实地研究方法。在外来者的参与下,由农民讨论和制定研究计划,由农民实施和管理研究项目。实践证明,以农民为主导的实地研究,完全符合当地的自然和社会条件,产生了良好的社会经济效益。     

Learning through practice? Learning from the REDD+ demonstration project,Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership (KFCP) in Indonesia

Despite a growing recognition of the importance of social learning in governing and managing land use, the understanding and practice of learning has received limited attention from researchers. In global environmental programs and projects aimed at supporting sustainable land use in developing countries, learning is often promoted but without explicit learning goals. The focus may be on capacity building and community participation, and on testing policy tools, rather than on collaborative social learning. In this study, we looked behind the rhetoric of learning in the Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership (KFCP), a large demonstration project for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) in Indonesia. The novelty of such mechanisms, linked to international forest carbon outcomes, means that learning lessons provides a rationale for REDD+ pilot activities. We used a qualitative approach to examine the nature and type of learning that occurred in the KFCP. While the stated project aims were to support policy experimentation and apply learning, the project design was highly technical, and project decision-making did not explicitly encourage joint problem solving. Despite the project’s shortcomings, we identified that learning did occur by the end of the project in ways that were different to the initial goals. Our findings suggest that flexibility and openness in project design and implementation can enable different local actors to define shared learning agendas in ways that are meaningful for them. Designing and implementing environmental projects, and learning goals within them, should attend to the needs and aspirations of those who will have to live with their long-term consequences. Learning should be integrated into international environmental programs and projects at all levels, including for policy and funding bodies, rather than focusing on local capacity building and similar project ‘benefits’. Interviewees’ eagerness to learn suggests that building approaches to social learning into program design has the potential to yield opportunities for learning beyond REDD+ to other forms of policy experimentation and governance innovations.     

Innovation context and technology traits explain heterogeneity across studies of agricultural technology adoption: A meta-analysis

Despite a wealth of case-specific insights from agricultural adoption studies, we lack systematic evidence on which technology characteristics matter for adoption across different innovation contexts. We synthesise the results of 304 quantitative farm-level adoption studies for a wide range of agricultural innovations across more than 60 countries using multi-level meta regression. Our results show that land, capital and knowhow are generally more important when an innovation uses the respective factor intensively, but this effect is reduced in contexts where the factor is abundant. Our findings have implications for the design of rural development and agricultural extension programmes. Both should consider the interplay of geographic context and innovation characteristics to develop more effective sustainable intensification strategies.     

Lessons learned: an evaluation of land administration initiatives in Latin America over the past two decades

Latin America has a long and rich history of land administration projects stretching back to the 1980s and beyond. Unfortunately, this history has not been systematically analyzed nor recorded but is buried in a myriad of reports and other gray literature. Currently, almost every country in the region has a land administration project, incorporating cadastral reform, that is either in preparation or being implemented. It is therefore timely to consider what lessons have been learned from previous experience, in the region and elsewhere, and more specifically how this experience can inform current efforts. This paper starts with a summary of a recent World Bank/USAID initiative to compile lessons learned from land administration projects around the world and follows with the author's view of lessons learned in the context of project design, institutional reform and technical innovation.     

Policy, technology, and management strategies for achieving sustainable agricultural intensification

Considerable agreement exists among researchers, development practitioners, and policymakers regarding the goals of sustainable agricultural intensification (SAI). They include: achieving agricultural productivity growth, household food security, and improved rural livelihoods and employment, while simultaneously mitigating environmental degradation. However, the multiplicity of these objectives, as well as the choice of approaches to achieving them and the site‐ and context‐specificity of specific technological and institutional interventions, assures that the research and policy challenges to achieving SAI will remain considerable. This article summarizes the contributions of the articles in this Special Issue in four areas of the literature. First, labor market constraints, the labor intensity of specific agricultural technologies and practices, and labor's substitutability, or complementarity, with other inputs are shown to widely influence their viability and related input efficiencies. Second, the articles identify specific tradeoffs and synergistic relationships that arise in the attainment of these multiple goals stemming from technologies, management practices, and policies introduced under specific agroclimatic, market, and institutional conditions. Third, these papers contribute to the literature on agricultural technology adoption by furnishing additional empirical evidence on the determinants and effects of investment behavior and adoption of specific technologies and management practices. Finally, the articles in this Special Issue emphasize that there is no single policy nor technological, management, or institutional innovation that unambiguously promotes SAI. Preferred policies must be contextualized and sensitive to initial biophysical, market, and institutional conditions.     

提高林草科技实效性的思考

分析制约林草科技实效性的五大因素,包括研究对象、资金投入、人才队伍、体制机制、硬件条件因素;提出了把握林草科技四大原则即需求导向原则、持续推进原则、注重协同原则和人才为重原则;深入推进体制机制创新即优化林草科技管理体制、构建以激励为导向的林草科研评价机制、构建以企业为主导的协同创新机制;加快人才队伍建设;完善推广体系;加强支撑条件建设;加大科技创新投入等科研管理若干建议。     

Facilitating collaboration in forest management: Assessing the benefits of collaborative policy innovations

Collaborative governance and landscape approaches have become a more prevalent in public land management in the United States in the face of increasing ecological and societal complexity and decreasing government resources and capacity. In this era of devolution and social-ecological change, there is a growing need for policy approaches that facilitate partnerships and participatory approaches to land management. One unique policy that emphasizes collaboration and large-landscape restoration on US federal forestlands is the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP), established in 2009 to accelerate the pace and scale of forest restoration. The policy included novel characteristics such as a decade-long commitment to landscapes and formal requirements for collaboration. This program presented an opportunity to assess how this policy affected collaboration and the factors that led to differential policy implementation. We conducted 89 interviews across all 23 CFLRP projects with internal agency staff and external collaborators on each project. We found that the CFLRP generated a variety of benefits related to collaboration, including increased trust and stronger relationships, increased collaborative partner influence, decreased litigation and conflict, and increased capacity to accomplish work; however, there were also challenges associated with the program, including thetime-intensive nature of collaboration and the lack of industry or contractors. Various local factors affected collaborative outcomes under the policy, including staff turnover and capacity, local leadership, and collaborative history. Successful collaborative outcomes were widespread under the CFLRP, and from this, we draw implications for the broader environmental governance literature about the policy characteristics that facilitate collaboration and the other institutional variables that may require attention in this context.     

Customary land allocation,urbanization and land use planning in Ghana: Implications for food systems in the Wa Municipality

Food insecurity remains persistent in the Global South due to constraints in food production capacities and intricate land tenure systems that stifle investment in agriculture. In the urbanized regions, uncontrolled urbanization and non-compliant land use systems have further worsened the potentials for urban food production. This research is based on a case study of the Wa Municipality in order to assess the influences of customary land allocation and peri-urbanization on land use planning and foods systems in Ghana using explorative and narrative research approaches. The study identified that customary stakeholders responsible for allocating such lands in the Wa Municipality were indiscriminately converting large tracts of hitherto agricultural lands to urban land uses. Statutorily prepared land use plans are hardly enforced and the planning priorities are on residential and commercial land uses that command higher land values to the detriment of agricultural lands. Weak institutional linkages also characterize the mandated planning and land administration institutions, with a planning system that is reactive rather than proactive in addressing development control challenges across the country. There is the need for planning authorities to adopt participatory land uses planning together with customary landholders and educating them on the essence of comprehensive land use planning approaches. Based on the findings, local governments need to partner landowners to identify and reserve high potential agricultural land for sustainable urban food production.     

Evaluating land administration projects in developing countries

There have been various approaches to evaluating and comparing the performance of land administration and land titling projects in developing countries. Many of these consider the efficiency of land administration processes and the capacity of institutions. This paper presents the results of research undertaken by the authors and considers the most common approaches taken to date, and the strengths and limitations of these approaches. The authors argue that improvements are needed to project design and make recommendations for more effective use of socio-economic analyses.     

Rural Policy Reform and Local Development Programmes: Appropriate Evaluation Procedures

As a result of various political and economic pressures, European policies that affect rural regions have evolved to become more local and participatory, reflecting diverse and rapidly changing circumstances. The experimental LEADER programme has attempted to instigate innovative responses to characteristic rural problems by focusing on very small districts and providing funding directly to local people and their representatives, and this has raised problems in assessing their impact and success in conventional terms. Few accurate statistics are available at such a disaggregated level, and the greater impact of external influences obscures quantitative relationships that could be investigated using conventional cost-benefit analysis. Several illustrative individual LEADER group evaluation studies are used to construct an account of the difficulties involved in use of project outcomes, targets and indicators to describe the qualitative changes resulting from local, integrated projects. The major approaches, of semi-structured in-depth interviews, participant observation and documentary analysis are considered and used to place evaluation in the theoretical context of Habermas's concept of communicative competence. It is concluded that evaluation should be integral to local rural development projects, and that whilst a range of investigative approaches have been used, in contrast there is scope for extension of the range of analytic approaches.     

Unpacking systemic innovation capacity as strategic ambidexterity: How projects dynamically configure capabilities for agricultural innovation

Problems in agriculture and land use are increasingly recognised as complex, uncertain, operating at multiple levels (field to global value chains) and involving social, economic, institutional, and technological change. This has implications for how projects navigate complexity to achieve impact. However, few studies have systematically evaluated how project actors engage with other actors to configure capabilities and resources across multiple levels in agricultural innovation systems (AIS), from the individual to the network, to mobilise and build systemic innovation capacity. An analytical framework conceptualising the nested configuration of capabilities at multiple levels in the AIS is applied to two projects that successfully tackled agricultural and land management problems of differing complexity: (i) improving lamb survival; and (ii) sustainable land management in New Zealand. Findings indicate that innovation capacity constitutes project actors interacting with other AIS actors to configure capabilities and resources at different levels of the AIS in order to leverage positive project path dependencies and break path dependencies that are created by existing and historical capability configurations. Project actors also balance exploiting existing innovation capabilities, as well as using adaptive capability for exploring and creating new capability configurations to respond to emerging circumstances. This implies that projects should have strategic ambidexterity in terms of how they combine exploiting existing and exploring new networks to access, combine, create, or disconnect certain capabilities to address ‘capability voids’ in AIS. This requires support to projects to constantly scrutinise, through reflexive monitoring by dedicated facilitators, specific agriculture and land use policies connected to major sustainable development models (e.g. climate smart agriculture, urban farming, smart farming). The can help assess whether the AIS provides the right mix of capabilities and whether this is adequately supported by innovation policy, to realize transformative policy objectives.