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on Project, Program and Portfolio Management |
| By: | Kropff, Martin |
| Abstract: | Our ability to deliver food security to the world’s poor in a sustainable way depends on three converging global challenges: climate change, population growth, and limited available natural resources. Understanding the severity of these challenges, and the actions that must be taken to successfully tackle them, is high on the international research agenda. Although the future is uncertain, it is possible to construct a range of likely scenarios, which are determined by a number of factors. This paper discusses changing trends, and provides recommendations for one of the principal factors driving the future of development: investments in international agricultural research. CIMMYT contributes to sustainable agriculture, rural development, and value chains for maize and wheat agri-food systems, with projects in more than 50 countries. Although most research has long been funded by public sector donors and philanthropic foundations, cooperation with the private agricultural industry is increasingly necessary to achieve desired development impacts. More specifically, cooperation between public and private sector institutions is essential to develop and utilize new technologies that address current and future food security challenges. Delivering joint, high-quality research will not only improve food products for clients and build farmers’ capacity, but also ensure that all partners benefit from cost-sharing and complementary technical expertise in precompetitive domains. Research will remain an academic undertaking, unless it is informed by real problems on farms and efforts are made to deliver solutions to real users. As compared to the traditional, separated approach, public-private collaborations will have the greatest impact on both agricultural productivity and long-term food security. |
| Keywords: | Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, |
| Date: | 2015–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:cfcp15:245058&r=ppm |
| By: | Binz, Christian (CIRCLE, Lund University); Diaz Anadon, Laura (Harvard University) |
| Abstract: | New clean-tech industries emerge in increasingly complex spatial patterns that challenge existing explanations on industrial path creation. In particular, the case of latecomer regions quickly building up industries in fields that are unrelated to their previous industrial capabilities is not well understood in the literature. This paper aims to address this gap with an analytical framework that draws on technological innovation system and catching-up literatures to specify the place-specific and extra-regional system resources that firms in latecomer regions draw on in the industry formation process. An in-depth case study of the Chinese solar photovoltaics (PV) sector reveals an industry formation process that differs from existing models. Rather than depending on linkages with multinational companies, extensive policy support, or gradual recombination of pre-existing domestic capabilities, early industry formation in the Chinese solar PV sector emerged from path transplantation in a highly internationalized entrepreneurial project. Pioneering actors mobilized knowledge, markets, investment and technology legitimacy developing outside China and re-combined them with the country’s generic capabilities in export-oriented mass manufacturing. This implies that in some industries, globalization may enable a new model of industrial path creation based on bridging domestic resource gaps by directly mobilizing system resources emerging in the international networks of a global innovation system. |
| Keywords: | cleantech; path creation; technological innovation system; solar photovoltaics; China; transnational entrepreneurship |
| JEL: | F64 O33 Q55 |
| Date: | 2016–11–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2016_029&r=ppm |
| By: | Jelliffe, Jeremy L.; Bravo-Ureta, Boris E.; Deom, C. Michael; Okello, David Kalule |
| Abstract: | The major objective of this study is to evaluate the adoption of groundnut varieties that are high yielding, drought tolerant, and groundnut rosette disease (GRD) resistant in eastern Uganda. In particular, this study examines differences in adoption and farm-level productivity associated with participation in the Appropriate Technology Uganda (ATU) seed dissemination project during the early 2000s. We are particularly interested in the sustainability of the project outcomes 10-years after the end of the original intervention. The impact of the ATU intervention is examined with respect to increased productivity (higher expected yields) and risk-reduction (improved disease resistance and drought tolerance). We find that participating farmers allocated 21% more of their available land to improved groundnut varieties. The results also show that, for improved varieties, beneficiaries produce 32% higher yields than their non-participating neighbors, and 55% higher yields relative to non-neighbor controls. This implies that the project led to significant increases in profitability for participating farmers. In addition, we observe significant spillover effects from the project, which is clearly revealed by the yield difference between non-participating neighboring households and non-neighbor controls. These results imply that project beneficiaries transferred some benefits to the neighbor control group over the course of the 10-year period following the project. This is an important result suggesting that farmer-led programs offer additional advantages to developing communities and may provide a cost-effective means of information and technology dissemination. |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, |
| Date: | 2016–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaae16:246450&r=ppm |
| By: | Mignouna, Djana; Akinola, Adebayo A.; Abdoulaye, Tahirou; Maroya, Norbert |
| Abstract: | A bold step to addressing myriads of constraints affecting yam productivity was achieved through Yam for Income and Food Security in West Africa (YIIFSWA) project. The project has embarked on a series of activities culminating in the development, deployment and disseminating intervention options/technologies in Nigeria and Ghana. This paper assesses the potential economic impacts, the number of beneficiaries and poverty reduction through these agricultural technologies/intervention options. The land area coverable by the technologies ranged 320,000–650,000 ha in the two countries. The land area under varieties for adaptation to environments with low soil fertility was the highest followed by resistance to nematode cultivars. The net present value (NPV) ranged $144 million–$616 million and was highest for YIIFSWA diagnostic tool and temporary immersion bioreactor. Crop management and postharvest practices option had the lowest benefit-cost ratios of 6.0 and 20.03 while the aeroponics option had the highest benefit cost ratio of about 36.90. Not less than 750, 000 would be brought out of poverty by these technologies. The technologies are expected to reach not less than 20 million households by 2037 in Nigeria and Ghana. The technologies are more responsive to change in adoption rate than change in costs. Overall, while the potential economic gains are considerable, realization of these gains depends on the efficiency and effectiveness of extension and input supply systems. Concerted extension efforts are needed to drive the use of these intervention options. Moreover, considerable technical advice would also be needed to explain how to apply them |
| Keywords: | Production Economics, Productivity Analysis, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, |
| Date: | 2016–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaae16:246453&r=ppm |