Science and Technology Mailing List Archive

["Hall, Andy" <<address removed>>]

My name is Andy Hall, I have been working on agricultural science,
technology and innovation policy issues in developing countries for the last
15 years or so.  I was a regional co-coordinator for one of DFID's RNRRS
research programmes in India for a number of years and currently work for
the United Nations University, Institute for New Technologies (UNU/INTECH) 
 
I am afraid I have come to this debate late and have not had the chance to
read all the contributions in detail, but felt that I would like to make a
general comment about ways of applying agricultural S&T in development.
This contribution may seem a little academic and long winded but I want to
set out some recent thinking about research and innovation in order to make
comments in connection with how DFID uses agricultural S&T.
 
 I am prompted to do this because I get a sense that much of the discussion
is (laudably) making the case for continued investment in agricultural
research.  However less of the contributions (with the notable exception of
Moses Ochieng) have tacked the question of the way research and innovation
processes are organized and do not seem to be paying attention to what
contemporary thinking has to say about this.  The reason that this is
important is that recent thinking about the production and use of knowledge
challenges the way many donor assistance programmes (and international
research organizations) deploy agricultural science and it also raises
questions about the types of capacities that are built and the ways these
capacities are strengthened.
 
This thinking makes a number of points relevant to agricultural research and
the way DFID could use in the development process:
 
*       Agricultural research (invention) is only one a number of tasks that
brings about innovation (defined here as the production and use of
knowledge of social and economic significance). 
 
*       As a result, many players from the public, private, civil society,
research, enterprise and policy sectors need to be involved in the
productive use of science and technology.  This usually involves partnership
of various kinds, the purpose of which is to share knowledge (about
[evolving] constraints, opportunities, technology, production contexts,
market conditions etc)
 
*       The process of sharing knowledge leads to learning and the
development and deployment of new products and processes, thus underpinning
innovation and social and economic change.
 
*        Thus innovation is not concerned primarily with either demand pull
or (technology) push , but a combination of both processes, with an
iteration between opportunities and demands
 
*       Building capacity to deploy science and technology therefore should
not only involve training scientists and building research infrastructure.
But also should involve strengthening the capacity of local systems to
promote learning and innovation and this usually involves building linkages
and institutional developments that support, learning, knowledge sharing,
and stakeholder participation. 
 
*       Rather than being fixed such capacities need to evolve and change
over time in concert with changes in the wider development context. The
ability to learn and change is thus an important attribute of local systems
of agricultural innovation.
 
All of us who have worked in the agricultural sector know only too well that
capacities of this sort of innovation system kind do not currently exist,
yet are clearly needed.  However accepting that the way to deploy
agricultural research for development lies in building the capacity of local
innovation systems still contradicts much of accepted practice.  
*       It runs counter to the idea of technology transfer (from the North
to the South, from International to National, from research to extension to
farmer).  
*       It suggests that we should worry less about agricultural science and
technology knowledge sources and technology shelves and instead  we should
pay more attention to the behavior of the  system that produce this
knowledge.  
*       It runs counter to the argument that technological change is at the
heart of social and economic change, instead suggesting that innovation (and
thus social and economic change) results from both technological and
institutional development.  And in this instance institutional development
means new ways of doing things, new norms, new ways of deploying science,
new ways of ensuring poor stakeholder need's are addressed and so forth.  
*       It suggests is that the usual distinction that is made between in
aid programmes between research and general development assistance is
misplaced. The reason being that  to distinguish between arrangements for
producing knowledge on the one hand and using it on the other ignores the
fact that these process can only proceed effectively if they are intimately
connected. 
 
Having worked in both a DFID RNRRS research programme and a CGIAR centre I
can say with some degree of confidence that both these ways of deploying
agricultural science have their roots in the old technology transfer model.
Naturally approaches the RNRRS and the CGIAR have evolved, but there still
some distance to travel.   It seems to me that the challenge is not to lobby
for (more) funding for agricultural research alone (although I am fully
behind that), but starting talking about how development assistance can be
used to build the capacity of locally based agricultural innovation systems.
DFID could use its limited resources to encourage international research
efforts to experiment and develop ways of using agricultural science in more
effective way, and I would argue that this means using agricultural science
as part of as part of local innovation systems.
 
 
Such a strategy might involve DFID shifting funding from UK based
disciplinary research programmes to funding in-country research programmes
that have more explicit links with bilateral development projects and with
more general rural development programmes.  These in-country research
programmes might have an explicit goal to develop links between local
scientific knowledge bases and rural development initiatives.  The role of
UK scientific organizations in such a scheme would be to act as a knowledge
base contributing to local, in-country innovation systems  -- i.e. gap
filling .
 
DFID's support of the CGIAR is always going to have to provide more generic
outcomes than a in-country research programme.  However it could use its
resources to encourage the CGIAR centers to develope knowledge about way of
better using agricultural science as well as the more usual sort
technological developments.  To illustrate what this might mean, some recent
work reviewing ICRISAT watershed research work over the last 30 years
concluded that the greatest contribution was not the soil water management
techniques developed per se, but rather the approach to watershed research
and development and the way this influenced international thinking on the
subject.  Contemporary questions of international generic interest might be
about:  how to develop local capacities for IPM; how to broker a more
effective relationship with the private sector, but still ensure a poverty
focus in research; how to set priorities with multiple stakeholders; how
create a more effective role for civil society organistions in the
innovation process. All of these are question about how to more effectively
develop innovation capacity in a systemic sense.  And all of these are
empirical questions that CGIAR centers are well placed to explore through
the on-going "technical" research that they are conducting.  DFID could
provide incentives to encourage this sort of knowledge to be synthesized and
promoted.  This may mean different types of expertise in CGIAR centres and a
changing role for the centers  -- but this would not be a change that
diminished science, but a change that recognizes that science has to be
embed in part of bigger endeavor.  
 
A final point concerns what DFID should do its self to help it rethink the
use of agricultural science and technology.
 
Firstly it should seek ways of getting participation in these discussion
from the developing countries its is trying to assist.  This e-debate seems
to be very Northern dominated - and that includes my own contribution.  
 
Secondly surely DFID has a vast amount of experience of how it uses
agricultural research from the RNRRS.  The opportunity to explore the
lessons it has learnt from this  10 + year programme does not seem to have
been exploited.  I believe a number of studies have been undertaken of the
economic impacts of DFID research,  but this is not about lesson learning on
process - in fact precisely the opposite as the process does not seem to
have been a parameter that has been explored.  The efforts of DFID's crop
post-harvest programme have been notable in trying experiment with ways of
supporting research in a way that contributes to the development of local
innovation systems. More could be made of this experience.  Was it really a
more effective way to deploy agricultural S&T?  Perhaps it's the case that
having contracted out its agricultural science and technology capability
(the RNRRS programmes are not managed by DFID its self)  DFID has further
distanced research from development within its own organization. Perhaps its
time DFID developed its own expertise in relevant areas and explored ways to
integrate innovation concerns across its development programmes.