Justice Tambo, Senior Socio-Economist CABI, Switzerland

DOI: 10.65398/WPQO9267

Abstract

This paper presents the experiences and outcomes of using contests to elicit farmers’ indigenous innovations and to reward outstanding farmer innovators in selected districts in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and Zambia. The contests attracted 349 eligible entries, most of which were submitted by male innovators. The most common domains of innovations were related to livestock (40%), crop management (26%), storage (10%), soil and water management (8%) and farm tools and implements (5%). Many of the innovators were using local resources to develop botanical pesticides and ethnoveterinary medicines with the goal of improving productivity and reducing production costs. The study concludes that farmers possess valuable ethnobotanical knowledge and innovation-generating potential that need to be harnessed and supported; and contests are an effective means to scout and acknowledge farmer innovators while raising awareness of farmer innovation approach among relevant stakeholders.

1. Introduction

Farmers are a rich source of indigenous knowledge and agricultural innovations (Biggs 1990; Van Huis and Meerman 1997). Driven by economic and environmental changes, curiosity, creativity, serendipity, and desire for social recognition, farmers have continuously been experimenting and generating innovations since the beginning of agriculture (Chambers et al. 1989; Sumberg and Okali 1997; Critchley 2000; Bentley 2006; Leitgeb et al. 2014; Bragdon and Smith 2015). Farmers develop innovations that are suitable for their diverse range of agro-ecological conditions and farming systems, and they make incremental improvements to traditional practices and promoted technologies to adapt them to local realities (Waters-Bayer et al. 2009). The innovations developed by farmers range from new or modified farm tools, techniques and practices to new ways of organizing, managing resources and communicating (Sumberg and Okali 1997; Reij and Waters-Bayer 2001). These farmer-generated innovations have been found to contribute positively to improved livelihoods (Tambo and Wünscher 2017a) and building resilience to climate shocks (Tambo and Wünscher 2017b).

Recognizing the importance of farmers’ innovations, there has been a rapidly growing movement of scientists, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), agricultural ministries and farmer organizations that are drawing attention to and supporting farmer-led innovation processes, including scouting and documenting the innovations, as well as building farmers’ capacity to test, adapt and develop their own innovations. Several initiatives and studies have been implemented in recent years to scout and document farmer innovations (Wettasinha et al. 2008; Critchley and Mutunga 2003; Gupta 2016; Tambo and Wünscher 2015; Find Your Feet 2012). Appreciating farmer innovators is likely to boost self-esteem of farmers as they start to see themselves as people rich in knowledge, thereby stimulating the generation of more innovations. In addition, it enhances mutual respect as it induces the scientific community to begin to see farmers as not mere adopters of promoted techniques but rather as people with valuable indigenous knowledge that can complement their own scientific knowledge (Waters-Bayer et al. 2009).

In this paper, we present the experience of the Program of Accompanying Research for Agricultural Innovation (PARI) in identifying and supporting farmers’ indigenous innovations in Africa. PARI is a research-focused program funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) that, among other things, aims at promoting and supporting the scaling of proven innovations in the agri-food sector. One of the components of PARI focuses on identifying high-potential farmers’ or bottom-up innovations and on recognizing and rewarding the innovators for their creativity. To this end, we implemented innovation contests in four African countries with the hope that the opportunity to win prizes through the contests would incentivize farmers to report their indigenous innovations.

2. Implementation of the innovation contests

This study was based on innovation contests that were implemented in 2016 in four African countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and Zambia. In the contests, farmers competed to win prizes by revealing their independently developed innovations. Following Tambo and Wünscher (2015), we considered three conditions necessary for an activity to be considered a farmer innovation and eligible for the contests , i.e. (1) any practice or technique along the food chain; (2) that is done differently from known common or traditional practice; (3) and was developed primarily by a farmer or a group of farmers themselves (without direct support from extension and development agents or formal research). The contests were implemented in collaboration with PARI project partners, including the Ethiopian Development Research Institute (EDRI), Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), Malawi’s Department of Agricultural and Research Services (DARS) and Zambia Agricultural Research Institute (ZARI). The innovations contests were implemented in Hitosa, Lude Hitosa and Digeluna Tijo districts in the Arsi Zone of Ethiopia; Bungoma, Kakamega and Siaya counties in Kenya; Rumphi Salima and Thyolo districts in Malawi; and Choma, Petauke and Katete districts in Zambia. The contests were open to farmers or groups working in the food value chain in the various study districts.

The first step in the contest process involved a visit to the selected districts to sensitize relevant stakeholders about the innovation contests. The stakeholders included leaders and staff of Ministries of Agriculture, research institutes, farmer associations and NGOs. The scoping visit provided an opportunity to obtain useful information to plan the actual implementation of contests in the various districts. This included identification of the best possible mechanisms through which farmers could obtain information about the contests as well as background information about the districts, including the most appropriate channels for disseminating information on the contests.

To create awareness about the contests, different information dissemination mechanisms, including extension officers, local radio stations, mobile phone text messages, churches, lead farmers, farmer organizations and community sensitization were considered. However, radio announcements and extension agents were the two main channels employed. Due to the low level of literacy of the farmers in the study regions, extension agents were instrumental in the implementation of the contests. An innovator interested in participating in the contest was required to submit a filled application form that was designed for this purpose. The roles of the extension agents in the contests included: informing farmers located in their operational areas about the contest; identifying those who had developed an innovation and assist them to complete an application form; and returning the completed forms to a designated location within a six-week period. The extension agents were offered monetary rewards (ranging from 12 to 25 USD) for each qualified application submitted. To ensure increased awareness of the contests, about two local radio stations with potential to reach wide audience were contracted in each country to broadcast jingles about the innovation contests in various local languages spoken in the study districts.

An independent evaluation committee was set up in each of the study countries to evaluate the applications. The committee members included 9 to 12 local experts who had been working on topics related to agricultural or farmer innovations and were familiar with the local farming systems. The experts were drawn from Ministries of Agriculture in the study districts, research institutions, extension service providers, farmer organizations and NGOs. Following Tambo and Wünscher (2015), a multi-criteria decision-making approach was adopted for the grading of eligible applications. The criteria agreed upon for the evaluation of the innovations included originality, economic potential, gender responsiveness, environmental friendliness, adoption potential and social acceptability.

The high-ranking innovations were then short-listed for verification, which involved visiting the applicants to get detailed information about their innovations and confirming if they were the true originators of the reported innovations. Based on satisfactory verifications, the short-listed innovators to be awarded prizes were selected. Prizes were awarded at the district level, and there were separate prizes for men, women and youth applicants. In each category of applicants, there were awards (such as farm inputs and machineries) for the first, second and third best innovators that were worth 1000 USD, 750 USD and 500 USD, respectively. The prizes were given out during district agricultural shows or events where stakeholders from the agricultural sector, award winners and media persons were present. The award winners together with all eligible applicants were given certificates of participation in the contests.

3. Main findings

Overall, 774 applications were submitted to the contests across the four countries, suggesting high levels of interest in the contests. However, about 425 (55%) of the submitted applications were rejected as they were deemed to be common, traditional or externally promoted techniques and practices. The number of successful entries received were 49, 66, 85 and 149 for Ethiopia, Zambia, Malawi and Kenya, respectively. Nearly two-thirds of the eligible innovations were developed by men. The women and youth innovators were about 24% and 13%, respectively. This is in line with previous evidence showing that most farmer innovators are middle-aged men (Reij and Waters-Bayer 2001).

A large share (98%) of the innovations were developed by individuals rather than groups. Nearly two-thirds of the innovations were incremental innovations, which involve the modification of existing techniques, tools or practices, while the generation of practices or technologies that are completely novel (radical innovations) constituted about a third of the innovations. Roughly 42% of the innovators had created commercial products and services from their innovations. Nearly 70% of the innovators claimed that they spent less than 20 USD to develop their innovations, which resonates with arguments that smallholder farmers use locally available resources develop simple and low-cost innovations (Reij and Waters-Bayer 2001; Reij et al. 2009).

Table1: Domains of innovations identified through the contests

Table 1 displays the domains of the farmer-generated innovations that were identified through the innovation contests. We find that livestock-related innovations dominate in all the study countries, particularly in Zambia where about 56% of the identified innovations were in the domain of livestock production. Overall, innovations in livestock production constituted roughly 40% of the identified innovations. A large share (82%) of the 138 innovations in livestock production involved livestock health management through ethnoveterinary practices. Others include innovations related to incubation, as well as feeding, breeding and housing of livestock.

Table 1 indicates that another important category of innovations identified through the contests was crop management innovations. Nearly half of this category of innovation was related to crop protection using botanical pesticides, which are concoctions containing extracts of fruits, pods, seeds, roots, barks or leaves of plants or trees with pesticidal properties. The botanical pesticides were used to control insect pests, including ants, termites, stem borers, stalk borers and aphids, as well as weeds, such as witchweed. Other examples of crop management innovations included various modified methods of land preparation and planting in order to optimize land use, quicken growth process, increase nutrient uptake, prevent lodging and increase yield; breeding and grafting activities to generate cultivars that are stress tolerant, fast growing and high yielding; introduction of a novel type of intercropping that increases crop yields; using local materials to make simple traps that prevent crop damage by rodents (such as mice and rats) and monkeys; and making liquid fertilizers by mixing extracts of plants (such as Tithonia), and human or rabbit urine, which are used as top dressing and foliar spray.

Inspired by modern farm implements, some of the innovators were using local materials to develop simple farm tools and implements to save time and labour or decrease production costs. A greater share of the innovations related to farm tools and implements were scouted in Ethiopia. Moreover, such innovations were mostly reported by youths, suggesting that youth farmers are relatively more involved in generating time-saving and drudgery-reducing farm implements.

The soil and water management innovations consisted of soil fertility enhancing techniques, irrigation practices and water conservation technologies. The storage innovations mainly involved the use of ashes of plants or pulverized plant materials to protect stored grains and seeds against storages pests, such as larger grain borers and weevils. We also identified a few simple processes or tools for adding value to farm products, which we termed processing innovations, as well as a few innovations in the areas of agroforestry, apiculture and aquaculture.

All the innovators were asked about the key motivations for developing their innovations, and their responses are summarized in Table 2. An important motivating factor for developing an innovation is to reduce the cost of production, as cited by about 62% of the innovators. The identified innovators were mostly smallholder resource-poor farmers who often faced difficulties in accessing affordable modern agricultural technologies, and this may have induced them to develop cost-saving practices and techniques. Achieving productivity increases in crops and livestock was the primary goal of about half of the innovators. Another important driver of the innovations was curiosity. Around 41% of the innovators were curious to find out if a harboured idea will work or not, and this resulted in innovation outcomes. Other driving factors mentioned by the innovators included reduction in the amounts of inputs and labour used, improving the quality of farm products, adaptation to environmental shocks, exploitation of market opportunities, and desire to gain social recognition. A few of the innovators (11%) asserted that their innovations were unplanned and occurred serendipitously.

Table 2: Motivation for generating the innovations

Note: Multiple responses recorded

At the country level, the Ethiopian innovators cited curiosity and reducing expenses as the main motivations behind their innovations. Similarly, curiosity and reducing expenses, in addition to increasing production and improving product quality, were the important factors that spurred the implementation of the identified innovations in Kenya. We also found that the innovators in Malawi were inspired to innovate mainly because of the desire to increase agricultural production and reduce production costs, which was also the key motive for the innovators in Zambia.

4. Concluding remarks

This paper presents the experiences and outcomes of applying contests to elicit farmer-generated innovations and to reward outstanding farmer innovators in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and Zambia. In the contests, smallholder farmers competed to win prizes ranging from 500 USD to 1000 USD by revealing their own generated innovations. The contests attracted about 350 eligible entries, mostly from male innovators. The most common categories of innovations include livestock (40%), crop management (26%), storage (10%), soil and water management (8%) and farm tools and implements (5%). Most of the identified innovations relate to reducing crop losses using plant-based biopesticides and preventing or treating livestock pests and diseases using ethnoveterinary practices. We found that the innovators were mainly driven by economic motives such as reducing production costs and increasing production, but intrinsic motives such as curiosity were also important drivers.

The findings suggest that contest is a good mechanism to scout farmers’ indigenous innovations while simultaneously acknowledging the ingenuity of the innovators and raising awareness among relevant stakeholders. The contests helped in revealing practices and tools developed by farmers that were hitherto kept in secrecy. Furthermore, this study reaffirms the notion that farmers are active experimenters who continuously generate remarkable and locally adapted innovations. They use local resources to develop low external input technologies to reduce production costs, improve food production and cushion the effects of climate change. In conclusion, farmers possess valuable ethnobotanical knowledge and innovation-generating potential that need to be harnessed and supported.

Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) through the research project “Program of Accompanying Research for Agricultural Innovation” (PARI). The author gratefully acknowledges project partners from EDRI, KALRO, DARS, ZARI and the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) as well as stakeholders who supported the implementation of the contests in the four study countries.

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[1] This chapter is derived from a published paper: Tambo, J.A. (2018). Recognizing farmer-generated innovations through contests: insights from four African countries. Food Security, 10(5), 1237-1250.