Guidance on farmer participation in the design, testing and scaling of agricultural innovations

Despite accelerated developments in agricultural innovations, there has been a limited progress in their adoption by smallholder farmers, especially in the Global South. Innovations are not adequately reaching farmers, and new technologies are often unsuitable for farmers, or the overall innovation landscape is discouraging the deployment of innovations at scale. The methodological approaches to designing, testing and scaling of innovations play an important role. Involving farmers in the innovation process from the start increases the likelihood of them being more relevant and having a higher chance of adoption. Whereas there is much literature on participatory approaches, there is a limited guidance on choosing an appropriate level of farmer participation across the innovation process. This study aims to develop practical guidance for researchers, development agents and project managers on how to choose an appropriate methodological approach with a suitable level of farmer participation for designing, testing and scaling of agricultural innovations, according to levels of innovation readiness and innovation use. Relevant scientific literature on participatory design, research and scaling of agricultural innovations was reviewed, followed by compiling lessons learned from selected vegetable innovation projects implemented by the World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg) in Asia and Africa. A list of methodological approaches for participatory design, testing and scaling of innovations was generated, with various levels of farmer participation. A simple guiding framework was then developed for choosing an appropriate approach with a suitable level of farmer participation, according to the readiness and use of the innovations. Examples of selected approaches and application of the proposed guidance are given in project case studies. Based on the literature review and experience at WorldVeg, we believe it is critical to choose the right level of participation based on how ready are the innovations for application in the local setting. This dimension of how ready the innovations are has been largely overlooked in earlier frameworks on farmer participation. The developed guidance generally recommends increasing participation with higher levels of technology readiness and use. In addition, farmer consultation in early research design should also be strengthened, to co-design locally relevant innovations. The overall innovation systems' landscape must be considered when researching and scaling new innovations. The guidance, experiences and lessons provided in this paper will be useful to various scholars, researchers, development agents, funders and project managers who aim to design, test and scale agricultural innovations in a more inclusive and responsible way.