David Bergvinson

Presented at NAAS 2015Silver Jubilee Lecture3 June 2015

Demand-Driven Innovation in Agriculture: Creating Economic Opportunity for Smallholder Farmers and Nutritional Security for Consumers

ICRISAT is a member of the CGIAR Consortium

ICRISAT | 2

What Is and What Drives Demand-Driven Innovation In Agriculture?

Innovation

Climate

Change

Consumer Awareness

Sustainable Intensification

HumanitarianGoals

Demand-driven innovation (DDI) integrates information, priorities and needs of farmers in the design, development and delivery of farmer- and consumer-preferred products, knowledge and services

ICRISAT | 3

Climate change, resource scarcity and changing demographics threaten food & nutritional security

Climate Change

Diseases

Climate

change

BreedingAgronomy

Projected demand by 2050 (FAO)

World-w

ide average yield

(tons ha

-1)

Linear extrapolations of current trends

Water, nutrient &

energy scarcity

Potential effect of climate-change-induced heat stress on today’s cultivars (intermediate CO2 emission scenario)

Year

Marianne Banziger, CIMMYT, 2012

ICRISAT | 4

Current realities in developing countries. . . Agronomic Dynamics

Smallholder farmers in South Asia are facing higher input costs and lower market value for produce and facing increased climate and market variability – this is even more challenging for woman farmers

• For nutritional security to be realized:

• Increase rate of genetic gain in staple crops by 50%

• Ecological intensification

• Diet diversity increased while increasing nutrition-per-drop

• Manage risk and economic opportunity

• We need to realize gains with same land, less water, nutrients, fossil fuel and labor

• All of this needs to get done against the backdrop of climate change

Biodiversity loss, Nitrogen cycle and climate change are various parameters has reached beyond its permissible threshold at planetary scale

Living within the ecological limits of the plant. . . Agronomic Dynamics

ICRISAT | 5

Foley et al, Nature, 2009

ICRISAT | 6

Narrowing diversity of our food system is having an impact on nutrition and health

Consumer Awareness

For nutritional security to be realized:

• Diet diversity to be increased

• Manage risk and economic opportunity

• Realize gains with same land, less water, nutrients, fossil fuel and labor – Smart Foods – e.g. Nutri-cereals

• Empowering women and girls –e.g. First 1000 days campaign

Khoury et al. (2014) PNAS 111:4001-4006

ICRISAT | 7

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be replacing the MDGs in 2016

• Goal 1 – End poverty in all its forms everywhere

• Goal 2 – End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

Humanitarian Goals

ICRISAT | 8

Public-Private-Producer Partnerships (PPPPs) are key in supporting demand-driven innovation in Agriculture

• Engaging farmers early and often in the design, development and delivery of scientific outputs will result in higher rates of adoption of farmer- and consumer-preferred technologies

• Participatory approaches to research can compress product development cycles and create awareness and demand

• PPPPs will play a critical role in feeding 9.6 billion people by 2050 in a sustainable manner – financially, socially, environmentally

• Key challenges: aligned goals, triple wins, trust, enabling environment, governance (including ‘big data’), agency to women and making agriculture a viable business for youth

PPPPs – The missing link ?

PPPPs – An engine to Innovate

• Designing global programs that are locally relevant and socially equitable

• PPPP for scaling / feedback for demand-driven innovation

• Agile science and policy support to respond to rapid changes in climate, markets and societal needs while living within the ecological boundaries of the planet

Monitoring, Learning, Evaluation

NAAS Network

Cross-cutting issues

Mainstreaming nutrition

Empowering women – women are

consulted, involved and supported to lead

Attracting youth to agriculture

Approach for AdoptionParticipatory approach and partnering – working side by side

Building capacity – at a national and local level

Integrating communications - to build awareness and share knowledge

Monitoring and evaluation – for feedback and adjustment

Policy support – work closely with government to encourage the needed policies

A holistic approach to demand-driveninnovation

Analyzingkey problems

and

opportunities

Managing

soil and water

CropImprovement

& seed

access

Drivingmarket

development

Facilitating market

access

Introducing

processing

Developing on-farm

practices and

technologies

Diversifying

farms

STRASA

Boundarypartners

Leadfarmers

Broadercommunity

STRASA built a large network of delivery partners capable of identifying and equipping lead farmers …

… who rapidly mobilized others in their community to adopt new varieties, thereby motivating seed companies to produce, promote and distribute improved varieties

DDI Example 1 – Stress tolerant rice

Lead farmers have interest and capacity to assist others in community, are influential and trusted, and can take risk with testing new technologies

Boundary partners are community based NGOs & government extension system with aligned goals

SOURCE: PO interviews

Participatory Variety Selection – asking the farm family what they want in a new rice variety

Swarna Swarna-sub1

11

CropImprovement

& seed

access

… and created feedback loops that both facilitate rapid scale up and enhance ongoing R&D and delivery efforts

“Participatory variety

selection”

“Dissemination”

▪ Improve product development by listening to farmers

▪ Accelerate adoption at launch by visualizing demand early at community level

▪ Stimulate informal supply networks by incentivizing farmers to produce seed and help match supply and demand

▪ Catalyze early policy change by using strong farmer demand to put pressure on government to create enabling environment

▪ Accelerate scale up by leveraging nodes of influence to deliver information and products to large numbers of farmers

▪ Reduce reliance on public extension system for broad and rapid delivery; can bring extension on board for scale up

▪ Improve future R&D by gathering market intelligence based on feedback from farmers (e.g., detailed farmer segmentation and targeting)

Researchers Lead farmersBroader

community

Technology

Feedback

Knowledge &

Products

Feedback

Impact

▪ Shorter product development cycles generating superior technologies (~3x faster timeline from R&D to on farm adoption)

▪ Faster adoption and scale up by farmers

▪ Faster diffusion across state governments

▪ Accelerated progress on complementary public sector efforts (e.g., National Food Security Mission)

Benefits

SOURCE: PO interviews 12

Lessons learned from projects that achieved delivery at scale

Accelerate trait introgression into farmer-preferred varietiesMove a highly desirable trait (e.g., submergence tolerance) into a widely accepted variety to accelerate product delivery

Variety targetingLeverage digital technology (e.g., geo-spatial mapping tools) to improve targeting and to prioritize trait development

Seed RoadmapsDevelop tools to systematically define market opportunities, product profiles and volumes needed to achieve target adoption; identify strategic partners for production; lay out timelines for delivery

Participatory Variety Selection Grow limited but diverse set of improved varieties under local conditions and let farmers select what variety is most appropriate

Strategic and valued partnerships in the public, private and civil society sectors Identify partners along the product development and delivery value chain and engage them early

Nodes of knowledge Identify and empower local leaders within the farm community to demonstrate, provide feedback and deliver appropriate technologies

Building a movement through the media and farmer testimonials Stories told from the perspective of farmers tend to be the most effective in building support and awareness at all levels – especially the government

Aligning with government initiatives National, state and local governments supporting farmers through various programs can help scale up new technologies – pride of local ownership is important

Real-time MLEUse digital tools to support real-time tracking of outcomes to optimize resource allocation, increase transparency and support rapid cycle research for development

1

2

3

4

5

7

8

9

10

6

Accelerated varietal release and pre-release promotion Coordinated with research institutions and government for early release. Organized large scale pre-release seed multiplication and dissemination to ensure seed availability and fulfilling demand upon commercial release

13

DDI Example 2 - Soil Mapping as an entry point under Bhoochetana

• Stagnant agricultural growth 2001-08 in Karnataka

• 70% agriculture is rainfed

• Vast untapped potential

Managingsoil and water

- Increased crop yield by 2066%

- Covered 3.1 m ha and benefitted 3.6 m families

- Contributed to rise in agriculture growth annually above 5% since 2009

- Benefit cost ratio for the farmers 3 to 14:1

- Net benefits accrued in 4 years Rs. 1268 Crores

ICRISAT | 15

Cloud-based business intelligence tools are now used to accelerate and integrate farmer preferred technologies

• Mobile Data Collection (MDC)

• On-farm trials

• Market intelligence

• Business Intelligence to support farm planning and practices

• Seed companies use mobile money to reduce costs; ensure product integrity

• Farmers are using mobile money to pay for seed and fertilizer

Key Enablers : ICT Tools Being Used

Challenges:• Valuation of farm data• Literacy and UI to support knowledge

exchange and decisions at farm level• Personal Identification Information• Big Data Governance• Reliable and affordable connectivity

in rural areas• Lack of high quality GIS data • Spatial Data Infrastructure is weak• Capacity building

End-user demand

Value chain assessment framework

Inputs and farmer servicesProcessing and access to markets

Research and development

Improved genetics & repro-duction

Animal genetics systems

Feed and Fodder1

Livestock production manage-ment2

Vaccine/ drugs/diagnostics development

Discovery Research

Aggregation, Storage

Animal health systems

Knowledge exchange

Co

un

try-

leve

l va

lue

ch

ain

st

ep

s

Crop improve-ment

Inputs and farmer servicesPost-harvest and access to markets

Research and development

Agronomic research

SoilHealth

Farm manage-ment

Seed systems

Know-ledge ex-change

Conditioning, Storage, Aggregation

Processing/ Value Addition

Crops

Co

un

try-

leve

l va

lue

ch

ain

st

ep

s

Multi-value chain national policies

Data, country strategies, business intelligence

Value chain-specific regulations – grades and standards, phyto-sanitary,

Environment

Partnerships and community ownership

Enab

ling

En

viro

nm

ent

Infrastructure, transport/logistics

Finance & insurance

Ou

tco

mes

fo

r

sust

ain

able

p

rod

uct

ivit

y an

d

livel

iho

od

s

Nutrition

Livestock

End-user demand

Processing

Enab

lers

fo

r ch

ange

Water-shed

Digital Agriculture

Capacity building

Inclusiveness and genderEconomic returns

Po

licie

san

dd

ata

Discovery Research

ICRISAT | 17

Mobile technology is now used to support the smallholder farmer knowledge exchange and market integration

• Mobile phones have increased farmers access to equitable markets and consumers

• Mobile phones are being used for traceability to support price premiums for locally grown food

• Tailored information and videos offers new opportunities to train women and youth about agriculture

Challenges:• Ag companies want to own the

platform (exclusivity); shared platform stimulates competition

• Advisory services are popular; timely access to inputs to follow recommendations is a challenge

• Info-entrepreneur bias towards products from sponsoring companies

• End-to-end support is not widely available as it often involves multiple actors to converge along the value chain.

Key Enablers : ICT Tools Being Used

Leveraging Open Data for Ag Development April 30 2013 v2 BOS

Stitching currently disparate data together enables us to offer integrated solutions: Power of location, time and unique identifiers

Location and time can stitch together diverse sources of information and support delivery of farmer-specific

information

Soybeanchickpea

Cattle breeds

Microbiome

Unique identifiers enables mining of genetic resources and standard trait

ontologies enables collaboration

Data Ecosystem for integrated solutions to increase farm productivity, market opportunities, reduce risk, improve natural resources and nutrition

Markets

Weather

Soils

Seeds

Financial

services

(not exhaustive)

Nutrition

ICRISAT | 19

Technology enablement and partnership with other sectors for inclusive market-oriented development (IMOD)

Inclusive Value Chains

Early pioneers for

realizing this vision:

Mobile Money

eContracts

Supply Chain Mgmt

ICT for

Extension

Processing / Branding

MOOCs, Participatory Ed

Demand Forecasting

Rural youth

FarmerUrban

ConsumerTechnology EcosystemInputs & Farmer

ServicesResearch &

DevelopmentPost-harvest

David Bergvinson Director General, ICRISATd.bergvinson@cgiar.org

We look forward to your questions, comments and partnership towards realizing global nutritional security

Thank You

ICRISAT is a member of the CGIAR Consortium