Putting farmers at the centre of the agricultural research and innovation agenda

At the end of 2018, I was honoured to be awarded 'Development Agriculturalist of the Year' by the Tropical Agriculture Association, at a ceremony in London. The Award was given for an "Outstanding contribution to agricultural development", in particular for "championing the views of farmers and their organisations, placing them at the centre of the international agricultural research agenda".

The TAA is an excellent association, and its members have a huge range of experience in sustainable agricultural development. I would encourage everyone involved in sustainable agricultural development to join and benefit from participating in the Association! https://taa.org.uk/membership-levels/

My award acceptance speech, which addressed the importance of putting farmers and poor rural communities at the centre of the agricultural research and innovation agenda, has now been published by the TAA in their journal 'Ag4Dev' No. 37, Summer 2019, Agriculture for Development: Special issue on the 40th Anniversary of the TAA (pp 75-81), available to TAA members at https://taa.org.uk

That speech is reproduced here, with the permission of the TAA:

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Ladies and gentlemen, firstly, my sincere and heartfelt thanks to the TAA for this wonderful award, which I am truly thrilled and humbled to receive. I would also like to recognize the roles of all those who work so tirelessly for the Global Forum on Agricultural Research and Innovation, and in particular my colleagues in the very dedicated Secretariat. I would also give my personal deep thanks to friends and colleagues in TAA, in particular, Jim Waller, David Radcliffe, Andrew Bennett, Paul Harding, Keith Virgo, Elizabeth Warham and Yvonne Pinto, for all your support throughout my career.

In recognition of the award’s theme, I wanted to address the vital importance of putting smallholder farmers at the centre of agricultural research and innovation systems – and what this means in reality:

Sadly, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are still a long way from being met in all the areas impacted by, and on, agriculture. Poverty is falling globally, but most of the world’s poor are in the rural communities, often struggling to make a living and are those most ‘left-behind’ by development advances. Three-quarters of developing country farmers are smallholders, farming on less than one hectare. These are not just ‘productive units’, but real people with real lives, real constraints, deeply inter-woven with their communities and their environments and who are crying out for new opportunity.  Rural desperation, particularly among disaffected youth who see no future in farming, drives outmigration to the cities and beyond borders. Without real prospects elsewhere, rural desperation is replaced with urban destitution and societal breakdown. Rural communities are also facing huge disruptions: it is no coincidence that development need is greatest where protracted crises and conflicts are fed by rural desperation and displacement and that climate change impacts most on those with least resources. 

Feeding 11 billion people by the end of this century, will require significant and sustainable increases in productivity, reduction in waste and dietary change. However, under existing practices, productivity gains come at a cost: the expansion of farmed land and unsustainable practices are chronically damaging the environment. Agriculture is both a major cause of, and impacted by, climate change, and unsustainable practices are major causes of environmental degradation and species loss, competition for agricultural water use, poor diets and risks of widespread antimicrobial resistance. Lacking resources, smallholders are being pushed more and more into the fragile margins.

Knowledge and innovation are the essential keys to achieving sustainable agricultural and rural development. Agri-food research and innovation have played tremendous roles in enabling us to feed a growing population over the last 40–50 years, particularly through production of major cereals. However, productivity research is vital, but not in itself sufficient, to achieve the interlinked SDGs, and yield without environmental and socio-political sustainability is not sustainable. Innovation is urgently needed to diversify and sustainably intensify our agriculture and food systems towards multiple aims: nutrition, income, ecological sustainability, women’s empowerment, youth opportunity etc. and for agriculture to become climate-smart. These are knowledge-intensive processes, for which appropriate research and innovation are vital.

Fostering viable futures for smallholders means changing perceptions, in both urban consumers and rural communities, about the real value and cost of food and its production systems and bringing new visions and policies for integrated rural regeneration. We need to re-imagine our agricultural and rural systems, address the real human, environmental and health costs of unsustainable agriculture and food systems and offer our youth a new hope and a new future. To do so, we have to consider smallholder farmers as central and integral to the innovation system and engage directly with their realities, rather than seeing them as being the end of a dysfunctional and unaccountable technology chain.

Smallholders require a truly supportive environment with access to ideas, knowledge and the enabling resources needed to empower and implement their choices, to overcome constraints and grow themselves out of poverty and hunger. However, around the world many agri-food research and innovation systems are fragmented, disconnected and under-resourced, yet we are relying on these same systems to create answers to the enormous challenges of sustainable development. 

Systemic challenges:

Despite acknowledging the complexity of sustainability, agri-food research and innovation and their value and reward systems remain largely focused on single-entry-point technologies and assumptions of linear uptake pathways. While the analytical methods used divide complex ideas into simpler parts, too little attention is generally paid to synthesis – reaching complex ideas by starting from simple elements. Smallholder farmers are doing such syntheses every day – facing numerous and simultaneously interacting challenges and drawing on widely different forms of knowledge to adapt and innovate continually and manage risks each day. Our innovation systems have to get better at seeing things through the farmers’ eyes and their realities, rather than continually seeking ‘magic bullets’, and recognize the complex reality of farming and the diverse socio-economic contexts into which innovations are introduced.

Research and innovation are not static, but continually evolving processes. Hybrid maize was developed in 1877 but first became available in 1960. Bacillus thuringiensis was identified in 1901, but it took 107 years to be able to move the Bt gene into plants (Pardey, 2016). Nor is adoption by farmers instantaneous: even in the wealthy economy of the USA, hybrid maize, fertilizers and herbicides have each taken 25-30 years to reach full adoption (Figure 1) and only 5% of recently developed CGIAR varieties have so far been taken up into use. 

Figure 1: Maize technology uptake lags in the USA (Source Beddow, 2012, reproduced with permission from P Pardey)

Adoption rates for new technologies are particularly slow among smallholders. A lack of awareness and lack of resources are clear causes, but, as importantly, farmers are also acutely aware of the risks and trade-offs of any change in their trusted systems and need to build their own confidence in any new practices or technologies - a wrong move can destroy livelihoods or even lives. Moreover, innovations that are parachuted in and don't match the farmers own perceptions of need will fail to take root. Truly participatory research and farmer-to-farmer learning are vital here.

New technologies and innovations are happening far faster than we, as individuals and societies, can deal with them. To ensure they benefit smallholder farmers, we have to deal with the tensions that arise around innovations and their use. Who controls them? Are they trusted? Who is empowered by them? Who gains? Who loses? Are smallholders actually further impoverished by advances that may favour bigger competitors, or take away existing labour and income opportunities? Smallholder farmers’ access and rights to land, information, germplasm etc are an important part of the innovation mix.

In many contexts, research, extension, education and enterprise, whether public, private or civil, each happens in its own space, with its own drivers, targets and value systems, its own financing mechanisms, operating under non-integrated policies and competing with, or even opposing, others in different sectors. This incoherence also means that short-term local financial drivers tend to dominate over and above the greater purpose.

Moreover, the ‘two cultures’ of agricultural science and society have become disconnected, even toxically so in some areas such as GMOs, where public concerns are as much about trust as about safety. We have to bridge the gap between science and society; build greater awareness and societal demand for agri-food innovation and build greater openness - and perhaps a certain humility - in agricultural research, listening to the actual needs of its clients.

An end to linearity

Research and innovation are vital to creating new and sustainable futures, but we need to recognise the complexity of the environments involved. Assumptions of linear technology adoption, research-extension-farmer, are over-simplistic and fundamentally flawed. Linear approaches create a ‘waterfall’ effect, where progress in one element is reliant on separate and subsequent steps being taken by others to overcome successive blockages. In reality agricultural innovation is a complex multi-actor web (Figure 2), with multi-directional flows of knowledge and cycles of actions, i.e. webs of connection, sharing and action, rather than a linear flow of knowledge from the ‘experts’ to the farmers. They involve many entry points, with diverse cycles of action and learning occurring continually within these processes, constantly evolving new combinations of skills, knowledge and technologies. 

Figure 2: The complex web of agri-food innovation

1.   Getting the demand right

We have to better engage rural communities in shaping their own futures, as drivers of innovation. Without user demand, from consumers and producers, we will fail to deliver society’s needs. If we don’t directly involve the users of research products from the outset, then external innovations are less likely to be trusted or adopted and farmer’s knowledge won’t benefit others. Community-based foresight has proved helpful in engaging science with society. These processes help people to explore and imagine possible futures for their community and set out which of those they really desire. Once people ‘own’ their preferred vision of their future, then ‘backcasting’ of what innovations need to be developed now, to reach that desired future, brings much greater understanding and ownership of those decisions and innovations. 

Even so, huge disruptors will arise, both man-made and natural. The world is changing very fast, yet our attitudes are programmed by our pasts, rather than our futures. We have to recognise that change is the norm and work out together how to own and benefit from potential disruptors, ahead of time and resolve the best paths for action. 

2.   Farmer-centred innovation processes 

To resolve the chronic, and often institutionalized, gaps between the elements involved and reform our innovation systems towards sustainable development, we need to work in a more holistic and integrated way, ‘re-imagining’ the relationship between innovation and farmers. As Robert Chambers highlighted in “Farmer First” 30 years ago (Chambers et al., 1989), farmers are co-innovators, not passive recipients of innovations. Farmers are themselves innovating every single day and are deeply aware of their contexts and risks. We have to start respecting and recognizing that each actor has vital knowledge and roles, but none are sufficient for impact, without the mosaic of other actors that need to be involved in creating agri-food change.

This means changing the way we think and work, addressing concerns as seen by the system’s clients - farmers and consumers - and embedding innovation in the wider actions required for sustainable development impact. A true partnership is required between science and society that recognizes and addresses the needs, priorities and knowledge of smallholder farmers within integrated innovation systems and in a systems-based approach. 

Software development companies have addressed their complexity challenges by addressing problems simultaneously and with active mutual accountability for success. Agricultural innovation needs to urgently do the same.

3.   Adaptation and uptake

Public extension services have collapsed in many countries and those remaining often tend to be prescriptive rather than participatory in their delivery. ICTs, and the emergence of a new range of advisory service providers, open out many new ways of engaging communities. The space provided by the internet to bridge knowledge and connect with others transcends fixed institutions and provides immense scope for enabling change and creating new enterprises. These are early days, but the information revolution is changing the face and pace of agricultural innovation around the world. Nonetheless, if we don’t provide the right enabling environment, and rights basis, for innovations to be equitably and effectively accessed and used by smallholders and poor communities, then they will be disempowered and disadvantaged and become further ‘left behind’.

4.   Enterprise and returns

Farmers of any scale are entrepreneurs. Innovation opportunities for smallholders lie not just in productivity and sale of primary produce, but all along the value chain: reducing drudgery, processing/value addition, income redistribution, storage/shipment/packaging and reducing losses and waste. New knowledge and technologies can bring value back down the chain to smallholders and small towns and foster new enterprises, service industries, new rural livelihoods and sustainable systems. Knowledge and true partnership are central to creating such change and ICTs will enable the next revolution.  Through access to the internet, the fastest growth in the UK economy now is in the ruralcommunities. 

Investing in smallholder-focused innovation

By speaking for themselves, rather than through articulated public demand, agri-food research and innovation often fail to make the political case that they are valuable investments. Countries are simply not making the essential investments required in their own future food security and food sovereignty. For example in Africa, public investment is often well below even the 1% of agricultural GDP that FAO member countries determined should be re-invested into research and is even now showing an overall decline (Figure 3). Private sector research has grown, particularly in plant breeding and other areas with market returns. However, smallholders have few resources to invest directly in costly inputs and are highly risk-aware in their adoption.

Figure 3: Percentage of Agriculture GDP reinvested in R&D in different countries (Agricultural research intensity ratios) (Source: Beintema and Stads, 2017, reproduced with authors' permission)

Too often, research investments are poorly integrated with other investments required - in capacities, infrastructure, access, transformation, enterprise development or micro-finance/insurance - to enable uptake and use by smallholder farmers and family enterprises. While funding agencies, and institutions, often seek direct attribution of development impact from specific research investments, the reality is that success also requires investment in many other partners and actions across the innovation system. To deliver impact at scale, innovation investments must be integrated much more coherently with rural development investments from the outset, getting away from dysfunctional linear systems and silo thinking. This means linkage with sustainable development policy commitments and investments at scale, and with those providing access to the inputs and resources required to deliver impacts across thousands of small farmers.

This seems commonsense, yet funding agencies and governments often still think and act in silos, investing in specific institutions and sectors, with little responsibility or accountability, even within single agencies, as to how the pieces join up. This is a significant structural constraint. While it may seem simpler to manage single elements financially, projects that do not generate local capacities to sustain the work or lack the enabling elements required for longer-term impact have led to many dead-end outcomes.

New institutional behaviours

The institutions involved, whether public, private or civil, are both a problem and a solution. We create institutions to deliver ways and rules of working coherently, yet the physical and mental bounds, behaviours and attitudes enshrined in institutions are also those which become ‘institutionalised’ and prevent us from working together more effectively. The world has changed, and institutions need to change with it, to meet the emerging needs of farmers, youth, women, enterprise, and civil society. Institutions in all sectors need to evolve fast to become better valued by their own societies, or they will fail.

Why do institutions struggle to change? Because people are inherently defensive, through fear of personal risks to their perceived power, or status, or even their jobs. Defensiveness becomes institutionalized into ossified systems and inflexible behaviours, unable to change and adapt, even to the extent where the perceived need for survival of an institution can assume a greater importance than the successful delivery of its mission.  However, real and equitable partnership with other sectors can bring about a new purpose and direction, new synergies and above all a new value.

The importance of Collective Actions

The best way to bring about sustainable change is by actually working together, creating an inclusive environment that enables people to openly share ideas and perspectives, challenge each other constructively and gain the excitement and energy of thinking and working in new ways. If we do not each have the courage to question our own roles and purpose, then nothing will change. If we don’t change the system now, break down boundaries and open out institutionalized silos so that knowledge and innovation can truly flow between actors, then we will not meet those SDGs. In fact, we will not get anywhere near them. 

By simultaneously addressing all required dimensions of the innovation web concerned, collective movements can bring far swifter change and greater impact than working within isolated institutions. Elinor Ostrom (1990), the Nobel Prize winning economist, showed that collective actions require catalysts of change; key champions who will stand up and make a difference in how we think and behave. These champions require the space in which to engage together and sufficient resources to catalyse a ‘snowball’ effect that draws in others. Success requires all actors to be recognized and valued for their roles, and demands self-reflection by all concerned: what is their role and what does true and equitable partnership really mean?

Investment in changing the architecture of agricultural research and innovation in development has so far been pitifully small. However, many successful models exist elsewhere. In networked businesses such as Uber, AirBnB or consortia such as Airbus, all actors become essential parts of the action in their own right and innovation and change are encouraged; these are not rigid structures as businesses used to be but build synergies and scale by working together. It is time that agricultural innovation learned from such approaches.  

Networked collective actions also bring the power of social media. If we can help wider societies to understand the value of sustainable agriculture and its interactions with health and environment, the significance of viable rural communities in sustainable development, and how vital these are for all our futures, then we start to change the game. With the internet, we now have the tools to communicate and transcend barriers that never existed before. 

In Conclusion

Trusting and empowering rural communities to bring about changes for themselves also means constructively questioning fundamental drivers and embedding research and innovation in wider development processes, to ensure their relevance and sustainability. We need to break down the silos and walls that constrain the flow and sharing of knowledge. We need to see innovation webs as the new reality, involving and requiring the public sector, the private sector and civil society, and move away from simplistic assumptions, introspective drivers and short-term policies. We need to trust and empower rural communities, and wider society, to shape their own desired and informed futures. 

Innovation and research are fundamental, but unless we embed agri-food innovation within wider sustainable development and change our value systems and drivers to do so, we are not going to achieve the SDGs. None of us has the entire picture, nor the capability to achieve sustainable change by ourselves. The only answer is Collective Action: if not us then who, and if not now, when?

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I hope you enjoyed reading this analysis and that you find it useful food for thought...

To emphasise the vital importance of linking humanity with agricultural science for truly sustainable development, I leave you also with a quote from His Holiness Pope Francis earlier this year (14 February 2019):

“Pope Francis today called for advances in innovation and entrepreneurship to transform rural communities and eradicate malnutrition, stating that "science with conscience" was needed to help the world's poor and hungry… The world must "place technology truly at the service of the poor," he said. "New technologies must not go against local cultures and traditional knowledge, but should be complementary and act in synergy with them"… "Today more than ever we have to join forces, achieve consensus, to strengthen our bonds. The current challenges are so intricate and complex that we cannot continue confronting them occasionally, with emergency resolutions," he said. He also encouraged those affected by poverty and hunger to be directly involved in decision-making "so that these people can be responsible architects of their own production and progress". 

References:

Beddow JM, 2012. A bioeconomic assessment of the spatial dynamics of US corn production and yields. University of Minnesota, PhD thesis.

Beintema NM, Stads GJ, 2017. A comprehensive overview of investments and human resource capacity in African agricultural research. ASTI Synthesis Report. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Chambers R, Pacey A, Thrupp LA, eds, 1989. Farmer first: farmer innovation and agricultural research. London: Intermediate Technology Publications.

Ostrom E, 1990. Governing the commons: the evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge University Press.

Pardey PG, 2016. Agriculture and food innovation: Europe in a changing global reality. Presentation at ‘Designing a Path: A Strategic Approach to EU Agricultural Research and Innovation’, Brussels, 27 January. https://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/image/ document/2016-5/s1_pardey-rev_13658.pdf