NGO
Non-Governmental Organization
OE
Official (State) Extension
WomUn Women’s Union
11.1 Introduction
In an era of progressively amplifying expectations towards food, the goal of
agricultural producers is no longer to simply maximize production, but also
to optimize across a far more complex landscape of quality, environmental
sustainability, product traceability and rural development, to name just a few of
the more prominent criteria. Despite the emergence of a myriad of innovations in
recent years geared towards supplying the farmer with the appropriate support
needed to keep abreast of these challenges, this combination of expectations has
brought with it novel and complex changes for farmers to deal with. Among these
changes, farmers are faced with not only having to physically introduce innovations
or comply with new institutions, but also become acquainted with relevant handling
information, understand basic functions and learn how to use and integrate new
things into common practice, which together may be considered “the software”
(Smits 2002) of an innovation, or simply the “knowledge” required to make full use
of it. Against this background, knowledge can be increasingly viewed as simply a
primary factor of agricultural production, along with the classical factors of land,
labor and capital (STEPS Centre 2010).
The complexity, or often lack of information flows between actors that can be
associated with the generation, communication and use of a certain innovation is
known to exacerbate the difficulties in obtaining the necessary knowledge required
to manage it (see e.g., Albrecht et al. 1989; Hoffmann et al. 2009; Leeuwis 2004;
Sumberg et al. 2003).
Knowledge, and all processes associated with its generation, dispersion and
utilization, can be seen as embedded in a wider contextual ‘landscape’ which
consists of societal factors that transform only slowly over time, such as the
political culture – including policy practices, institutional capabilities and organizational processes, as well as lifestyles and the economic system. The set-up of this
landscape can favor or limit innovation.
At the center of this – within what literature commonly refers to as the
‘innovation system’ (Clark 2002; Ro ¨ling 2006; Sumberg 2005) – there is, however,
a smaller or larger number of actors each of whom follow individual strategies,
beliefs, practices, perceptions and norms (Leeuwis 2004).
This view helps us to move away from a simple model of technical progress,
to accept the broader (human) interactions behind innovation of all kinds –
interactions that can be associated with a wide range of notions, such as networks,
434
I. Schad et al.
Non-Governmental Organization
OE
Official (State) Extension
WomUn Women’s Union
11.1 Introduction
In an era of progressively amplifying expectations towards food, the goal of
agricultural producers is no longer to simply maximize production, but also
to optimize across a far more complex landscape of quality, environmental
sustainability, product traceability and rural development, to name just a few of
the more prominent criteria. Despite the emergence of a myriad of innovations in
recent years geared towards supplying the farmer with the appropriate support
needed to keep abreast of these challenges, this combination of expectations has
brought with it novel and complex changes for farmers to deal with. Among these
changes, farmers are faced with not only having to physically introduce innovations
or comply with new institutions, but also become acquainted with relevant handling
information, understand basic functions and learn how to use and integrate new
things into common practice, which together may be considered “the software”
(Smits 2002) of an innovation, or simply the “knowledge” required to make full use
of it. Against this background, knowledge can be increasingly viewed as simply a
primary factor of agricultural production, along with the classical factors of land,
labor and capital (STEPS Centre 2010).
The complexity, or often lack of information flows between actors that can be
associated with the generation, communication and use of a certain innovation is
known to exacerbate the difficulties in obtaining the necessary knowledge required
to manage it (see e.g., Albrecht et al. 1989; Hoffmann et al. 2009; Leeuwis 2004;
Sumberg et al. 2003).
Knowledge, and all processes associated with its generation, dispersion and
utilization, can be seen as embedded in a wider contextual ‘landscape’ which
consists of societal factors that transform only slowly over time, such as the
political culture – including policy practices, institutional capabilities and organizational processes, as well as lifestyles and the economic system. The set-up of this
landscape can favor or limit innovation.
At the center of this – within what literature commonly refers to as the
‘innovation system’ (Clark 2002; Ro ¨ling 2006; Sumberg 2005) – there is, however,
a smaller or larger number of actors each of whom follow individual strategies,
beliefs, practices, perceptions and norms (Leeuwis 2004).
This view helps us to move away from a simple model of technical progress,
to accept the broader (human) interactions behind innovation of all kinds –
interactions that can be associated with a wide range of notions, such as networks,
434
I. Schad et al.