This policy brief deals with the relations between Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS) policies and digital ecosystems. AKIS can be conceptualised as representations of the actors, relations, resources, and institutions involved in knowledge exchange in the agricultural sector. Digital ecosystems include innovation intermediaries and Living Labs supporting the process of sustainable digitalisation of agriculture in specific regional contexts and for specific purposes. It is crucial to understand the AKIS perceptions of different actors or social groups that contribute to these ecosystems. Discrepancies between the AKIS perceptions of researchers, practitioners and policy makers, for instance about the profiles of intermediaries involved, could hinder the effectiveness of AKIS policies. We compared the perspectives of various actors engaged in digitalisation on the components and roles of intermediaries both within digital ecosystems and AKIS. More specifically, we compared 1) a “top-down” perspective on AKIS that can be found in policy documents or science and expert reports, 2) the perspective on AKIS of actors engaged in digital ecosystems through their participation to the Living Labs of the CODECS project, 3) the bottom-up perspective of the practices of actors acknowledged as innovation intermediaries. Evidence reveals discrepancies in AKIS perceptions. These differences are influenced by the regional context as well as by the specific objectives of the Living Labs (e.g., the degree to which sustainability issues are integrated). A closer examination revealed a potential distribution of roles among: 1) actors involved in co-designing and testing digital solutions, 2) actors evaluating them, and 3) actors contributing to farmers’ everyday advice on the use of technologies. This pattern can be seen as a form of functional complementarity within innovation systems, but it may also be a sign of segmentation between the innovation support embedded in EU policy frameworks and the day-to-day advice available to farmers. These findings should be interpreted with caution as they are based on a small sample, however, they point to the need for debate about how to anchor AKIS policy discussions and actions in the realities of farmers’ practices, networks, and resources. A promising avenue for such debates would be to give bottom-up perspectives a stronger role in the policy arenas where the AKIS policy mix (strategies and instruments) is designed and evaluated.
Pierre Labarthe (Thu,) studied this question.