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Pathways for impact: scientists' differentperspectives on agricultural innovationNiels Röling aa Communication and Innovation Studies, Wageningen University, TheNetherlandsVersion of record first published: 08 Jun 2011.

To cite this article: Niels Röling (2009): Pathways for impact: scientists' different perspectives on agriculturalinnovation, International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability, 7:2, 83-94

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Pathways for impact: scientists’ different perspectives onagricultural innovation1

Niels Roling*

Emeritus Professor, Communication and Innovation Studies, Wageningen University, The Netherlands

This paper takes the viewpoint of a social scientist and looks at agricultural scientists’ pathways forscience impact. Awareness of these pathways is increasingly becoming part and parcel of theprofessionalism of the agricultural scientist, now that the pressure is on to mobilize smallholders andtheir productive resources for (global) food security and for reducing persistent rural poverty.Significant new thinking about pathways is emerging and it is useful to present some of this, even if itis not cut-and-dried. This new thinking focuses on innovation, not as the end-of-pipe outcome ofdevelopment and transfer (or ‘delivery’) of results of research to ‘ultimate users’, but as a process oftechnical and institutional change at farm and higher system levels that impacts on productivity,sustainability and poverty reduction.

This paper will review technology supply push; farmer-driven innovation; market-propelled or inducedinnovation based on the agricultural treadmill; participatory technology development; and innovationsystems. The pathways reviewed all have their merits; the paper will assess them from the perspectiveof improving smallholder productivity and livelihoods.

This paper concludes that many agricultural scientists have not developed their thinking about how thefruits of their work can help make the world a better place. This is a flaw in their professionalism.Curriculum development, training, promotion criteria, standards used in refereeing journal articles andresearch funding could benefit from taking on board understanding of pathways of science-for-impact.

Keywords: African smallholders, bananas, institutions, rural livelihoods, technology, treadmill

Introduction

Gabre-Mahdin and Haggblade (2004) report anexpert survey of the successes of African agricul-ture, as a counterweight to the usual gloom anddoom. One of the successes was the adaptive breed-ing of bananas in the Great Lakes Region. Over 800years, farmers have experimented with the bananasthat had been imported from Asia and developedover 60 cultivars, the ‘largest pool of genetic diver-sity anywhere in the world’. Since most edible

bananas are seedless and must be reproduced byvegetative propagation, ‘most experts marvel atthe rapidity with which African farmers achievedsuch genetic diversity’.2 The recognition thisachievement as a ‘success of African agriculture’ isbut one example of the increasing realization thatinnovation in agriculture is not necessarily anoutcome of applying the results of scientificresearch.

The world conference Banana 2008, organizedby five scientific organizations,3 is a case in point.The Conference had four major themes: globaltrends affecting banana, markets and trade, pro-duction and innovation systems. Though the*Corresponding author. Email: n.roling@inter.nl.net

doi:10.3763/ijas.2009.0043

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL SUSTAINABILITY 7(2) 2009, PAGES 83–94# 2009 Earthscan. ISSN: 1473-5903 (print), 1747-762X (online). www.earthscanjournals.com

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theme ‘production’ was by far the largest, givingsuch prominence to markets and especially to ‘inno-vation systems’ is not something that is likely tohave occurred only a few years ago. The main-stream is embracing new thinking: from a focuson technology, it is shifting to innovation.

Of course, the word innovation is sometimes stillused for new technology (as in ‘diffusion of inno-vations’4). But the word is increasingly used for theprocess of technical and institutional change atfarm and higher levels that impacts on productivity,sustainability, and poverty reduction. Walsh andRemington (2008) used the term: ‘bringing toscale’. Or as Latour (1987) and other adherents ofthe Actor Network Theory put it: it is one thing todevelop a technology in a laboratory, quite anotherto replicate the experiment at the societal scale as aresult of such processes as interessement, solicitingcommitment of major players, investment, etc. Inthe new thinking, the key challenge is not so muchto transfer technology to users, but to enhance theinnovative capacity of key stakeholders in an oppor-tunity. Innovation is seen to emerge from the syner-gistic interaction of such stakeholders.

I have struggled with the appealing concept ofinnovation throughout my career. It started withmy MSc in 1963 with Anne van den Ban in Wagen-ingen, who became a world leader in extensionstudies, continued with my PhD in 1970 withEverett Rogers (2003), the guru of diffusion of inno-vations, then at Michigan State University, and it isstill ongoing (e.g. Roling, 2008). It is not becomingeasier, especially now that anthropogenic change ofthe fragile troposphere is asking for innovation inthe way we innovate.

My involvement in the IAASTD (www.agassess-ment.org), the International Assessment of Agricul-tural Knowledge, Science and Technology forDevelopment, which was approved by 59 countriesin an inter-governmental plenary at Johannesburg,South Africa, in April 2008, really brought homethis new context. IAASTD is a sequel to, andfollows a similar procedure as, the InternationalPanel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Eco-System Assessment (EA). That is, the IAASTDcame about as a multi-stakeholder process underthe auspices of a Bureau made up of governments,private organizations and civil society. Some 400authors were involved in writing the report. Whatwas new and exciting was the explicit attention

given to the role of agricultural knowledge,science and technology (AKST) in achieving thecombined development and sustainability goals.IAASTD focused on the multi-functionality of agri-culture, that is, the recognition that agriculture,which represents 70% of the Earth’s surface, doesnot only produce food, feed, fuel and fibre commod-ities, but also ecosystem services, such as freshwater, closing of cycles, biodiversity, etc. Based onthe evidence with respect to how AKST is impactingon poverty, equity, food security and climatechange, the IAASTD report concludes thatbusiness-as-usual is not an option. With respect topoverty, it concludes that persistent poverty isespecially rural, and that the most promising wayto ensure global food security and reduce ruralpoverty is to enlist smallholders and their currentlyunproductive resources.

My involvement in a research programme called‘Convergence of Sciences’ compelled me to come togrips with the institutional dimensions of innovationin the smallholder sector. Its conclusion: farmershave very few opportunities that they can accessthrough improved technology. Appropriate technol-ogies can only be effective within the very smallwindows of opportunity smallholders have. Thechallenge, therefore, is to stretch those opportunities.Institutional framework conditions proved import-ant in ways we had not anticipated when the pro-gramme started.5 The second phase, CoS-SIS,which focuses on Strengthening InnovationSystems, starts where the first stopped: the interfaceof technical and institutional change with a view toimproving smallholder opportunities.

The present paper addresses the question: if thechallenge is to enhance innovation, what are thepathways through which agricultural science canhave impact? This question is at the heart of theprofessionalism of the agricultural scientist. Onecannot imagine that scientists go about theirbusiness of producing technologies withoutworrying about the processes by which their workcontributes to reaching development and sustain-ability goals. Yet when one looks at how scientistsconceptualize pathways of science-for-impact, oneoften cannot escape the impression that they andtheir professional organizations do not spendmuch time and effort on understanding them.

This paper will review five pathways. All of themhave their merits. I review them from the perspective

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of the need to enlist smallholders and their resourcesfor sustainable global food security and for reducingpersistent rural poverty.

Pathway 1: Technology supply push

The New Scientist in an article on the current foodcrisis in its 14 June issue, had this to say:

The New Scientist has asked the world’s leadingagricultural experts what it would take to boostyields. They were unanimous: We need researchand support of farmers so that they can makethe most of its results . . .. Governments will beable to mitigate the crisis, but only if they investin the science that can increase yields and in theinfrastructure to get the resulting technologiesto the farmers who need them. (New Scientist,2008: 28–33)

The thinking of these scientists is called ‘the linearmodel’ (e.g. Kline & Rosenberg, 1986), ‘the pipe-line model’ (e.g. Biggs, 2007), or the ‘technologytransfer model’ (e.g. Chambers & Jiggins, 1985).6

This pathway emphasizes investment in agriculturalresearch and technology development. It looks atinnovation as the ‘delivery’ (a dead give-away forthis type of thinking) of science-based technologiesto ‘ultimate users’ (another give-away), and theirspontaneous diffusion among them.

Technology supply push is very influential indetermining funding and development strategies.For example, the CGIAR Science Council rejectedthe IAASTD report because it did not sufficientlyacknowledge the contribution of agriculturalscience nor emphasize agricultural research asthe key element in the way forward. The UnitedStates rejected the IAASTD because of its equivo-cation about a priori endorsement of genomics.During Banana 2008, we heard glowing pro-motion of tissue culture bananas, although only5% of Kenya’s banana farmers seem to haveadopted them (Njuguna & Wambugu, 2008). Itis also not uncommon nowadays at conferencesto hear serious academics promote genomics asif it were the solution to the world’s food pro-blems (Shotkoski, 2008). On the other hand,many observers during Banana 2008 wereworried about the promotion of TC, whichmade the conference a typical example of the

equivocation that marks gatherings of scientistsin this period of change.

From a perspective of reaching smallholders,let alone changing their productivity and/or liveli-hoods, technology supply push has not been veryeffective. For example, the Cocoa Research Institutein Ghana (CRIG) reports that only about 3% of thetechnologies it has produced have been taken up byfarmers (Ayenor et al., 2007). During my longcareer I have never stopped wondering how intelli-gent scientists could in such large numbers continueto cling to technology supply push. The New Scien-tist article was a real disappointment in that respect.The Green Revolution is often quoted as proof ofconcept. But the success of the GR in Asia was deter-mined not only by the HYV technologies, but verymuch also by the conditions that Asian Govern-ments created, in terms of political commitment,incentives, access to inputs and so on, thatallowed farmers to utilise the technologies.

Says Biggs of the Green Revolution in India:

In brief, there was massive political commitmentto increasing food production in India, in order toreduce dependency on food aid imports. TheGovernment tested improved wheat varietiesfrom Mexico for only three years and took therisky decision (from a disease genetic vulner-ability perspective) to import large quantities ofMexican wheat seed. The Planning Commissioncommitted very large sums to subsidisinginputs, and guaranteeing prices to farmers(some of this came from large reserves of PL480funds that had been accumulated). Large publicsector inputs and procurement agencies wereestablished, as well as the expansion of the Min-istry of Agriculture in several states . . .. Punjabifarmers (some of the major farmer beneficiaries)were not passive recipients of technology (ascharacterized in the pipeline model) but werevery politically active in promoting higherfarmer subsidization. (Biggs, 2007)

Luck was also involved. ‘Most scientists thoughtthat the full package of practices was needed togrow the Mexican wheats. As it turned out, thesewheats outperform local wheats all over South Asiaunder almost any growing conditions’ (Biggs, 2007).

The role of institutions and politics often is notrecognised and the Green Revolution remains thevindication of technology supply push. ‘Societies

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have become much better at technological inno-vation than institutional innovation – a mismatchthat underlies the global crisis in inequality, climatechange and resource depletion’ (Woodhill, 2008).

Pathway 2: Farmer-driven innovation

At times, we forget that farmers are experimenterswho have to live by the results. What is more, theykeep at it for generations. Although they cannot seemicrobes, nematodes, Striga seeds or even Capsids,their experimental knowledge allows them todevelop farming systems, farming procedures andcultivars that work, provide them with essentials,and that are adapted to their circumstances.Examples abound. I have already referred to theagro-biodiversity of bananas in the Central High-lands. The hybridization of African rice (Riza glab-berima) with Riza japonica and Riza indica wasachieved and used by West African upland ricefarmers long before scientists thought it possible.7

The glabberima � japonica crosses were the basisfor the development of NERICA, now hailed asone of the great successes of WARDA.

Farmer-driven innovation can be deliberatelyused as a pathway. In the United States, the Exper-imental Farmers of Iowa is an experimental groupthat carries out systematic experiments, in collabor-ation with the research station. PROLINNOVA is aproject that identifies and simulates farmer science,and promotes the results (Rey & Waters-Bayer,2001; also www.PROLINNOVA.org). TheUniversity of Development Studies in NorthernGhana is driven by the notion of endogenous devel-opment,8 that is, development is ‘born from within’(Van der Ploeg & Long, 1994).

Pathway 3: Participatory development

The recognition of the importance of indigenousknowledge by people like Mike Warren (Warrenet al., 1991) and David Norman (1974) emergedpartly as a reaction to the arrogance of the technol-ogy supply push model. Warren was an Americanagronomist, who as a Peace Corps Volunteermarried a Nigerian gold trader. As a result,Warren was immersed in local culture, learned to

respect and appreciate it9 and began to realize theextent to which modern agriculturalists ignoredthe contributions that indigenous knowledgecould make. He started the Centre for IndigenousKnowledge and Agricultural and Rural Develop-ment (CIKARD) in Iowa. Norman worked in theresearch station at Samaru in Northern Nigeriaand began to wonder why local farmers outsidethe gates of the station after all these years stillrefused to adopt the mono-cropping that was prac-tised in the station. When he and his colleaguesfinally studied mixed cropping, they found that itwas superior to mono-cropping in terms of riskmanagement in a highly variable rainfall regime,of creating micro climates and agro-ecosystemdiversity that helped control pests and diseases, ofefficiency of labour allocation (the scarcest resourcein the local system), and in terms of generatingfinancial returns. Such insights led to the recog-nition that farmers hold knowledge that is veryvaluable. Chambers and Ghildyal (1985) concludedthat it was more efficient to ask local people in rapidrural appraisals about local conditions, seasonality,and so forth, than to carry out large and expensiveextractive surveys.

The next step was to realize that if scientificresearch results were to be utilized by farmers, it isonly those farmers who could provide informationon what they wanted, what conditions the technol-ogy needed to fit and what technology would be feas-ible in the farmers’ conditions, given their labour,land resources, access to inputs and markets, andso on. In a way, this thinking was not dissimilar tothe basic tenets of marketing, in this casenot-for-profit marketing, including market segmen-tation, consumer analysis and so forth (Kotler &Andreasen, 2003). But where marketing research iscarried out by the organizations in an extractiveand strategic manner, the participatory technologydevelopment tradition that emerged in agriculturefocuses on the active involvement of farmers in tech-nology development to ensure effectiveness,goodness-of-fit, desirability and feasibility of thetechnologies developed.

For some observers, that does not go far enough.It is one thing to give farmers a say, another to givecontrol over research agendas, design trajectories,funds, and the choice of the issues that needresearch. In my own country, The Netherlands,farmers’ organizations have a tremendous influence

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in all decisions with respect to land and water use,let alone issues that directly affect them, such asagricultural research. For a long time, the ministerfor agriculture was routinely recruited fromamong the CEOs of farmers’ organizations.Farmer cooperatives have become huge inter-national corporations. The largest meat processingcompany is wholly farmer owned. Dutch Baby(milk) is sold by a corporation that has recentlybeen privatized after its successful rise as an amalga-mation of cooperatives. The cooperative RABOBank is not in danger of collapse due to its decentra-lized structure. It is my conviction that African agri-culture cannot develop unless farmers gain politicalcontrol over the sector and the policies affecting it.At present, most African farmers do not even under-stand how the wealth they generate is beingsiphoned off, and by whom.

Back to participatory development. In the firstphase of the CoS Programme, we tested the partici-patory pathway by carrying out elaborate explora-tory and diagnostic studies10 to zoom in on issuesand situations that proved promising in terms ofmaking a contribution. The nine PhD studentsworked with groups of farmers to experimentwith IPM, soil management and crop bio-diversitymanagement technologies that were negotiatedwith farmers and developed with and by farmers.What we learned is that it is possible to developuseful and appropriate technologies by followingthis pathway. But we also learned that technologies

tap into existing opportunities. Given the very smallwindows of opportunity faced by farmers in Beninand Ghana, the technologies only made marginalcontributions to improving their livelihoods. Whatour students realized is that it is the opportunitystructure that needs to be tackled, and that meantinstitutional change. Immigrant settlers engaged indestructive soil fertility management practices.The insecurity of land tenure forced them intothese practices. The two PhD students whoworked on soils decided to work on new tenancyarrangements between land owners and settlersthat allowed the latter to use the land in a more sus-tainable manner (Adjei-Nsiah et al., 2007; Saıdouet al., 2007). A student who worked on cocoaIPM developed a farmer-owned organization forthe procurement and processing of Neem seeds asa condition for access to this important input(Dormon et al., 2007). The second phase of CoSstarts where the first phase left off and focuseson the mix of institutional and technologicalconditions that determine opportunities (Figure 1).

Pathway 4: Market-propelled orinduced innovation (the agriculturaltreadmill)

After technology supply push, Pathway 4 is themost widely held pathway by scientists, policy

Figure 1 Innovation as a function of institutional and technical change (based on Dorward et al., 1998; adapted fromGiller, 2001; 306)

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makers, economists, and by farmers in industrialcountries who have learned the hard way what ittakes to survive. The mechanism works as follows:

† Farms are small firms in a free market, all produ-cing the same commodities.

† Each one of them is too small to affect the price:they are price takers who produce as much aspossible against the going price. As a resultthere is a constant downward pressure on prices.

† Introduction of an ‘innovation’ allows its earlyadopters to capture a windfall profit becauseoverall prices are still dictated by the prevailingstate of the technology.

† Soon diffusion leads to over-production andfurther price squeeze. Adoption becomes anecessary condition for staying in the marketplace, but now it is no longer profitable.

† In the ‘tail’, farmers who cannot keep up (too old,too sick, too small, too uneducated, too drunk)eventually drop out. Their resources are absorbedby the survivors who capture economies of scale,in a process called ‘scale enlargement’.

This model is also known as the ‘agricultural tread-mill’ (first described by Cochrane, 1958). It is verysimilar to the ‘induced innovation model’(Hayami & Ruttan, 1971). It is a neoliberal econ-omic model and the basis for WTO, the EuropeanCommon Agricultural Policy, and, as Lamb andHarris (2008) told us, the model on which the strat-egy of the Gates Foundation is based: to lift millionsof small farmers out of poverty by increasing theproductivity of their resources. Diffusion will even-tually lead to increasing farm sizes.

The model is popular among economists andpolicy makers. Given that farmers cannot hold onto the rewards for their productivity gains, thetreadmill leads to lower food prices. Scale enlarge-ment leads to labour leaving agriculture for otherpursuits. The treadmill increases the efficiency ofthe entire farm sector, leading to greater competi-tiveness in international markets. These effects inturn lead to a high internal rate of return to invest-ment in research and extension (Evenson et al.,1979). All you need to do is to feed the treadmillwith new technologies. In that sense, the technologysupply push and the treadmill models go welltogether.

But there is a difference. Pure technology supplypush enthusiasts would not, for example, understandhow the widespread adoption of a new technologycould actually suppress farm prices and incomes. Infact, whole farm sectors can be wiped out as aresult. A lack of understanding of the treadmillbecomes obvious when scientists refer to the highincomes that early innovators make in the windfallprofit phase as something that will happen to allfarmers. Many a project has calculated its likelyrate of return in this manner. I believe that the opti-mism about the impact of TC bananas could bebased on this faulty type of reasoning.

As said, the treadmill is a neo-classical econ-omics model. As such it is blind to institutionalconditions. In advocating the treadmill as theway to go for smallholder development inAfrica, people forget that the functioning of thetreadmill assumes a very specific institutionalcontext. By the time the treadmill started towork in the Mid-Western United States in theearly 1940s (e.g. in the case of hybrid maize,Ryan & Gross, 1943), American farmers hadbecome embedded in an institutional support fra-mework of which most African farmers can onlydream. A system of Land Grant colleges andcounty agents provided publicly funded access toresearch, information and training. Farmers werewell organized and could exert strong politicalpower in State legislatures and in Washington. Agri-business had developed to a point where farmersfaced huge and integrated markets, received excellentinformation, and so on. Insurance, input delivery, aland market, mechanization, market protection,export promotion, all these were in place. In TheNetherlands, the third largest agricultural exporterby value, it was no different. The tenure law of1917 made it rational for tenant farmers to investin land improvement. Huge government subsidyand land improvement programmes were availablefor drainage, land adjudication and consolidation,infrastructure development, farm building improve-ment, and so on. The landscapes of Rembrandt andPotter were wiped out and modernized in a matterof years. Huge research institutes, extension servicesand farmer education facilities helped farmersbecome modern entrepreneurs. Value chains werestreamlined and integrated, with built-in quality con-trols, subsidies, price protection, and so on. Thetreadmill worked like a charm in these conditions,

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with an average loss of farm enterprises of about 2%per year ever since the 1960s.

One cannot simply apply the treadmill to Africawithout considering the institutional context. Also,one wants to carefully consider how fast one wantsto destroy agricultural employment. The treadmilltends to stimulate the externalization of social andenvironmental costs, so that one has to take care toembed the functioning of the treadmill in correctiveregulation. In all, the treadmill requires a strongdose of institutional economics before one letsloose the market liberators (North, 2005; William-son, 2000). What is more, in Africa with its hugelydiverse social and economic systems, one cannotassume that one can design a uniform institutionaldevelopment for a clean slate. Very strong insti-tutions exist, including patriarchy and patrimonial-ism.11 Required are careful analyses and an eye forthe embeddedness of institutions. It is not unusualto find institutions that have been deliberatelycreated to extract wealth from smallholders, suchas the ‘value chains’ for cocoa and cotton, forexample, in West Africa from which armies of rentseekers ‘eat’ (see, e.g. Sinzogan et al., 2007).

For Africa it is also very relevant to consider theglobal treadmill. African farmers face unfair com-petition from imported agricultural products fromcountries where farmers have received statesupport for capturing economies of scale for over50 years. The value added per agricultural workerin 2003 (in 2000 US$) in OECD countries was$23,081, with a rate of growth of 4.4% in1992–2003. For Africa South of the Sahara, thefigures were respectively $327 and 1.4% (FAO,2005). Dutch exports of chicken wings, a virtuallyuseless by-product of filets and drumsticks, toGhana prevents a local broiler industry from devel-oping. Many supermarkets in Africa are beingstocked from Europe or South Africa, leavinglocal farmers with no opportunities and forcingtheir resources to remain unproductive if notdegrading them further, given the need for subsis-tence of a growing population. It is awareness ofsuch impacts on farmers in their own countriesthat led India and China to refuse to sign the lastDoha agreement that would force them to acceptcheap agricultural imports. African governmentsmight well consider their position. As long asAfrican farmers remain ignorant of the situation,governments can continue to import cheap food to

keep their urban electorates happy. It is time forAfrican journalists to inform farmers of what isgoing on. If one is serious about enlisting small-holders for global food security, Ricardo does notapply: the rule that goods should be producedwhere they can be produced most cheaply doesnot hold when sustainable resource use andpoverty reduction are at stake.

One last point about the treadmill: it can lead toforms of scale enlargement in which a few largeplayers can dominate the agricultural sectorwithout much accountability to electorates,farmers or consumers. Large companies withcontrol over technologies, such as GMOs, fertilizersor pesticides, can build on the treadmill to cream offwealth from farmers for the interests of their share-holders, in a way that is little different from theearlier mentioned ‘value chains’ for cocoa orcotton in West Africa. The concentration of compa-nies in the food and agricultural supply sectors,coupled with the fact that global governance insti-tutions hardly exist to ensure their accountabilityfor the public good (Stiglitz, 2006), has created asituation that is comparable to that in the bankingsector before its collapse. In their enthusiasm totransform the banana into ‘an engine of economicdevelopment’, the strategy of Banana 2008, theAfricans involved would do well to consider whowould benefit from such economic developmentand to ensure that the institutions are in place thatgive African actors control.

Pathway 5: Innovation systems

The review of pathways has shown that we needadditional models, now that we are becomingserious about rural poverty reduction, global foodsecurity, and mitigating the effects of climatechange. The new pathways are rapidly emergingand Banana 2008 is no exception. It is hearteningto see and hear so many people talking about theinstitutional conditions required for smallholderdevelopment. The fact that Banana 2008 dedicateda major theme to innovation systems is itself a suresign that new pathways are emerging. What we areall struggling with is to find the right language totalk about them. In the meantime, we hear wordslike partnerships, networks, coalitions, collabor-ation and linkages used increasingly frequently. As

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Walsh (Walsh & Remington, 2008) put it:‘partnership is my business model’.

We learned from the first phase of CoS that asingle-minded focus on technology as the pathwayto agricultural development is an example ofpars-pro-toto reasoning: a necessary condition istaken to be sufficient. The other part of the storyis institutional change. The New Institutional Econ-omics has taught us that markets are embedded ininstitutional contexts that allow them to function,as I have described for the treadmill. Institutionsare not organizations or institutes, such as theWorld Bank, but usually defined as the rules of thegame that reduce uncertainty in human interaction.Williamson (2000) distinguishes between the fol-lowing levels of institutions shown in Table 1.

One cannot change African banana farming (orthe Soviet Union for that matter, O’Brien, 2006)into a free market economy without first consider-ing institutional change, that is, paying attentionto such issues as gender relations, patrimonialism,corrective regulatory frameworks, quality controls,price stabilization, access to inputs, the develop-ment of value chains, and so on. A typicalexample is the institutional calibration of thevalue chain for certified organic or fair-tradeproduce. Guaranteeing that consumers can trustthat what they buy has the qualities they want, elab-orate institutional arrangements must be developedfor each node in the value chain (Pyburn, in prep.).

Institutions are embedded in highly diverse his-torical contexts: one cannot treat them as if theywere technologies. The highly diverse conditionsin African farming make a uniform or blanketapproach impossible. This has two very importantimplications for the methodology for developingscience-for-impact:

(1) We need an exploratory process of zooming inon crucial opportunities and constraints, andon actors who can make a difference.

(2) We need facilitators or coaches who canfoment negotiated concerted action amongthe stakeholders who can make innovationhappen.

The Innovation System approach is notcut-and-dried. It points to additional pathways thathave become necessary now that we have becomeinterested in enlisting smallholders and theirresources for global food security and for mitigating

climate change. These pathways are in statu nas-cendi. They all have one thing in common. Theylook at innovation as the emergent property not ofscience, or of markets, but of interaction among sta-keholders in opportunities for development. It istheir negotiations, conflicts, agreements and abilityto undertake concerted synergistic action that deter-mines whether we shall be able to move forward.

The box below gives an example of innovation asthe emergent property of concerted action amonghighly diverse stakeholders, including scientists.12

Table 1 Framework for institutional analysis

Frequencyof change

Level Relevanteconomictheories

30–250years

Socialembeddedness:Informal rules,customs, traditions,norms, beliefs

† Social capital

10–50years

Institutionalenvironment: Formalrules, constitutions,laws, property rights

† Propertyrights theory

† Economictheory oftakings

1–10 years Governancestructures: The playof the game: modesof organizations,alignments ofinstitutionalarrangements withtransactions

† Informationandbehaviouraleconomics

† Attributes oftransactions

† Transactioncost theory

† Mode oforganization

† Coordinationmechanisms

Continuous Incentive structure:Incentive alignment

† Neoclassicaleconomics

† Principalagent theory

Source: Adapted from Slangen et al. (2008: 20) based onWilliamson (2000).

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Box: Ghana’s pineapple export

Ghana traditionally exported Cayenne pineapples.But since 2002, international demand shifted to theextra sweet MD2 variety with quite dramaticconsequences for Ghana’s exporters andsmall-scale producers. Many of the latter quitproduction altogether, while the former faced lossof their market contracts in Europe unless theycould change to MD2. That was no sinecure. Anacre requires 22,000 suckers, and some of thelarger exporters grow hundreds of acres. Initiallytissue culture material from Latin America wasimported. But this proved expensive and somemishaps occurred. Then BOMARTS Farms Ltd(about 400 ha pineapple), faced with atermination of its contract, decided to set up acommercial tissue culture lab with assistancefrom scientists of the Department of Botany at theUniversity of Ghana. Millions of plantlets wereproduced, some of which were sold tocommercial producers who in turn could providetheir out-growers. MD2 makes many suckers perplant, so that farmers themselves can quicklymultiply the variety. Yet the bulk of small-scaleproducers was not ready to spend money onbuying plantlets. The Government stepped in tosave Ghana’s second largest export crop, andwith a World Bank loan, contracted BOMARTS toover a two-year period produce 4.8 millionplantlets at cost (3 eurocents per plantlet). Twicea week, the Ministry of Agriculture collects 44,000plantlets and distributes them to farmers throughSPEG (Sea-freight Pineapple Exporters of Ghana)and HAG (Horticultural Association of Ghana) oncredit at a tenth of the price. BOMARTS itself hasfew out-growers and largely exports its ownproduce. At the other extreme are exporters whohave no farm operations themselves. The typicalset-up is a mix with out-growers making asubstantial contribution to the consignment of theexporter. Exporting companies make detailedcontracts with out-growers, providing inputs oncredit, specifying the times of planting, forceflowering (uniformity) and harvesting, so that thecompany has a steady supply. Around harvestingtime, the company will inspect and spray thecrop. It does the harvesting and transporting ofthe fruits. Companies exert very strict qualitycontrol (e.g. water content). The sanctions arehigh: importers deduct costs of destruction of arejected assignment in Europe. Farmers whosecrop is rejected have to sell in the local market,often below cost price. At the time of writing,Ghana’s pineapple exports are getting back ontrack, and the number of small farmers growingMD2 is rapidly expanding. For many, pineapple istheir main source of monetary income.

In considering innovation systems as a pathway forscience, it is important to heed Biggs’ (2007) admoni-tion. In his view, the pipeline model often is alsoapplied to institutional innovation: ‘Once the newinstitutional model has been developed and tested, itis expected that it will be widely adopted by targetaudiences (in this case development agencies)’. Butsince institutions emerge from human interactionand agreement, they cannot be designed, tested andreplicated or scaled up as if they were technologies.Institutions express specific historical contexts (Biggs& Smith, 2003). They are ‘embedded’. At best, theirdevelopment can be stimulated and promoted on thebasis of principles such as fairness, equity, sustainabil-ity or opportunity – and driven by development andsustainability goals. Biggs provides an alternativeway forward to the pipeline model:

The Actor Innovation Systems model is a moreholistic model of innovation processes. It startswith identifying all major actors that influencethe generation and diffusion of innovations (tech-nical and institutional) in a historical and politi-cal context. It then analyses the actual socialrelationships between these actors over time.Changes in the power and other social relation-ships between actors over time are at the centreof the analysis . . . Managing R&D projects isall about managing learning and change pro-cesses. It is not about managing a preconceivedplan with specially defined stages. It is all aboutmaking changes, sometimes radical ones, in aprogramme, say every six months in response to. . . new information. (Biggs, 2007)

Conclusions

In a time of anthropogenic environmental crisis,agricultural science risk not being fit-for-purposeby neglecting the pathways for science impact,and worse, continuing to opt for pars-pro-tototechnology transfer scenarios. Something has tochange. We must look at ourselves. I concludeby the following answers to the question: ‘whatneeds to change?’ that was put to all the partici-pants of Banana 2008:

† The professionalism of the agricultural scientistassumes expertise in pathways of science, butthis expertise is currently weak, if not absent.

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† The urgency of persistent rural poverty in Africa,climate change and global food insecurity make itimperative that we invest in developing appropri-ate pathways of science and in capacity buildingof agricultural science so as to render itfit-for-purpose given the new global challenges.

† We need adapted university curricula, training ofscientists, reading materials, as well as recognitionof this issue in agricultural science journals.13

I cannot conclude, however, by leaving theimpression that those answers would deal with thepredicament. If one considers the enormity of ahuman society that has become alienated from itsecological roots, that is finding it impossible tocurb its devouring greed, or to create the kind ofequity that would stop the mad race for more, andthat seems totally incapable of applying evenwidely shared understanding because of short-termpolitical or economic considerations, one can onlylaugh at the idea that ‘innovation systems’ wouldcreate space for change. The true challenge is aglobal institutional transformation, in whichhumans begin to widely share the convictionthat it is our own economy, our own competition,nationalism and religious fervour, our own insti-tutions and life styles that need to change. Even ifwe would all share this conviction, it is doubtfulwhether it could be done without massive star-vation, death, destruction and upheaval.

The inability of many agricultural scientists tomake a first step from technology-supply-push toinnovation system thinking, notwithstanding undis-putable evidence,14 is reason for not being too opti-mistic about the future.

Acknowledgment

The author wishes to thank Dr Judith Francis ofCTA and Dr Charles Staver, Bioversity, for theirassistance and confidence.

Notes

1. An earlier version was presented as ‘Bananas andnew thinking about pathways for science impact’at the World Conference Banana 2008 held inMombasa, 5–9 October 2008. It will be published

in the Proceedings of the Conference to appear inActa Horticulturae.

2. Chimerism seems to provide the diversity onwhich the farmers built (Karamura et al., 2008).

3. International Institute of Tropical Agriculture(IITA); Bioversity; the International Society ofHorticultural Science (ISHS); the Kenya Agricul-tural Research Institute (KARI) and the Forumfor Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA).

4. The title of the very influential book by EverettRogers (respective editions in 1961, 1972, 1985,2003).

5. The CoS experience with institutional issues ispublished in a special issue of InternationalJournal of Agricultural Sustainability (IJAS) 5(2&3), 2007.

6. See Raina and Sulaiman (2007) for a descriptionof technology supply push in India.

7. Pers. Com. Prof. Paul Richards at WageningenUniversity, October 2008. See also Richardset al. (in print).

8. Millar (2005).9. He was buried as a senior Chief in his wife’s home

town Ogbomosho in Nigeria.10. See special issue of Wageningen Journal of Life

Sciences (NJAS) 52 (3–4), 2004: 211–441.11. Quimpo (2007) defines patrimonialism as ‘a type

of rule in which the ruler does not distinguishbetween personal and public patrimony andtreats matters and resources of state as his per-sonal affair’.

12. Elizabeth Acheampong, of University of Ghana’sBotany Department, pers. com. June 2007, thecase was recorded for the IAASTD Main Report(www.agassessment.org).

13. With respect to the last point, I fully appreciateand endorse CTA’s effort reported by Francis(2008) to develop and implement a trainingcourse on ASTI (Agricultural Science, Technologyand Innovation) Systems based on the InnovationSystem approach for ACP (African, Caribbeanand Pacific) countries.

14. For example, Jiggins, J., Lightfoot, C. andC. Reintjes (1996). Mobilising Science and Tech-nology to Get Agriculture Moving in Africa: AResponse to Borlaug and Dowswell. Develop-ment Policy Review 13 (1), 89–103.

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