November 8, 2018 Food & Agriculture Uma 0 comment

Technology generation, adaptation, adoption and impact: towards a framework for understanding and impact

International agricultural research, technology generation, transfer, adoption and impact (IARTGTAI) constitute components of a system that has evolved from a relatively simple structure in the 1960s to a complex network in the late 1990s. Its functioning is of great international interest. Despite major successes on the food front, there are still 850 million people who earn less than a dollar a day and go to bed hungry. Many studies of research, adoption and/or impact in agriculture exist, but they tend to look at specific aspects of the scientific and technology processes, such as priority setting or research impact. The recent changes in the science and technology processes and the resulting present structure have not been analyzed sufficiently yet as organizational innovations intended to alleviate market failures with a view to achieve specific social objectives. The innovations form part of a larger global science and technology process consisting of multiple actors, each with a different set of interests. A broader evolutionary framework offers an opportunity for a clearer understanding of the relationship between sources of technical change in agriculture, and the spread of its adaptation and adoption by producers and agroindustries.