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Abstract
Despite the pineapple fruit contributing significantly towards Ghana’s non-traditional export, the empirical space deficiently accounts for innovations within the sector. This article addresses prime questions that beg answering such as: the origin of innovations, when, how, what conditions facilitate adoption intensity or otherwise, what type of innovations are systematically associated with pineapple production. This study fills this lacuna by chronicling the main pineapple innovations using innovation history methodology embedded in an agricultural innovation system conceptual framing. Relying on a qualitative approach, the findings showed the emergence of two varieties – smooth cayenne and sugar loaf, overtaken by the MD2 variety. Degreening, forcing, and global Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) dominate. The Millennium Development Authority programme consolidated business plan development, efficient marketing, record keeping, and farming as a business. Successes were recorded in some instances with the transfer of technology extension model, but this article argues that the agricultural innovation system can be prioritized given the plurality of actors. The innovation history is trivialized, but it is essential for learning and co-learning in building stronger partnerships. This article underscores a radical use of innovation history both as a methodological tool and means of documenting innovations, particularly in the global south, where copious record-keeping remains rare.
Acknowledgement
I acknowledge the use and further development of a research objective of my PhD thesis submitted to the University of Reading, United Kingdom (UK). The reference has been duly acknowledged in-text.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 In this study, we consider the AIS, also known as systems thinking (the two terms are used interchangeably) to include all pineapple value chain actors. An examination is made about the type of relationships existing, the level of interaction among actors that leads to the generation and use of knowledge, processes involved in knowledge generation, who champions innovation, what influences innovation generation and use, the level of reflectivity involved in the processes leading to the generation and use of knowledge. Inferences are made about valuable lessons derived from the level of adoption or otherwise of varied pineapple innovations.
2 Nvivo is a software program used to analyze unstructured text, images, videos, and audio information within the qualitative research domain.
3 In the 1980 and 1990s, Combined Farmers Ltd was the largest producer, and exporter of fresh pineapples in Ghana.
4 Farmapine is no longer in operation.
5 Nsawam Canneries Ltd was a government-owned fruit processing company engaged in canning pineapple juice for the export and domestic market.
6 Fante is a local name meaning the local dialect for the people hailing from the Central Region.
7 The Agricultural Innovation System (AIS) is also known as systems thinking.
8 Nnoboa is a group practice where individual farmers come together to constitute a group to weed each other’s farm in an agreed successive arrangement.
9 GLOBALGAP constitutes a private standard established in 1997 as EurepGAP by a collection of European retailers. The standard has the sole aim to establish a universal standard for Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) (Kleemann, Abdulai, and Buss 2014).
10 Farmapine Company Limited was a farmer-owned company established in 1999 with funding from the World Bank (Fold and Gough 2008).