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How do farm advisory businesses innovate to support inclusive chain-wide innovations? Innovation ecosystem experiences from selected private models emerging in Kenyan agrifood sector

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Abstract

Recently, private agricultural extension and advisory services (AEAS) models have emerged, owing to growing demand for knowledge and innovation support among entrepreneurial farmers and other value chain actors, linked to the unfolding agrifood sector transformation in Kenya. At the same time, a new strand of studies on AEAS, inspired by the concept of agricultural innovation system (AIS), have emerged focusing on the roles and contribution of AEAS in brokering multi-actor networks to create shared value for farmers and other actors. However, the value that these different actors bring into the innovation processes and how this is enabled has not been well interrogated empirically. This paper addresses this gap by applying the innovation ecosystem concept as a new perspective for analyzing value co-creation and value capture. Through qualitative fieldwork and review of secondary documents, we explore how two nascent private AEAS models in Kenyan agrifood sector build their innovation ecosystems. Findings show that the ecosystem lens evokes a more compelling conceptualization of AEAS as entailing a complex value proposition that is dependent on other complementary services and requiring focal actors to take the lead in mobilizing and aligning multi-actor contributions to the materialization of the value proposition. We find pre-entry capabilities of founder directors and articulation and popularization of the business concept as main resources and roles, respectively, of the focal actors in building their ecosystems. Main contributions of ecosystem actors are in financial, technical, networking support; content development and validation, and skilling of advisors; and linkages for complementary inputs and services. Value capture mechanisms are both monetary and non-monetary, and direct and indirect. We show that in seeking alignment, the models manipulate both the multi-actor network composition and/or the components of the value proposition by design or through learning from real life experiences. We conclude that the ecosystem perspective offers a systematic approach for visualizing the outlook of an inclusive and productive multi-actor network. However, actor level inclusiveness in ecosystem lens should be evaluated from value addition perspective of end users and not normatively. This points to the need for private firms venturing into AEAS to apply the ecosystem perspective to guide their business strategy processes.

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Paper long abstract

Post-apartheid agrarian reform in South Africa has long focused on combating rural poverty and transformation of the historically-skewed and racialized agricultural sector.. It initially targeted a broad range of rural poor and had an interventionist focus, with a key role for government in redistributing land and other productive resources. Recently, a new style business-focused agrarian reform is emerging that sees a key role for the private sector. This approach to transformation seeks incorporation of 'black' smallholders in high-value commodity markets, increasingly differentiates between 'entrepreneurial' and 'subsistence' farmers and aims to make farmers independent of state support. The new vehicle for delivery is the smallholder-public-private partnerships and the various value chain collaborations that fall under it. Drawing on fieldwork and action research from 2015 to 2019, this paper unpacks these recent, smallholder-focused partnerships and collaborations around the production and marketing of the high-value macadamia and avocado crops in Vhembe District, Limpopo Province, South Africa. Political economic relations and historical continuities are evident in the growing gap between the new entrants and the established commercial growers and processors. Historical privilege is also evident in implementation and agenda-setting of the new transformation agenda. This includes private sector-friendly governance instruments for achieving Black Economic Empowerment, and discrediting of more radical alternatives such as land reform. .Notwithstanding such outcomes, we find that the practices and processes underpinning emergent partnerships show other aspects of accumulation and consolidation. Key to stabilising this new transformation agenda is a collection of value chain actors, hired consultants, local and national officials and a new class of farmer representatives. These so-called brokers work in tandem to stabilise a new commodity-oriented discourse of inclusiveness focused on maintaining the status quo in the commercial farming sector and instilling new entrants with business attitudes. Together they construct a transition model focused on rescaling of the large-scale farming model to smallholders and adoption of 'best farming practices'. Brokerage theory is applied in order to understand new identities and mentorship roles that shape the novel transformation approach. By analysing brokers' differential agency, repertoires, positionalities and moral ambiguity, we see how this field is unwieldy - a negotiated space of intermediation that requires brokers' constant reworking. These findings nuance current political economic thinking in agrarian reform debates. It is suggested that we focus on brokering and knowledge-based trusteeship as key aspects explaining South Africa's historical continuities and dual agrarian structure.