Tag: innovation
The Relationship among Farmers’ Embeddedness in Value Networks and their Innovation. A Ugandan coffee value chain perspective
The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship among farmers’ embeddedness in value networks and their innovation. Many developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have problems setting up efficient and effective food systems. Smallholder farmers deal with uncertain markets, lack of farmer organizations, and lack of infrastructure. Farmers are heterogeneously embedded into value networks, which results to heterogeneous access to initial resources. Via semi-structured interviews data has been collected in the coffee value network in Manafwa, Uganda. By scoring the farmers on the features reciprocity, resource diversification, and channel diversification more information can be obtained on the embeddedness of a farmer. Defining the farmers in different clusters according to their characteristics and embeddedness leads to different value network maps of the heterogeneous embedded farmers. The variables location, gender, age, and farm size do have influence on the embeddedness of a farmer in the value network. Linking the way how farmers are embedded in the value network with the innovation constraints they face leads to new insights on how to organize the coffee system more efficient and effective.
Farmers’ characteristics and entrepreneurial competences for innovation in Ugandan multi-stakeholder platforms
The objective of this research is to assess the role that farmers’ characteristics and entrepreneurial competences have on farmers’ innovation in the context of Ugandan multi-stakeholder platforms for innovation. In this thesis report, the acronym MSPs is used to indicate this particular type of platforms.
Who is using the new technology? The association of wealth status and gender with the planting of improved tree fallows in Eastern Province, Zambia
Although there is increasing emphasis on targeting of improved technology towards poor and female farmers, few adoption studies assess the uptake of new practices by these groups in a comprehensive manner. In this study, community members used the wealth ranking method to identify the different wealth groups in their communities, to determine each household’s wealth status, and to assess the association of wealth and different types of households with the planting of improved tree fallows, a practice for improving crop yields. There were no significant differences between the proportions of women and men planting improved fallows nor were there differences between single women and female heads of households who were married. There was some evidence of association between planting improved fallows and wealth. That 22% of the ‘poor’ group and 16% of the ‘very poor’ group were planting them suggests that there are no barriers preventing low-income households from doing so. Moreover, the proportion of females, poor, and very poor people planting improved fallows varied considerably among villages, suggesting that opportunities exist for increasing their use of the technology. Whereas the use of mineral fertilizer is strongly associated with high-income, male farmers, improved fallows appear to be a gender-neutral and wealth-neutral technology. Poor farmers appreciate improved fallows because it permits them to substitute small amounts of land and labour for cash, their most scarce resource. Finally, the high degree of consistency among different key informants in classifying households among wealth groups confirmed the effectiveness and accuracy of the wealth ranking exercise.
Tracking the spillover of introduced technologies: The case of improved banana (Musa spp) in Northeast Tanzania
This paper reviews a methodology for tracking the pattern and extent of spillover of introduced technologies, using improved banana (Musa spp) germplasm in Lushoto, Northeast Tanzania, as a case study. Such tracking is important in understanding the factors responsible for the spread of technologies and the accompanying farmer innovations. Spillover of technologies, as used here, refers to the spontaneous flow, or spread, of technologies between farmers using their social networks without external interference. Formal surveys, farmers’ records and focus group discussions were used to establish the path taken and distance covered by the technology, the barriers encountered, and modifications made by farmers on the technology. Lessons derived from the study show that farmers made different modifications to the introduced technologies in order to fit them into the existing farming systems. The pattern of spillover is very much related to existing social networks in the community. Kin (nuclear and extended families) accounted for 53% of the spillover of improved banana germplasm, compared to 47% in non-kin (friends and neighbor) social networks. Improved banana suckers, introduced in Lushoto, were found as far as in Dar es Salaam; more than 300 km away. Gender bias was exhibited in the spontaneous sharing of cash generating technologies (cash crops) like banana, with exchanges between women being negligible.
Building research on farmers’ innovations: low-cost natural vegetative strips and soil fertility management
Contour hedgerows using nitrogen-fixing trees have been widely promoted in Southeast Asia to minimize soil erosion and improve crop yield, but few farmers have taken them up. This is partly because establishing and managing such hedgerows is very labor-intensive. The spontaneous use and rapid dissemination of narrow buffer strips consisting of natural vegetation, so-called Natural Vegetative Strips (NVS), among farmers in the Philippine uplands has provided a low-cost, yet effective alternative to the establishment of tree hedgerows. Formal research on this farmer technology proved that NVS are at least as effective in controlling soil erosion as tree hedgerows, while causing minimal competition effects on the associated field crop and requiring only a fraction of the labor needed to establish and maintain pruned tree hedgerows. As in conventional hedgerow systems, however, natural terrace formation resulting from the redistribution of sediment from upper to lower terrace zones, a process called ‘scouring’, leads to the development of a soil fertility gradient. The result is a significantly lower crop yield on the degraded upper terrace. The assessment of farmers’ strategies to improve crop yield on the upper terrace concluded that practices, which increase soil organic matter levels and raise the soil pH, may be needed to sustain yield in NVS systems in the long run. Future collaborative research by the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF), national agricultural research institutions and farmers will focus on validating and adapting the NVS technology under the contrasting conditions of the shallow, marine limestone-derived soils typical of the central Philippines. This is another major soil environment in Southeast Asia. The evolution of NVS systems to more complex agroforestry systems through the planting of fruit and timber trees along the contour strips will be further assessed. Facilitating and strengthening the collaborative efforts of farmers, local governments and technical providers (researchers, technicians) will be more widely tested as a successful model for the efficient development and dissemination of appropriate soil conservation technologies.
Adoption of agroforestry technology: The case of live hedges in the central plateau of Burkina Faso
Off-season farming activities contribute significantly to household income in the central plateau of Burkina Faso. Cattle and small ruminants are also important. The lack of rules regulating animal browsing during the dry season, unlike during the rainy season, has created competition for available land resources among the components of the land use sub-system. This study describes traditional practices utilized to protect home gardens from animals, how these practices have evolved over time and examines factors that affect the adoption of live hedges. Informal and formal surveys were undertaken in the study area in 1993. Five types of traditional method for protecting gardens from animals were identified. A logit model integrating technology profitability as an explanatory variable was used to study farmers’ decision processes to live hedges adoption. The results indicate that water availability and the profitability of the technology itself enhance the probability of adopting live hedges. The results provide an insight into conditions that should be taken into consideration when targeting farmers for this agroforestry technology.
Follow the innovation: transdisciplinary innovation research in Khorezm, Uzbekistan
Agricultural innovations produced by research projects without interaction with potential end users often fail to match the real-life complexities of local farmers. To overcome this lack of fit between scientifically generated innovations and local realities, the interdisciplinary research project’Economic and Ecological Restructuring of Land and Water in the Region Khorezm, Uzbekistan’ initiated a participatory approach to innovation development and diffusion together with local stakeholders. From early 2008 until early 2011, selected agricultural innovations, developed by the project and identified as’plausible promises’, were tested jointly by teams of local farmers, water managers and researchers under real-life settings. This chapter outlines the transdisciplinary innovation research experience, coined’Follow the Innovation’ by the team. It discusses the challenges faced in this process of joint experimentation and learning as well as the lessons learnt with regard to the innovations and the participatory innovation processes.
More effective natural resource management: using democratically elected, decentralized government structures in Uganda
As forest and plantation reserves decline, the demand for tree products and services steadily increases in the densely populated south-western highlands of Uganda. Farmers are willing to grow trees on their farms but, as is typical in the highlands of Central Africa, on a small farm of less than i ha the farmer cannot set aside an area specifically for trees. Integrating trees into the farming system can provide important benefits to the fanner and the environment.
Scoping Study Report on Potential Value Chains and Institutional Arrangements in Solwezi, Zambia
The scoping study was conducted in Solwezi district in Northwestern Zambia. The aim of the scoping study was to provide an overview of i) the institutional arrangements in terms of partnerships at the local, national and regional level that will enable value chain innovation platform development and ii) to identify and characterize potential value chains and market information delivery systems that could be developed through innovation platforms that would work best for smallholder farmers including women and young people.