1 - Setting innovation free in agriculture

Annual Meeting, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 2009

In the face of increasingly severe resource and environmental constraints, accelerating the transformation of agricultural green development through agricultural science and technology innovation is an effective measure to reduce agricultural pollution and improve agricultural production efficiency. From the perspective of multidimensional proximity, this paper expounds the mechanism of agricultural science and technology innovation on agricultural green development through spatial spillover from two perspectives: factor spillover path and product spillover path. Based on panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2006 to 2019, using the gray correlation analysis method, the level of agricultural green development in China was measured, and its spatial–temporal evolution trend was analyzed. The spatial economic matrix was selected as the spatial weight matrix, and the spatial econometric model was used to analyze the spatial spillover effect of agricultural science and technology innovation on agricultural green development. The results showed the following: (1) Agricultural green development had distinct spatial characteristics. The development level of green agriculture in eastern and northwestern China showed a trend of fluctuation decline, while that in southwest China showed a trend of fluctuation increase. The overall spatial distribution of green agriculture was high in the east and low in the west. (2) The spatial distribution of agricultural science, technological innovation and the agricultural green development level showed a significant positive global spatial autocorrelation, and the local spatial pattern characteristics of a number of provinces showed high-value agglomeration (HH), low-value agglomeration (LL), low-value collapse (LH) and high-value bulge (HL) as the auxiliary local spatial distribution. (3) Under the economic matrix, the improvement of the agricultural science and technology innovation level not only had a significant promoting effect on agricultural green development within each province but also promoted agricultural green development in neighboring provinces through positive spillover effects. This study provides insights that can help make up for the lack of regional agricultural science and technology investment, formulate scientific regional agricultural science and technology innovation policies and promote agricultural green development.

Technical change is one of the critical elements that determine the pace of agricultural growth in developing countries. International agricultural research centers currently initiate much of the scientific work necessary for technical change, but individual countries also need to be able to identify what is relevant in the existing stock of international knowledge, to conduct adaptive research and farm-level tests, and thus to tailor techniques discovered in the laboratory to the specific requirements of different farming locations.1 These functions require investments in national scientific and technical institutions. The public sector is heavily involved in this enterprise because agricultural research requires lumpy investments, involves externalities, gives rise to public goods, and is subject to long gestation lags. As a measure of the scale of the effort of multilateral and bilateral official donors in supporting farm technology development at the national and international levels, the Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR) spent $163 million worldwide in 1985.2 Despite these expenditures, the process by which countries develop their own agricultural research capacity is little understood, as are the links in the long chain of research, experimentation, adaptation, and dissemination of technology. The theory of induced innovation, for instance, which explains technical change and institutional innovation as the result of relative factor scarcities, tends to treat as a "black box" the process of national capacity-building.3 Others have postulated that the demand for technical change reflects pressures from interest groups, but this approach has limited value as an explanation

This study focuses on the impact of agricultural science and technology innovation and its decomposition indicators on green agricultural development, providing valuable insights not only for China but also for other countries to further optimize agricultural technological innovation and empower green agricultural development. The research finds that agricultural science and technology innovation and its decomposition indicators have a significant positive impact on agricultural green development, and this research conclusion remains robust after replacing the explained variables and conducting endogeneity tests. Meanwhile, although there are certain differences in the level of agricultural green development among sample regions, the significant positive impact of agricultural science and technology innovation and its decomposition indicators on agricultural green development holds true in different regions. Mechanism tests indicate the existence of an intermediary mechanism through which agricultural science and technology innovation and its decomposition indicators promote agricultural green development by enhancing the levels of human capital and urbanization.

This paper argues that the largely unrealized potential of agricultural science and technology (S&T) in promoting growth and poverty reduction in developing countries results from deeply rooted incompatibility among policy environments, institutional arrangements, and micro conditions and behavior in agricultural research and development (R&D). Achieving growth and poverty reduction based on greater agricultural productivity therefore means achieving greater compatibility among these three dimensions of agricultural innovation systems. Research is sorely needed to build understanding of (1) the “big picture” influencing agricultural S&T policy design and implementation in developing countries, (2) strategies for sustainable funding and delivery of agricultural R&D, (3) priorities for and impacts of emerging and prospective agricultural technologies, and (4) the role of science in food and agricultural policy processes. Agricultural S&T policy analysis as presented here extends beyond the current boundaries of agricultural economics into such disciplines as public finance, public administration, political science, history, sociology, and psychology. The economics of science and innovation in industry has embraced some of these disciplines and benefited greatly from having done so, as has industrial policy in the developed world. The fundamental horizontality of agricultural development policy and the long reach of agricultural S&T policy suggest similarly high returns were agricultural economics to do the same for science and innovation in agriculture.

The public sector agricultural research system in the United States is currently the subject of intense critical review. In spite of its documented record of success, measured in terms of discovering, developing, and extending new technology over the past century, indications are that public financial support for the system will be sufficient only to maintain research programs at present levels for the next several years.1 Support for the system expressed as a fraction of the value of agricultural product has been declining for the past fifteen years or so, and further declines appear likely. In addition to the decline in its support base, the system has become the subject of a critical debate over its effectiveness. Many of its critics betray little understanding of the distinctive characteristics of the system that have made agricultural research programs among the most successful public research programs in the United States or of the body of economic studies that have documented this success.2 It would not be wise, however, for this writer or for the managers and administrators of the system itself to dwell on the ignorance of the critics. Much of their criticism is valid, and the decline in the funding base for the system is real. The process of criticism and reform is vital to the maintenance of effectiveness of any public sector program not directly subject to the discipline of the market place. Agricultural research institutions in the United States have experienced major reform at least once in the past. In the early part of this century, an intense struggle between the practical researchers and the more researchers ultimately produced reform in favor of the scientific interests. By the 1930s, modem agricultural science departments and experiment station organizations emerged from this process as the scientific forces won most of the battles. The outcome of this reform process was the development of genuine agricultural sciences. That is, each agricultural science drew on one or more basic general mother sciences for methodology and scientific principles. At the same time, most of the agricultural sciences developed a scientific knowledge cumulation process internal to their own disciplines.3 Some contemporary critics would argue that a similar reform process is required today. They note that the agricultural science disciplines have become highly inbred and have lost close ties with the more general mother sciences from which they drew sustenance to develop as bona fide sciences in the earlier period. The failure of the agricultural sciences to be in the forefront of the recent biotechnology boom could be cited in support of this criticism. Other critics see the problems as being primarily a matter of coordination. The The author is a professor, Economic Growth Center, Yale University. This paper was prepared while he was a visiting fellow at the East-West Population Institute. I See Evenson, Waggoner, and Ruttan for a review of the studies of the productivity of the system. Rose-Ackerman and Evenson report estimates of the support base for research conducted in the State Agricultural Experiment Stations and conclude that expenditures will increase less than proportionately with farm output. 2 See Evenson, Waggoner, and Ruttan, and Ruttan for discussions of the mechanics of articulation of client interests and their role in making the system more effective. Among current critics, little concern is expressed over the means by which research systems effectively serve their clients. 3 This, of course, varied a great deal from discipline to discipline. Agricultural economics, for example, developed an internal knowledge cumulation process in its early years by drawing on three mother sciences: agronomy (itself a daughter science), economics, and statistics. This combination enabled it to achieve important early contributions to econometric studies as well as to applied agricultural studies in farm management and policy.

Chapter 22 - The Economics of Innovation and Technical Change in Agriculture

Événement(s) lié(s) : - Réunion annuelle de la Société canadienne de phytopathologie; Québec (FRA) - (2006)

Farmer experimentation with technologies, diverting from the official recommendations, highlights a common theme in the academic literature on agricultural research and development. Local knowledge and farmer- or demand-driven research have become watchwords of international development efforts, yet remarkably little farmer experimentation has made it into the sphere of formal agricultural research. Farmer practices, interests and experimentation are not systematically analysed, nor is there any serious testing of the effectiveness of farmers’ experiments and adaptations of technologies. International institutes for agricultural research – such as the members of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) – have adopted a changed discourse on farmers’ knowledge, yet their research practice appears surprisingly persistent and little influenced by farmers’ agendas. Drawing on fieldwork and studies on the adoption of agroforestry technologies in Malawi and building upon social science research into the institutional embedding of development discourses, this chapter analyses this incongruence between research discourse (farmer-oriented), and the institutional framework which continues to be geared towards the international research community. Building on the recognition that the institutional set-up and environment of agricultural research produces particular policies, discourses and outcomes, it is shown that, despite a changed discourse on research, change in organizations and research practices has been limited – with changes rarely going beyond rhetoric. Despite new development priorities, research institutes largely still speak to scientific audiences rather than with farmers. It is argued that for agricultural research institutions to adapt to the changing discourse on agricultural research, these institutions themselves need to change organizationally. The chapter critically discusses some recent organizational adaptations in agricultural research, and suggests further modifications so as to make international agricultural research more able to adapt to farmers’ practices and agendas.

Scientific collaboration networks connect researchers across institutions and academic disciplines. Agricultural research involves multiple stakeholders and academic disciplines to address increasingly complex and diverse research agendas. However, the dynamics of collaboration and the patterns of interaction in the agricultural sciences have been little investigated. Uruguay has a rich tradition in agricultural research, but little is known about the ways in which institutional and interdisciplinary collaboration occur and have evolved recently. This article uses relational data from projects documented in researchers’ vitas (CVs) to examine patterns of collaboration in agricultural research in Uruguay during the period 2000–2017. Collaboration networks were explored with social network analysis (SNA) resulting in networks involving varied institutions and academic disciplines. An inter-institutional network with a center and periphery structure is revealed with long-standing science and technology centers as the fundamental nodes. Interdisciplinary collaborations show diversification over time with more academic fields involved in research projects in the agricultural sciences. Joint research between agricultural sciences and other academic fields to address complex current phenomena could benefit from increasing connections with multiple fields in the environmental, social, and health sciences. The study shows the usefulness of SNA and research project data to improve the understanding of collaboration patterns in agricultural research.

Scientists who can communicate across disciplines are essential to fluid translation and must be developed systematically through targeted training.

Against the backdrop of global challenges to food security and China’s push to modernize its agriculture, it is critical to understand how government strategies affect innovation efficiency. This study examines how three modes of intergovernmental competition—fiscal spending competition (strategically increasing public spending to attract resources), tax competition (providing incentives to promote investment), and promotion competition (officials prioritizing short-term projects for promotion)—affect the efficiency of agricultural science and technology innovations across China’s provinces. Utilizing panel data (2000–2021) and a Slack-Based Measure Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA-SBM) model, we find that fiscal spending competition suppresses efficiency, particularly in western regions where infrastructure investments crowd out R&D. Tax competition enhances efficiency, yet its impact is attenuated in central China due to low industrial upgrading. Promotion competition impedes long-term innovation, as frequent official turnover prioritizes short-term projects. Regional heterogeneity highlights eastern China’s market-driven advantages versus central/western regions’ structural constraints. Policy implications advocate for spatially differentiated governance, including R&D tax rebates in the east and cross-regional innovation alliances. This study contributes to fiscal decentralization theory by revealing the nonlinear effects of competition modes on agricultural innovation.

Investments in the agricultural sector represented by innovations and new technologies strongly influence the economic growth in developing countries. In this context, purchasing decisions have become more relevant. Multiple-criteria decision-making techniques are well suited for decision-makers (DMs) who are considering the introduction of new technologies. In this paper, a multi-criteria model is built to help a Colombian agricultural research company make decisions on purchasing different laboratory equipment. A compensatory approach based on trade-offs is used to elicit the preferences of a group of DMs. The high number of answers and cognitive effort required from them during the elicitation process led to using an alternative approach based on partial information, called the FITradeoff (The Flexible and Interactive Tradeoff) method. It showed to be the best fit to solve the company’s purchasing problem and allowed its managers to make decisions that consider criteria other than price, taking account of the DMs’ conflicting viewpoints. The proposed model aimed at contributing to the articulation of the end-user knowledge in decision-making in order to ensure effective articulation of actors and strengthening of science, technology and innovation in agriculture.

Farmer innovations and re-inventions is a subject that is increasingly making people sit up and think. At the very least it underpins a refreshing new approach to indigenous environmental knowledge that goes further than just passive admiration. At the most it is a potentially important new direction for research and extension wherever else the conventional approaches have failed to deliver. To highlight the value of this rich resource and to develop mechanisms for local innovations and re-inventions to find their way into the formal research and development system, documentation of farmer innovations and re-inventions is necessary to give the real picture of its wealth. Scientific enquiry into the documented practices would make it to a status of formal knowledge base and studying extent of adoption of these practices by the farmers will give the real picture of farmers innovations and re-inventions. Finding out the various constraints and analysis of the innovation development process will fetch a base to develop a comprehensive strategy which can be utilized by scientists, extentionists and user system. In this study 216 farmer innovations and re-inventions were identified in different farming situations of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states through informal interview with innovative farmers who were identified for the purpose of giving information on farmer innovations and re-inventions in the selected 3 districts and also from non sample area through secondary sources. Based on the various constraints faced and suggestion given by the innovative farmers a comprehensive strategy was developed which includes identification of farmer innovators, recognition of farmer innovators, documentation of farmer innovations and re-inventions, testing of farmer innovations and re-inventions for scientific rationality and validity, commercialisation of the innovations and re-inventions, networking of farmer innovators, providing farmer innovation support fund, monitoring and evaluation of the farmer innovator network groups, farmer innovator to farmer innovator cross visits and popularisation of farmer innovations and re-inventions. Strategy suggested in the study will help different agencies in promotion of farmer innovations and re-inventions and gives a brief comprehension and hence, it can be effectively utilised in promotion of these technologies through different agencies.

Following the Open Source Trail Outside the Digital World: Open Source Applications in Agricultural Research and Development