A range of approaches and financial instruments have been used to stimulate and support innovation in agriculture and resolve interlocking constraints for uptake at scale. These include innovation platforms, results-based payments, value chain approaches, grants and prizes, incubators, participatory work with farmer networks, and many more.
A huge increase in investment in innovation for agricultural systems is critical to meet the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Climate Agreement. Most of this increase needs to come from reorienting existing funding for innovation. However, understanding whether an investment will fully promote environmentally sustainable and equitable agri-food systems can be difficult.
The study was designed to answer the following three key questions:
(1) What types of investment instruments have been tested to support innovation in agri-food systems in the Global South, and how can these be categorized into a working typology?
(2) What is the evidence on how well different instruments have supported SAI's multiple objectives (e.g. social equality and environmental) at scale and what contextual and design factors affect their success or failure in achieving these objectives (e.g. type of value chain, who participates)?
This shift in thinking will require major shifts in policy, research, and investment. But where should these investments go? What foundations should be strengthened? Which gaps need filling? What’s working? What’s not?
In order to answer these questions in an informed way, we need to examine the evidence that exists and identify areas where more research is needed.
But this is easier said than done.
If you are a research or innovation manager or a funder of innovation in the agrifood sector, in the private or public sphere, these Principles are for you. Investment in research and innovation today will shape the agrifood systems of the future. The choices that you make during an innovation process will affect the future benefits and drawbacks of the innovations you help to create: for example, what types of people gain and lose, and what the effects are on the environment. Too often, these choices are not made consciously, and important issues are overlooked until it is too late.
This book reports on the Papa Andina Partnership Program, which has been an especially innovative and productive regional initiative, bringing together researchers, small farmers, diverse market actors, and dozens of organizations in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru to spur innovation in public policies, potato products, and value market chains.
The Papa Andina network employs collective action in two novel approaches for fostering market chain innovation. The participatory market chain approach (PMCA) and stakeholder platforms engage small potato producers together with market agents and agricultural service providers in group activities to identify common interests, share market knowledge and develop new business opportunities.
This report provides a synthesis of all findings and information generated through a “stocktaking” process that involved a desk study of Prolinnova documents and evaluation reports, a questionnaire to 40 staff members of international organizations in agricultural research and development (ARD), self-assessment by the Country Platforms (CPs) and backstopping visits to five CPs. In 2014, the Prolinnova network saw a need to re-strategise in a changing context, and started this process by reviewing the activities it had undertaken and assessing its own functioning.
The inadequate linkage of knowledge generation in agricultural research organizations with policy-making and economic activity is an important barrier to sustainable development and poverty reduction. The emerging fields of sustainability science and innovation systems studies highlight the importance of “boundary management” and “innovation brokering” in linking knowledge production, policy-making, and economic activities. This paper analyzes how the Papa Andina Partnership Program, based at the International Potato Center, functions as an innovation broker in the Andean potato sector.
El objetivo de esta guía es proponer una metodología para la “evaluación de la sostenibilidad de los sistemas de producción de la agricultura familiar”, a través de “indicadores de sostenibilidad”. Con ellos se busca detectar “puntos críticos” en los sistemas de producción que limitan su sostenibilidad, de forma tal que se pueda iniciar un proceso de elaboración de “estrategias de gestión sostenible” enfocado al fortalecimiento de la agricultura familiar y al desarrollo de los territorios rurales en los que se desenvuelven.