Scaling up research-for-development innovations in food and agricultural systems

ABSTRACT

The last decade has seen a growing interest in scaling up innovations to realise wider benefits from development investments. While numerous proven technologies, products and models have been successfully piloted, scaling them up through expansion, adoption and replication has proved challenging, particularly in poor regions of the world. The low uptake of innovations is partially attributed to the design of technologies, in a manner that is not compatible with local farming practices. At the same time, proven innovations fail to generate large impacts at scale because implementing actors have not sufficiently understood or effectively engaged with the scaling process. This article shares lessons from the Canadian International Food Security Research Fund (CIFSRF) that supported applied research to develop, test and scale up promising food and nutrition security innovations. Key lessons include ensuring that innovations are embedded within local socio-ecological systems; engaging end users throughout the research process and enabling participatory decision-making; and considering the investment returns of innovations for end-users.

KEYWORDS:

• Aid – Capacity Development
• Civil society – Participation, Partnership
• Environment (built and natural) – Food security

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Helena Shilomboleni is a former Professional Development Awardee (2017/2018) in the Agriculture and Food Security Program, at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada.

Renaud De Plaen is Program Leader, Agriculture and Food Security Program, at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada.

ORCID

Helena Shilomboleni http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9875-6484

Notes

1 Geels (2002) draws on the historical life cycle of steamships in the UK (1780s–1900s) to illustrate this trend in transitions.

2 Although all 36 innovations were tested for scaling, not all went to scale by the end of CIFSRF programme cycle. As discussed below, some innovations faced regulatory challenges that could not be resolved during project phases.

3 AFS also identified a fourth pathway: financial services, which extends financial products to end users. This pathway, however, was not widely used across CIFSRF Phase 2 projects and thus is not a focus of this research.

4 Among these were products that included corn sheller, farm rake, hand gloves, super grain bag and electric millet thresher as well as practices such as maize-cowpea intercropping, ginger-maize-soybean intercropping, drip irrigation and tarpaulin greenhouses.

5 A different study by Quaye et al. (2017) appraised the performance of the Agro-Tech model based on the awareness and capacity to use among farmers and the agricultural extension agents, willingness to pay for extension services delivery and perceptions of performance of the model. The study carried out 402 structured interviews with farmers, agents and out-grower businesses. Farmers’ perceived performance of the Agro-Tech model were evidently influenced by factors such as timely supply of inputs, cost implications, improvement in yield and value addition that translate into additional income to commit themselves to the terms of the intervention. The study reported that more than one-third of farmers rated the performance of the AgroTech model as excellent (above 70%) while 27% rated the performance as good (70-50%), deducing overall that the model has high-performance rating among interviewed farmers.

6 Enhanced Freshness Formulation (EFF) (pre-harvest spray, dips and vapour treatment), Bio wax, and Nano-packaging (Nano-stickers and sachets.)

7 The countries were India, Canada, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tabago. Among the types of fruits were mango, stone fruits (peach and nectarines), strawberry, banana and papaya.

8 India, alongside Sri Lanka and Canada were part of an earlier project in CIFSRF Phase 1 that developed and tested pre-harvest and post-harvest application of EFF. The work in Kenya, Tanzania and Trinidad and Tobago focused on testing the innovation for the first time.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by International Development Research Centre [Canadian International Food Security Research Fund].