The article synthesises the experiences of innovation platforms (IPs) that engaged in open-ended experimental action to improve the institutional context for smallholder farm development in West Africa. The IPs sought change at the level of the institutional regime covering an entire agricultural domain (such as cocoa, cotton, oil palm or water management). Their purpose was therefore not to ‘roll out’ farm-level technologies across rural communities. The IPs's outcomes were documented and analysed throughout by means of theory-based process tracing in each of seven of the nine domains in which regime change was attempted. The evidence shows that by means of exploratory scoping and diagnosis, socio-technical and institutional experimentation, and guided facilitation IPs can remove, by-pass, or modify domain-specific institutional constraints and/or create new institutional conditions that allow smallholders to capture opportunity. The article describes the 5-year, €4.5 million research programme in Benin, Ghana and Mali, covering theory, design, methods and results. It is the sequel to Hounkonnou et al. in AGSY 108 (2012): 74–83.

This article analyses the development of a system for producing and distributing hybrid oil palm seedlings to small-scale famers. The existing seed system had become so corrupted that the seedlings actually planted were largely of unimproved kinds. The article describes institutional experiments carried out by two Innovation Platforms (IPs) in order to improve the oil palm seed system. Theory Guided Process Inquiry was used to document, evaluate and analyse these interventions. The experiments catalysed changes in interpersonal and inter-organisational power relationships that enabled further co-learning and co-construction of understanding and action among key stakeholders in the oil palm domain. The IPs and those who became local champions of seed system innovation, also triggered change in institutional behaviours, technologies, and practices that further improved the integrity of the seed system. Official nursery holders must now be trained, registered and licensed by local government. Farmers are encouraged to source hybrid seedlings only from licensed nurseries. These achievements were then shared and discussed with officials and higher level government leaders, drawing on IP members' pre-existing professional and personal networks. Improvement of the oil palm seed system was included in the government's latest 5-year development plan.

Approaches to food security primarily focus on technological solutions, seeking to produce more food, preferably with fewer resources. It has been argued that access to food involves issues of resource distribution and social marginalization. Governance is seen as one of the keys to redressing the institutional inequity that affects resource distribution. Rural women's empowerment is seen as a means to reduce social marginalization and to hasten progress towards hunger eradication and gender equitable institutions. Building on the empirical findings of a six-year study (2006-2011) undertaken in the context of a participatory barley breeding (PBB) programme in pre-war Syria, this paper establishes the links between women's empowerment, seed improvement through PPB and seed governance vis-a-vis household food security. The study shows how the programme enhanced the empowerment of the respondent women and how gender-blind seed governance regimes at national and international levels restricted the empowerment of these women ultimately affecting the pillars of food security. We discuss some of the challenges encountered by the study in conceptualizing and operationalizing gender analysis to enhance women's empowerment. The article further discusses the interplay of processes to both discipline gender norms and provides transformational opportunities towards gender equity created by public spaces such as the PBB programme. The article contributes to current discussions on the effective pathways to develop smallholder agriculture, enhance gender equity and enhance food security and rural livelihoods in the dry areas of the temperate world. (C) 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Royal Netherlands Society for Agricultural Sciences.

This paper discusses external influences on innovation platforms(IPs) and the options for effective responses. The platforms examined in this paper were conceived as vehicles for facilitating institutional change in support of innovation that benefits smallholders, in selected agro-enterprise domains in Benin, Ghana and Mali. They were designed and implemented in a manner that enabled experimentation with processes of change in the selected domains. A Research Associate in each case facilitated the work of the IPs and applied Theory-Guided Process Tracing (TGPT) methodology to document the innovation processes pursued by platform members. The recorded data allow analysis of the external influences on the IPs. This paper first presents a typology as derived from literature of the main external influences on the domains of interest, and then uses the typology to analyse the influences on and responses of the IPs. The main influences were found to emanate from global, sub-regional and national levels. The IPs' responses were diverse but generally included reconstitution of the membership, lobbying, capacity-building among smallholders, and empowerment of smallholders by organizing provision of new knowledge, skills or financial resources. The paper highlights lessons drawn by the platform members in addressing the challenges involved. It concludes that external influences are important in determining the direction of socio-technical and institutional innovation.

Cocoa is a major source of employment, smallholder farmers' incomes, and export revenue in Ghana. However, by 2010 institutional constraints throughout the value chain were failing to sustain bean quality and cocoa production. A national-level innovation platform, comprising key public and private actors in the cocoa sector, was established in 2010 to analyse and act to address this concern. The members' initial inquiries revealed that: farmers indirectly were paying for the national mass spraying and Hi-Tech input programmes, both provided free at the point of delivery. As the largest components in the cost structure, these programmes to a large extent accounted for the low price paid to farmers for their beans; a volatile exchange rate regime meant that often the prevailing rate was not equal to its equilibrium level; policies that heavily taxed cocoa were destroying farmers' expectation of long-term profitability. This paper draws on data recorded from the beginning 2009 to end 2013 by means of theory-guided process tracing (TGPT), to show how the platform contributed to increased prices for farmers, to subsequent reform of the input supply arrangements, and to changes to the mass spraying programme. The key causal mechanisms identified are policy learning and progressive amendment of existing institutions. The paper concludes by drawing lessons for the role of an innovation platform.

Seed governance in agriculture is a challenging global issue. This paper analyses the evolution of organic seed regulation in the USA, the European Union and Mexico as model cases of how these challenges are being addressed, based on a study conducted between 2007 and 2014. It highlights how growth of the organic sector is hindered by regulatory imbalances and trade incompatibilities arising from divergent stakeholder interests along the organic seed value chain, and the varying capacity for self-organising governance of the seed sector in relation to the state's regulatory role. Progress towards regulatory harmonisation in the organic seed sector among the three cases has been slow. The paper concludes with an assessment of the regulatory processes described including what the regions may learn from each other and lessons for key areas of regulatory policy and practice.

Innovation as a policy goal, normative practice, and a conceptual framing of purposeful human activity, has received increasing attention. The question of what kinds of purposeful innovation might benefit smallholders in developing countries has been raised. This issue presents and analyses the work of Innovation Platforms (IPs) established by the COS-SIS (Convergence of Sciences–Strengthening Innovation Systems) programme in nine agro-enterprise domains in West Africa, drawing on Theory Guided Process Inquiry data recorded through 2011-end 2013. Six papers synthesise individual IP experiences, complemented by a cross-case analysis of external influences on the IPs and their responses, a reflection on how well the IPs in Mali dealt with local conflicts, and an analysis of how the work of the IPs in Ghana led to changes in university curricula and in the researching practices of three leading agricultural institutes. An analysis of thirteen case studies from Kenya, Benin, and South Africa supported by the JOLISAA (Joint learning in and about Innovation Systems in African Agriculture) programme, adds further insights. Five general lessons are drawn, expressed as propositions that can be further tested against others’ experiences: (i) IPs can bring about significant socio-technical and institutional changes at a range of levels, and in a wide variety of agro-enterprise domains and contexts; (ii) the IPs are not isolated from nor independent of the networks of influence in which they are embedded; thus they cannot be treated as the sole causal agents of the changes accomplished; (iii) research that tracks the IPs’ work and performance provides evidence that enables the members to learn from experience and adjust activities in the light of effects; (iv) there is no blueprint for what an IP is nor a recipe for the processes by which such changes are brought about; the form, activities, and changes co-evolve with whatever is happening in the wider context; (v) field-based diagnosis of opportunity, evidence-based information-sharing and experimental exploration of pathways of change establish the legitimacy and influence of IPs.

This article highlights examples of transition pathways towards more sustainable natural resources management and farming systems. The common thread is that all involve 'changing the boundaries' in one or more significant ways, including new ways of thinking about core businesses and stakeholder involvement, creating new spaces and processes for experimentation and co-learning, discovering new practices and technological opportunities, and finding a new balance between public and private standard setting and regulation. Each promises greater resilience in the face of uncertainties associated with climate change, market risks and policy fluctuations that are unforeseeable as to scale, timing, intensity or consequence. Each involves purposeful change in the institutions governing current mainstream practice.

Business as usual is impeding implementation of systemic change in the governance of the natural resources on which all forms of farming depend and the transformation of agricultural techniques, practices, and enterprises toward multifunctional sustainability. The contributions to the governance of farming and natural resource management explore how business as usual challenged and transformed by means of institutional change; cogeneration of knowledge and multi-actor learning; and new forms of governance. Studies of water resources management in agrarian landscapes in Denmark and other European countries, an on-line platform for co-learning among Australian agricultural researchers, and of Maöri dairy enterprises in New Zealand braid together these issues to demonstrate the barriers to and opportunities for transformative change. These papers are fronted by an opinion piece on institutions in agriculture and rounded off by an opinion piece on selected sociotechnical and institutional innovations that might offer pathways toward more sustainable agricultures and natural resource management.

This article reviews and analyses the evolution of organic seed regulation in the USA, as a model case of how challenges in a new regulatory area are being addressed. The study draws on formal interviews of key stakeholders, participant observation and documents generated in a 6-year period between 2007 and 2013. The article addresses three main issues: (1) how proposals for the wording and implementation of the regulation constrain seed choices and give rise to unintended consequences, (2) how emergent organizations and procedures have responded to the tension between sustaining seed differentiation to match the characteristics of local markets, organic production and agro-ecologies, and the narrowing of varietal choice in catalogued seed so as to expand commercial organic seed markets and encourage organic seed breeding and (3) why consensus on the content of formal seed policy has failed to develop despite a high level of stakeholder engagement. The study revealed that the official guidance on the interpretation of the regulation has not been sufficiently decisive to prevent divergent interpretation and practices, and therefore, the needs of a rapidly growing economic sector are not being met. The article concludes by drawing lessons for key areas of regulatory interpretation and practice and by identifying possible ways to make organic seed governance more effective.

The government’s cocoa spraying gangs in Ghana treat about two million hectares of the crop against black pod disease and mirids, the key insect pests of cocoa in West Africa, each August through to December, based on recommendations issued in the 1950s. A few cocoa farmers use additional pesticides. We studied the temporal distribution of two important mirid species, Distantiella theobroma (Dist.) and Sahlbergella singularis Hagl., in 1991, 1999, 2003 and 2012 to determine the appropriate timing for the application of control measures in current farming systems. There was a significant correlation between mirid abundance and pod availability on trees, as well as the number of basal shoots and the cocoa variety grown. Mirid populations peaked between January and April and from September to October. Surveys (interviews and focus group discussions involving over 300 farmers in 33 cocoa-growing districts) on pesticide use, sources of recommendations, and perceived successes and failures of current cocoa pest treatments suggested that the 1950 recommendations on the timing of insecticide application need revising.

Agricultural research designs tend to be bounded by agroecological conditions, farming systems and other dimensions assumed to be homogeneous for the population of interest (that is, a recommendation domain or population for whom a technology or practice is expected to be relevant). Scaling is then a question of 'rolling out' results across the domain. But what if technology adoption and institutional context explain the variance in the output of smallholders, and agricultural development is also a question of institutional innovation? What if a domain is seen as a system of interest among actors who have a stake in the system and as an arena for concerted action and institutional innovation? This paper reports on six years of action research that attempts to answer these questions. It compares experimental interventions and subsequent systemic changes within each of nine agroenterprise domains. The experience suggests that the research approach used can explain variance in smallholder output that, in present-day West Africa, is not explained by technology adoption.

After more than a decade of successful collaboration in participatory plant breeding (PPB) between farmers and maize breeders in southwest China, and release of new improved varieties and hybrids, it was realised that their conservation objectives could not also be secured unless farmers had incentives to maintain their traditional cultivars in production. This article explores their experience of expressing the public value of farmers' cultivars through organizing novel relationships among public and private actors, by means of PPB programmes and market-based arrangements. The researchers reached beyond common agri-food development practices and theories, to apply concepts used in public administrations studies, in order to consider public and private interest and value in relation to the direct, indirect and option value of the plant genetic resources (PGRs) represented by farmers' cultivars. In this paper, seven organizational options from selected countries are examined in relation to their roles in (i) creating indirect and options values; (ii) sustaining the legitimacy of and support for related practices; and (iii) developing operational capacity of the associated organizations and actors. The three main findings are (a) innovations in breeding and conservation developed through PPB are key factors in the management by smallholders of the indirect and option value of agro-biodiversity; (b) market-based arrangements and the creation of new sets of property rights in the products developed from farmer-bred cultivars legitimize and support PPB and PGRs conservation; and (c), the organization of the indirect and option value of farmer-bred cultivars calls for the integration of the joint efforts of producers, consumers, market actors and public sector agencies in networked governance, that can take a variety of forms. Lessons are drawn from and for China, where legal and regulatory practices in the seed sector are still under development and smallholders still maintain crop and varietal diversity by their agricultural practices.

SUMMARYThis paper explores changes in the organization of seed supply in China over the last decade by means of a multi-level institutional analysis. At the landscape level, the implications for China of the regulation of plant genetic resources through various international treaties and conventions are reviewed in the light of the evolution of the global seed industry. At the regime level, the transition in the Chinese context to market-based seed supply and the development of commercial and public seed sectors are examined. The study then analyses trends in seed supply at the niche level, with reference to participatory maize (Zea mays L.) breeding in three provinces in southwest China where high rural poverty persists. This work offers radical novelty in variety development and seed provision on behalf of smallholder farmers. However, a series of technical, organizational and market ‘mismatches’ are demonstrated within the existing seed regime. The participatory work emphasizes breeding for diverse cultivars adapted to specific ecosystems but these are prevented from reaching commercial markets by existing varietal testing procedures. Participatory breeding has potential to address farmers’ varietal needs as agriculture modernises and to support the public function of research institutes, but within mainstream intellectual property regimes the public value of participatory breeding cannot be accommodated adequately. Yet, when coupled to institutional innovations for recognising intellectual property and sharing benefit among all those who contribute, participatory breeding may initiate a powerful dynamics for change within seed regimes and a sui generis seed system suited to the Chinese context.

Despite recognition of forests' roles in rural livelihoods, there has been relatively little empirical exploration of community forestry's contribution to poverty alleviation. Similarly, there has been little study of the interaction of social learning-based approaches to forest governance with poverty alleviation. This article draws on 6 years of research on community forestry in Nepal to explore whether, and how, adaptive collaborative forest governance influences the financial and forest assets of women and the poor. The study includes impacts on income generation, access to micro-credit, and employment. The findings indicate that the financial and forest assets of both women and the poorand especially poor womenincreased as a result of adaptive collaborative forest governance. They also suggest a strong role for social learning in poverty alleviation. The article concludes by considering whether poverty alleviation might usefully be reconceptualized as a power-related transformation process.