Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

There’s a paper out that’s worth getting to grips with if you are interested in genebanks having an impact, even though it never actually mentions genebanks. David Pannell’s Reflections on Adoption of New Agricultural Practices distils more than 70 years and 5,000 studies of why farmers take up, adapt, abandon or reject innovations, be they new practices or technologies. It’s not specifically about plant genetic resources, but think of bringing back lost landraces, releasing a new variety or giving a neglected crop a second chance as an innovation and some of Pannell’s conclusions will seem very relevant to genebanks and their users. I’ll just pull out what I think are the top lessons.

Perhaps the main point Pannell makes is that testing something out isn’t adoption.

That sounds pretty obvious, but agricultural projects routinely give farmers something to try and then apparently count the resulting trial as adoption. Pannell points out that what is in fact being measured may be nothing more than farmers trying to figure out whether the innovation is good enough to keep using once the project support disappears.

The farmer planting that accession from the genebank or that new variety from the breeder is evidence of interest, not adoption. The more meaningful result is whether she is still using it, without being paid or encouraged to do so, several seasons later.

And speaking of trying things out, how easy that is to do matters for adoption, and it varies enormously among innovations.

Pannell notes that a new crop variety has an important advantage over other agricultural innovations: farmers probably already grow the crop. They can try the new variety right alongside the older ones without redesigning their whole farming system. In contrast, innovations that require systemic change can take decades to reach widespread adoption.

So, a package of sorghum landraces, or a new disease-resistant sorghum variety, being presented to sorghum farmers is one type of adoption problem. Promoting an opportunity crop that most farmers have forgotten how to grow is quite another. That may require new knowledge, equipment, markets and consumers, as well as a convincing reason to grow it. It’s bound to take longer.

Next, and perhaps more surprisingly, extension cannot compensate for a weak advantage.

Pannell is pretty clear: extension services can speed up awareness and evaluation early on, but they cannot manufacture adoption if and when farmers discover that an innovation isn’t sufficiently good.

That puts the emphasis back on the thing being offered. Does the new variety really outperform what farmers already have? Does the old landrace being revived have drawbacks? Does the neglected but really nutritious opportunity crop provide a return that compensates for the risks and additional work involved? If the answer is no, the best communications operation in the world won’t fix it.

Finally, every innovation is unique.

Pannell shows that different innovations being considered by the same farmers, and the same innovation being considered by different farmers, can have radically different drivers of adoption. Farmers aren’t a uniform population, and neither are innovations.

That is a useful reality check. The story of one neglected crop becoming an agricultural opportunity will never be repeated exactly. Each innovation has its own combination of advantages, constraints and players. There is no generic path to impact, though there may be recurring questions.

So what does this mean for genebanks trying to have — and measure — impact?

I’ll go with four fairly simple things. First, don’t treat germplasm distribution or a farmer field day as the end point: follow up and find out what breeders actually used, and farmers actually kept using. Yes, I know that takes time and resources, but it needs to be a routine part of the genebank’s work. Second, design projects tightly around the particular crop diversity involved, rather than assuming that the same adoption machinery will work across crops, countries, ecologies, whatever. Third, spend at least as much effort understanding why farmers might want the diversity in the first place as on getting it in front of them. If an advantage isn’t there, no amount of factsheets and posters and field days will rescue it. Finally, and maybe most importantly, remember that non-adoption isn’t always failure. Genebanks exist in large part for option value: material nobody wants now may be exactly what everyone wants in 2060. Plan the project so that even a failure to adopt teaches you something.

I’ve written plenty of posts here celebrating some interesting new diversity getting into farmers’ hands. I’ve written far fewer checking back to see what happened next. But that’s the more important story to tell.