CHAPTER 3 LITERATURE REVIEW
3.5 Productivity and viability
Page 56 of 231 five attributes upon which an innovation is evaluated viz: relative advantage (degree to which an innovation is perceived as being better than the idea it supersedes), compatibility (extent to which an innovation is perceived as consistent with the existing values, past experiences, and the needs of the target group), complexity (the level to which an innovation is perceived as relatively difficult to understand and/or use), observability (the scope to which the results of an innovation are visible and communicated to others), and trialability (degree to which an innovation may be experimented with on limited basis).
3.4.7 Role of innovation platforms in technology adoption
Innovation platforms represent a paradigm shift from linear thinking to innovation system thinking, which entails a re-conceptualizing of the roles and contributions of research in development projects (Sumberg, 2005), innovation processes and technology adoption. As an example, institutions influence how decisions are made, how research priorities are set, how research questions are identified, how relationships with other stakeholders are shaped, how knowledge is generated and shared, and how learning and reflection happens (Hall et al., 2003;
Leeuwis, 2013). All this influences the credibility, legitimacy, relevance, appropriateness, target domain perceptions, and the level of technology adoption of related innovations.
Technology adoption in innovation platforms is also, to a large extent, driven by a conducive environment within IPs. Such drivers include, inter alia, the presence of a common objective and a shared vision, the existence of functional output markets, incentives, a critical mass of relevant actors, and the ability of the organizations to conduct critical functions, provide services and develop policy, coordinate, and afford mechanisms for reducing risk and transaction costs.
Page 57 of 231 increased by 71 percent between 1961 and the turn of the millennium, while average grain yields have doubled (World Bank, 2006). Other studies have shown that a 1 percent increase in agricultural yields in low-income countries leads to a 0.8 percent reduction in the number of people below the poverty line (Thirtle et al., 2003). This shows the link between agricultural productivity, an assumed viability and poverty reduction. To ensure this, most agricultural production has been increasingly been integrated in value chains with forward (marketing) and backward (input supply) linkages. However, this progression has not proceeded without its own challenges.
Population densities within smallholder farming areas continue to increase while the land and other resources available for the expansion of agriculture are becoming increasingly scarce (SADC, 2010; ZimVAC, 2014). Additionally, insecurity of tenure, low levels of mechanization, shortages of inputs, lack of capital and labour bottlenecks (particularly in resource-poor and female-headed households) often limit farmers’ propensity and ability to expand their scale of production. Thus, sustainable increases in enterprise productivity and viability, through technological and managerial innovation, continue to be crucial means through which both food security and poverty reduction can be achieved. Like elsewhere within the global village, agricultural producers are also now supplying long and complex value chains that are marketing high value fresh and processed products to a diversity of consumers, the bulk of them being urban dwellers (Cavatassi et al., 2009). This is an opportunity for expanding agricultural markets, thereby providing incentives and an avenue for improving productivity and viability.
However, production contexts are always and rapidly changing, yields remain uncertain, prices are volatile due to thin markets, and market access remains limited, with the bulk of smallholder producers continuing to be marginalized (Cavatassi et al., 2009).
Thus innovation platform initiatives designed to improve productivity, product quality, margins and viability (through reduced system inefficiencies and transaction costs), market linkages (via vertical integration or contract farming arrangements), and subsector competitiveness are essential.
Page 58 of 231 3.5.2 Equity and sustainability
Equity entails the quality of being fair or impartial e.g. fairness or justice in the way people are treated. Within the context of innovation platforms, equity addresses cross-cutting issues of gender and the youth. As an example, within an IP, the roles and benefits may not be equally shared among men and women actors, and among these and the youth. According to Makini et al. (2013), this is because an IP may not possess control mechanisms to ensure gender balance and equity across stakeholder groups since actors participate voluntarily, based on interest and may not enforce change in attitudes and/or practices. In Zimbabwe, there are inherent gender imbalances regarding livestock ownership as more men tend to own more animals than women and very little numbers are owned by women or jointly owned in male-headed households (Hanyani-Mlambo and Manyonga-Matingo, 2014). This also entails differences in gender disaggregated roles for men and women (Kristjanson et al., 2010), disparities in livestock marketing decision making patterns (Ruzivo Trust, 2013), variations in the quantity and quality of representation in leadership positions (Hanyani-Mlambo and Manyonga-Matingo, 2014), and hence the need for gender disaggregated data analysis. Youth’s current role in farming is peripheral, thereby raising inheritance and sustainability issues notably in smallholder dairying.
However, evidence from recent studies have shown that where markets and incomes are involved, young people are keen to engage in agriculture and in taking advantage of arising opportunities (Carr and Hanyani-Mlambo, 2013; Land O’ Lakes, 2013).
While this thesis has already addressed issues on innovation platform sustainability, there are also sustainability issues at the farm and farmer level. So the question could be, at that level, what is sustainability? Sustainability at the farm and farmer level is hereby conceptualized as the ability to sustain, support, uphold, or confirm farming activities or specific agricultural enterprises. Although not the focus here, the concept of sustainability at the farm and farmer level is also partially related to environmental sustainability, which hinges on the quality of not being harmful to the environment or depleting natural resources, and thereby supporting the long-term ecological balance.
Page 59 of 231 According to UNDP (2002) sustainability issues to consider can, inter alia, include:-
(i) The number of farmers adopting the introduced technologies in intervention areas and outside the intervention sites.
(ii) The capacity of beneficiaries to continue with the intervention activities without outside support.
(iii) The sustainability of the introduced technologies vis à vis the local context and environment.
(iv) The sustainability of the social and institutional capital built among beneficiaries.
(v) The number of people who can continue to practice the recommended good agricultural practices.
3.5.3 Econometric models for assessing productivity, viability and impact
Ex-ante and ex-post economic impact assessments, as well as productivity, viability and technology adoption studies have remained the dominant paradigm in international agricultural research, particularly in CGIARs. Similarly, the measurement of performance of interventions and innovations in the literature has been characterized by quantitative and process analyses (Hall et al., 2001; Hall et al., 2003). Quantitative analysis, which is derived mainly from neoclassical economics, posits a linear relationship between investment in research, the development of agricultural technology, its subsequent adoption by farmers, and the ultimate impact on productivity and economic viability. This conceptualization has influenced priority setting whereupon research financial allocations came to be based on rates of return to investment without due care of equity issues. The emphasis has also been on factors and characteristics of technology without questioning the effectiveness of current institutional arrangements in generating and disseminating innovations. Conversely, the qualitative approach has tended to focus on the process rather than on the outputs and impact of intervention and innovations. The underlying proposition is that the hierarchical institutional arrangements typical of most centralized agricultural research systems are not capable of dealing with the complex technology needs of small and resource-poor farmers, arguing instead that thriving innovation platforms can only be achieved by a much more holistic understanding of the process of technology development and the institutional arrangements necessary to achieve this.
Page 60 of 231 Thus, the dominant form of assessment and analysis have been economic impact approaches and econometric tools. Ex-ante studies rely mostly on the economic surplus model. Econometric approaches, on the other hand, estimate the empirical importance of different factors explaining adoption (Doss, 2003). They typically have a dependent variable, adoption, being explained by a set of independent variables and include the OLS, Tobit, Probit and Logistic Regression.
Identified limitations include the unavailability of adequate input and output data on the research process and subsequent technical change, the difficulty of attributing past, current or future outcomes to particular research investments, and assigning a value to these outcomes (Alston et al., 1995).