• What we do
  • The People
  • About Us
  • Why Innovation Africa
  • Contact Us
Innovation AfricaCreating the Future Today
  • Feature Articles
  • Innovation
  • Agriculture
  • ICT
  • Technology
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Health
  • Store
  • Contact Us
Menu
  • Feature Articles
  • Innovation
  • Agriculture
  • ICT
  • Technology
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Health
  • Store
  • Contact Us
  • Grassroots innovation: no support without solid evidence

    September 23, 2012 Editor 0

    From SciDev

    A lack of evidence to convince policymakers holds back progress on grassroots innovation in agriculture, say Brigid Letty and Martin Bell.

    Grassroots innovation has long been seen by its advocates as playing an important role in smallholder agriculture. Governments have been urged to make much stronger policy commitments to supporting it, in parallel with the support commonly given to innovation based on formally organised research and development (R&D).

    But such advocacy has achieved little, not least because it rests on an inadequate evidence base on the impacts and developmental benefits of grassroots innovation as a complement to conventional modes of agricultural innovation.

    Without this evidence, it is unlikely that any government will support grassroots innovation.

    Innovation by smallholders

    The livelihoods of two-thirds of the world’s poor rely to some degree on small farms of less than two hectares, which are usually located on marginal land with limited resources and poor infrastructure. The smallholders depend increasingly on innovation as they face accelerating economic and environmental change.

    The limitations of conventional R&D-led innovation, which seeks to develop technologies ‘on behalf of’, or even ‘with’, smallholder farmers, are becoming clear. Externally developed technologies and practices are often not appropriate, and uptake is frequently very poor.

    Grassroots innovation — which in agriculture is substantially controlled and implemented by smallholder farmers — can complement conventional R&D approaches. This is the case especially for innovation processes that combine knowledge from smallholder farmers, other stakeholders, and formal R&D.

    A different form of grassroots innovation, known as local innovation, is driven by smallholders without the contribution of external knowledge.

    Advocates of participatory (multi-stakeholder) grassroots innovation point to advantages over conventional approaches. These include higher rates of initial uptake of locally appropriate technologies and faster adoption of those that are taken up; bolstered farmers’ skills and capabilities to experiment and innovate; and greater relevance to the needs of disadvantaged people.

    There are also benefits for conventional R&D: improved farmer feedback for researchers, and lower research costs as farmers take up some of the roles traditionally reserved for researchers. And often, by accelerating the process of developing technology — and not developing technology that is never adopted — grassroots innovation results in less wastage of resources.

    But there seems to be inadequate evidence to support these claims.

    No proof

    There are many small studies of grassroots innovation projects, and numerous evaluations for internal management purposes. But these have not been undertaken in a way that allows a cross-analysis of cases to provide common indicators that describe key features of the innovation process.

    The way information has been collected does not permit comparative analysis — either between different types of grassroots innovation, or between these and more conventional R&D.

    At the same time, national surveys of agricultural R&D, or of science, technology and innovation activities more broadly, do not capture participatory grassroots innovation occurring in smallholder agriculture –— its inputs or outputs, the organisational and institutional arrangements within which it occurs, or socio-economic impacts such as improved capacity of farmers to solve their own challenges through innovation.

    There are a few systematic evaluations suggesting that grassroots innovation has advantages over conventional R&D in some circumstances. But the evidence base on the significance of those advantages, or about the circumstances where they are likely to be particularly important, is not adequate.

    Building evidence

    Coordinating the description and evaluation of grassroots innovation projects using a common set of indicators, is one way to build the evidence base. This information could be compiled by staff at non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and other stakeholders supporting these projects, with a view to engaging with external policy debate, and not just for internal project management.

    A collaborative effort by NGOs could analyse existing data on a regular basis.

    Such data could cover the history and initial conditions of projects; the actors involved; the inputs to the innovation process including the cost of any institutional strengthening; outputs in terms of technical, social and organisational innovation; and socio-economic impacts such as strengthening of farmers’ skills and capabilities.

    Our analysis of examples from South Africa, such as the case of a farmer experimenting with a method of producing potatoes, highlights the benefits of grassroots innovation and the type of ‘non-conventional’ indicators (labour-saving ability, for example) that could be developed. [1]

    Another way of strengthening the evidence base, which has not been used to date, is to extend the scope of organisational, provincial or national surveys of formal R&D and innovation activities to include components that are explicitly concerned with supporting and enhancing grassroots innovation.

    Some combination of these information-generating activities should be a substantial step towards developing an evidence base and indicators about the benefits of investing in grassroots innovation.

    The challenge is not only developing new mechanisms to generate and publish the kinds of information needed to influence policy, but also to support the right kinds of analysis. We can then begin to build a strong case for committing human and financial resources to support such activities.

    Brigid Letty is an agricultural development specialist with the Institute of Natural Resources in South Africa. Martin Bell is emeritus professor at the Science and Technology Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex in Brighton, United Kingdom. Brigid can be contacted atbletty@inr.org.za
    Go to Source

    Related Posts

    • Brother or bully: Leaders squabble over role of big business in alleviating global hungerBrother or bully: Leaders squabble over role of big business in alleviating global hunger
    • Research chairs initiative bearing fruitResearch chairs initiative bearing fruit
    • Combining open innovation with corporate venturing: a case of how to balance incremental and radical innovationCombining open innovation with corporate venturing: a case of how to balance incremental and radical innovation
    • The Rise of Social Entrepreneurship in B-Schools in Three Charts
    • A pilot biomedical engineering course in rapid prototyping for mobile health.A pilot biomedical engineering course in rapid prototyping for mobile health.
    • Innovation Key to Unlocking Africa’s Horticultural PotentialInnovation Key to Unlocking Africa’s Horticultural Potential
    Sovrn
    Share

    Categories: Agriculture, Innovation

    Tags: conventional R&D, evidence base, grassroots innovation, smallholder farmers

    Algeria to open research sector to foreign scientists IT-Based Knowledge Capability and Commercialization of Innovations

    Leave a Reply Cancel reply

    You must be logged in to post a comment.

Subscribe to our stories


 

Recent Posts

  • SL Crowd Green Solutions September 21, 2020
  • Digital transformation in the banking sector: surveys exploration and analytics August 3, 2020
  • Why Let Others Disrupt You? Take the Smart Self-Disruption Journey! August 3, 2020
  • 5 Tips for Crowdfunding During the Pandemic August 3, 2020
  • innovation + africa; +639 new citations August 3, 2020

Categories

Archives

Popular Post-All time

  • A review on biomass-based... 0.9k views
  • Can blockchain disrupt ge... 671 views
  • Prize-winning projects pr... 646 views
  • Apply Now: $500,000 for Y... 602 views
  • Test Your Value Propositi... 523 views

Recent Posts

  • SL Crowd Green Solutions
  • Digital transformation in the banking sector: surveys exploration and analytics
  • Why Let Others Disrupt You? Take the Smart Self-Disruption Journey!
  • 5 Tips for Crowdfunding During the Pandemic
  • innovation + africa; +639 new citations
  • SME Innovation: 10 Priorities for Support Post-COVID-19 
  • Africa RISING Annual Progress Report 2018 – 2019 now available
  • Fodder beet feed supplementation delivers dairy success for Ethiopian farmers
  • Using theory of change for outcome-oriented research
  • Africa RISING partners publish soil fertility management guidebook

Tag Cloud

    africa African Agriculture Business Business model Business_Finance Company Crowdsourcing data Development East Africa economics Education Entrepreneur entrepreneurs Entrepreneurship ethiopia ghana Health_Medical_Pharma ict Information technology Innovation kenya knowledge Knowledge Management Leadership marketing mobile Mobile phone nigeria Open innovation Organization Research rwanda science Science and technology studies social enterprise social entrepreneurship south africa Strategic management strategy tanzania Technology Technology_Internet uganda

Categories

Archives

  • A review on biomass-based hydrogen production for renewable energy supply 0.9k views
  • Can blockchain disrupt gender inequality? 671 views
  • Prize-winning projects promote healthier eating, smarter crop investments 646 views
  • Apply Now: $500,000 for Your Big Data Innovations in Agriculture 602 views
  • Test Your Value Proposition: Supercharge Lean Startup and CustDev Principles 523 views

Copyright © 2005-2020 Innovation Africa Theme created by PWT. Powered by WordPress.org