Andrew John Hall

• PhD
• Researcher at Agriculture and Food, The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation

The sustainable development agenda and its emphasis on transformational change reframes innovation concepts, practice and policy. A central point of departure is the need to shift from innovation systems as a guiding framework to system innovation perspectives. This has significant implications for public agricultural research organisation, includi...

Managing trade-offs for ‘do no harm’ outcomes is central to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and requires an understanding of impact processes within agri-food systems. However, agricultural programming continues to rely on single point interventions framed by earlier development paradigms at odds with the systemic change goals of...

A central concern about achieving global food security is reconfiguring agri-food systems towards sustainability. However, historically-informed trajectories of agri-food system development remain resistant to a change in direction. Through a systematic literature review, we identify three research domains exploring this phenomenon and six explanat...

Agricultural Research Organisations (AROs) are being urgently called to provide solutions for agri-food system transformation. However, contrasting visions of how transformation should be achieved create difficult choices for AROs. This paper reviews existing transformation narratives to build four scenarios of future AROs: 1. Industry transition-o...

System innovation is a signature feature of agri-food system transformation. Such system innovation often occurs in niches. However, how the "green shoots" of transformation can be detected and appraised through time remains ambiguous. This paper proposes, applies and tests a framework that could be used as a ‘transformation assessment tool’ to eva...

This virtual issue reports on the use of digital technologies in On-Farm Experimentation (OFE) in varied farming systems across the world. The authors investigated diverse questions across contrasted environments and scientific domains, with methodologies that included review, empirical studies, interviews, and reflexive accounts. The contributions...

Urgent calls for food system transformation have spurred a variety of responses globally. In some cases, these calls have been answered through top-down led processes, driven by public agencies to design and implement measures that can drive societies towards more viable patterns of development. In other cases, transformation processes have been ig...

A just food system transformation is imperative to meet this century’s goals of environmental sustainability, economic fairness, and equitable social well-being. While considerations of justice are beginning to inform food system transformation debates, there remains a lack of conceptual and practical integration of these two historically separate...

This paper explains why we need to think more broadly about innovation policy in Australia's agriculture and food sectors. There is a growing sense across industry, government and communities that a forward-looking discussion is needed on how agricultural innovation policy should be adapted to meet accumulating environmental, social sustainability...

CONTEXT Complexity has long been recognised as a key feature of agri-food systems. Yet, it remains largely theoretical or poorly addressed in practice, hampering the potential of international development projects to address agriculture and food-related challenges in the Global South. OBJECTIVE The paper identifies and examines six sources of comp...

Despite a broad consensus on the necessity of fundamental change, endeavors to transform food systems appear to have reached an impasse. Greater engagement with the uncertainty of food systems could open up new ways of triggering transformation directed towards achieving more sustainable and inclusive outcomes. As a way of reorienting current food...

Accelerated transitions that enable far-reaching and systemic changes to a more sustainable future are urgently needed to ensure inclusive human development and Earth system stability. Different processes for accelerating transitions have been proposed over the past decade. However, evidence-based guidance on of what these processes are across scie...

Taking a systems perspective of Australia's food system helps us understand and manage the sustainability and social challenges affecting the systems we use to produce and distribute food. Taking a systems perspective means understanding interactions between components of the food system from natural resources and agriculture, to food processing an...

Agricultural research organisations play a critical role in the agri-food system; not only through the provision of research and technologies, but also by brokering relationships with stakeholders throughout the research process to create impact. Yet over the past decade, as the focus has shifted towards such multi-actor innovation processes, the r...

Starting from the observation that value chain research has informed much of agricultural development interventions in recent decades, this paper identifies five key challenges to current agricultural development policies in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs): access to finance, infrastructure, land tenure, local linkages and knowledge transfe...

This perspective paper integrates theories of responsible innovation (RI) with the nascent development of the concept of mission-oriented innovation to address wicked socio-institutional challenges. Theoretically, steering a Mission-oriented Innovation System (MIS) and associated ‘mission arena' toward activities that create virtuous cycles of RI p...

Within the nutritionism paradigm, in this article we critically review the marketization and medicalization logics which aim to address the pressing issue of malnutrition in low-and middle-income countries. Drawing from political economy and food system transformation discourses, we are using the popular intervention types of nutrition-sensitive va...

There is an increasing interest in official development assistance (ODA) to help strengthen the capacity of partner countries to deploy science, technology and other sources of knowledge and innovation to achieve economic and social development goals through innovation. These innovation support programs recognise the systemic nature of innovation c...

As the value of global markets for functional food products grows (with expected revenue of around $275 billion by 2025), there is a significant opportunity to include functional food traits in GLDC crops. Already considered as the basis of diets in South Asia (SA) and Sub-Sharan Africa (SSA), functional GLDC crops could represent a critical opport...

Restructuring farmer–researcher relationships and addressing complexity and uncertainty through joint exploration are at the heart of On-Farm Experimentation (OFE). OFE describes new approaches to agricultural research and innovation that are embedded in real-world farm management, and reflects new demands for decentralized and inclusive research t...

This is a blog article that can be accessed here: http://gldc.cgiar.org/what-can-international-agricultural-research-for-development-learn-from-the-andhra-pradesh-chickpea-revolution/

A recent study found that adoption rates of improved chickpea varieties were above 90 per cent in Andhra Pradesh, India. In this paper, we use a novel perspective to reconstruct and attribute how this outcome came about. The accepted success narrative is that the public international agricultural research system developed some excellent new chickpe...

This study has explored the impact of innovation hubs on knowledge, innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems. To gain deeper insights, the study adopted an exploratory case study design along a qualitative approach to conduct an empirical investigation. The study reveals a noticeable contribution of the X-Innovation Hub in empowering youths in asp...

Studies of sustainability transitions and transformational change are common in energy and transport sectors. However, there is limited research on how these transformational change processes play out in the natural resources sector, particularly in developing economies. This paper seeks to address this gap, with a case study of the community fores...

https://www.cgiar.org/news-events/news/an-agri-food-system-innovation-in-kenya-will-smallholders-be-the-winners/

Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) could play a critical role in addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, it will require an STI planning, investment and evaluation approach that in addition to economic growth, targets more explicitly, social inclusion and environmental sustainability to achieve balanced growth. This will...

Research institute-private sector partnerships are promoted as a mechanism to increase the scale and sustainability of research impact, especially where government extension services are constrained. Such partnerships are often framed as simple transactional or contractual arrangements. This paper traces the evolution of a multilateral partnership...

Food system innovations will be instrumental to achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, major innovation breakthroughs can trigger profound and disruptive changes, leading to simultaneous and interlinked reconfigurations of multiple parts of the global food system. The emergence of new technologies or social solutions, the...

Future technologies and systemic innovation are critical for the profound transformation the food system needs. These innovations range from food production, land use and emissions, all the way to improved diets and waste management. Here, we identify these technologies, assess their readiness and propose eight action points that could accelerate t...

This article deals with the challenges of harnessing agricultural research, technology and innovation in Africa. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which development assistance could adapt to improve impact. A historical review of evolving research methods illustrates the way in which increasing interest in innovation has reframed the researc...

The dairy production in India is increasing in recent times and has reached the milestone. However, when the overall productivity from individual animal is considered, it is still found to be very meager. The main hindrance behind the low productivity of the animal is feed and fodder scarcity. There is a huge scarcity in the availability of green f...

It has long been recognized that investment is needed to build capacity in Science Technology and Innovation (STI) particularly in low and medium income (LMI) countries. Yet there is little understanding as to how to do this. The combination of a) the use of research and innovation policy frameworks more aligned with High-Income Countries rather th...

Bioscience advances present important opportunities for economic development and sustainable intensification of African agriculture. In the global North, the private sector invests heavily in applied research, whereas in Africa the public sector shoulders the burden of developing research capacity. This article explores whether public science agenc...

Under increased scrutiny by its funders, the CGIAR continues to search for ways of translating research excellence into innovation and developmental impact. Several approaches have been suggested that recognize the interactive nature of innovation. While these have been deemed useful, it is the deeper institutional change agenda that has been a bot...

A blog that explore why different sorts of knowledge system are required for different types of development agenda, and the way a sustainable development agenda adds urgency to arriving at something different from the past

Blog discussing the need to think about configurations of knowledge systems adapted for an era of sustainable development

Companion volume of case studies on agri-food sector transformation

Blog, discussing the emergence of Asia as a hotpot of innovation and the implications for Australia's own innovation capacity

Summary of study reviewing patterns of partnership for agricultural innovation aligned to the systemic change agenda of the SDGs.

Food insecurity persists in many parts of Africa and Asia, despite ongoing agricultural research for development (AR4D) interventions. This is resulting in a growing demand for alternative approaches to designing and evaluating interventions in complex systems. Theory of Change (ToC) is an approach which may be useful because it enables stakeholder...

The reality of the institutional setting of the RIs in Indonesia is that traditions of research practice and modes of funding and professional performance rewards need considerable transformation before partnerships with the PS can become common practice. The initial support and resourcing of the ARISA partnerships has developed some of the capacit...

The main challenge in Indonesia to an innovation-led approach to increasing farm productivity and farmers’ incomes is not due to a lack of good ideas by researchers but rather the lack of effective mechanisms making these ideas available and accessible to farmers. The Applied Research and Innovation Systems in Agriculture (ARISA) project, funded by...

This workshop report is a summary record from the second workshop convened by the ISPC/CSIRO Agri-food systems innovation and partnership initiative, and held from 27 to 29 June at ICRISAT in Hyderabad, India (Annex 4). The report attempts to capture, in brief, the deliberations of the participants (Annex 5), including key outcomes and follow-up ac...

This discussion note proposes the core elements of a narrative of agri-food systems transformation. The purpose of this narrative is to catalyse a new conversation about how development stakeholders including research agencies engage in transformational changes process. This is a response not only to a global development agenda articulated in trans...

This note proposes the core elements of a narrative of agri-food systems transformation. The purpose of this narrative is to catalyse a new conversation about how development stakeholders including research agencies engage in transformational changes process. This is a response not only to a global development agenda articulated in transformation t...

Research and analysis of agricultural innovation processes and policies over the last 20 years has made a major contribution to scholarship on and the understanding of the nature of innovation. To an important, but much lesser degree this has also led to re-framing practice at the research-innovation interface. Innovation studies (for want of a bet...

CSIRO and the Secretariat of Independent Science and Partnership and Council (ISPC) of the CGIAR have an on-going collaboration to explore the nature of agri-food system innovation, the role of research within this and the way different types of innovation processes lead to impact. The purpose of this meeting is to open up a conversation on this...

Applied Research and Innovation Systems in Agriculture (ARISA) is implemented by CSIRO in collaboration with Indonesian partners. This multi-year program seeks to strengthen collaboration between public research organisations and agribusinesses in order to incubate and deliver technology and business solutions appropriate to smallholder farmers. Th...

Applied Research and Innovation Systems in Agriculture (ARISA) is implemented by CSIRO in collaboration with Indonesian partners. This multi-year program seeks to strengthen collaboration between public research organisations and agribusinesses in order to incubate and deliver technology and business solutions appropriate to smallholder farmers. Th...

The CSIRO Agriculture and Food & the CGIAR Independent Science and Partnership Council (ISPC) Secretariat are collaborating to explore the nature of agri-food systems innovation and impact. This workshop report is a record of the key outcomes from a workshop held on the 14-15 December 2016 in Canberra, Australia.

• Stakeholders thought the IPs effective but their outcomes and impacts were modest. • Increased social capital was the prime mediator of change. • Producer technical knowledge and capacity for collective action were enhanced. • Producer-centric approaches and delayed market engagement limited IP impact. • R&D actors with orchestration capability a...

The CSIRO Agriculture and Food & the CGIAR Independent Science and Partnership Council (ISPC) Secretariat are collaborating to explore the nature of agri-food systems innovation and impact. These 15 case study summaries were developed as part of this research and to contribute evidence on the nature of innovation and impact processes in different c...

Recent years have seen a growing interest in agricultural research for development (R4D) initi- atives designed to address the need to make more effective use of research investments in the development process. While there remains some ambiguity about the precise nature of R4D, it is nevertheless clear that a shift to this approach is going to requ...

This article reflects critically on the use of a wiki as a data repository for knowledge transfer and as a mediating technical platform for social learning in the context of a multi-country programme of agricultural research for development. The wiki was designed to foster sustainable social learning and an emergent community of practice among biop...

The purpose of this report is to present an initial diagnostic analysis of the Indonesian agricultural innovation system, to identify priority areas that could be addressed to better support innovation, and to explore options and opportunities to do this in the scope and comparative advantage of ARISA. The report is based on an innovation system la...

Some reflections on our ability to reverse engineer agricultural innovation and impact

Some thoughts on disruptive innovation and its implications for agricultural research organisations

Blog exploring what an innovation support facility might look like

Australian agriculture faces the dual challenges of meeting a massive market opportunity for food exports in the face of declining rates of productivity growth. While research outputs are healthy, other indicators of innovation and impact with industry suggest that the innovation system in Australian agriculture is not evolving fast enough, and hen...

􏰨􏰄The CGIAR is currently in a state of transition from its historical role in addressing defined agricultural technology problems, to engagement with strategic partnerships addressing systemic change challenges of the type defined by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This review explores good practice in multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs...

This note presents an outline of the main strands of the innovation systems research associated with the ARISA project. It begins by locating this in the current discourse on concepts and policy perspectives on innovation and capacity building before setting out key areas of research inquiry and research activities.

Motivated by donor interest in innovative thinking on food security, we conducted an interdisciplinary, triangulation analysis of four divergent conceptual frameworks, each relevant to diagnosing food insecurity in developing countries. We found notable tensions as well as synergistic interactions between agroecology, agricultural innovation system...

This paper explores innovation processes and institutional change within research for development (R4D). It draws on learning by Australian participants associated with the implementation of a three-year Australian-funded food security R4D programme in Africa, and in particular a sub-component designed to support and elicit this learning. The autho...

This paper provides a framework to help analyze the sorts of innovation management tasks that are becoming important. This framework distinguishes three elements of innovation management: (i) Functions (ii) Actions (iii) and Tools. The paper's analysis of the innovation management in the Research Into Use (RIU) projects in South Asia suggests that...

In line with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) this study defines climate change as any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity. This report is a shortened version of the final study report, produced on request of FAO. The purpose of the shortened report is twofold: (1) to...

Agricultural innovation invariably involves a whole range of partnerships, alliances and network-like arrangements that connect together knowledge users, knowledge producers and others involved in enabling innovation in the market, policy and civil society arenas. There is now a very large conceptual and empirical literature that reveals agricultur...

Agricultural innovation is a process that takes a multitude of different forms, and, within this process, agricultural research and expertise are mobilised at different points in time for different purposes. This paper uses two key analytical principles to establish how research is actually put into use. The first, which concerns the configurations...

Purpose: This article reviews the experience of ICT applications as a tool for putting research derived knowledge into use for innovation in South Asia.Design/methodology/approach: The article uses the contemporary understanding of communication and innovation in reviewing the experience of ICTs in putting new knowledge into use in South Asia.Findi...

Purpose – Despite favourable agro‐ecological conditions and being the largest international mango producer, India still struggles to build competence in sustainable mango production and post‐harvest. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on innovation capacity development, and to explore aspects of innovation systems ideas in...

Debates about biotechnology continue to be polarized despite its potential to improve the living standards of the poor in Sub‐Saharan Africa. In the backdrop of this polarized scenario, this paper asked, is there a place for brokers in bringing about a productive debate that is pro‐development? The paper argued that if potential intermediaries are...

This article sets out to explore the nature of new organizational and institutional vehicles for managing innovation in order to put research into use for social gain. It has reviewed four classes of such vehicles found in South Asia. The first two contract farming and organized retailing – represent what is becoming commonly accepted in policy cir...

The purpose of this book is to showcase a range of approaches that consider learning and collaboration as central processes in agriculture and natural resources governance and management. These include four related and overlapping adaptive collaborative approaches – Adaptive Collaborative Management, Participatory Action Research, Social Learning a...

Examines processes to inform decision making and manage innovation at four generally defined levels of the innovation system for agriculture; policy, investment, organization, and intervention and also identifies methods relevant at each level for assessing, prioritizing, monitoring, and evaluating innovation processes so that practitioners have th...

Successful cases of innovation invariably demonstrate a range of partnerships, alliances and network-like arrangements that connect together knowledge users, knowledge producers and others involved in enabling innovation in the market, policy and civil society arenas. With this comes the realisation that public agricultural research needs to streng...

Despite favourable agro-ecological conditions and being the largest international mango producer, India still struggles to build competence in sustainable mango production and post-harvest. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on innovation capacity development, and to explore aspects of innovation systems ideas in the analy...

The recognition that innovation occurs in networks of heterogeneous actors and requires broad systemic support beyond knowledge brokering has resulted in a changing landscape in the intermediary domain in the increasingly market-driven agricultural sector in developing countries. This paper presents findings of an explorative case study that looked...

This paper reflects on the experience of the Research Into Use (RIU) projects in Asia. It reconfirms much of what has been known for many years about the way innovation takes place and finds that many of the shortcomings of RIU in Asia were precisely because lessons from previous research on agricultural innovation were "not put into use" in the pr...

This paper is a synthesis of research undertaken as part of the Research Into Use programme (RIU) to explore the question of how agricultural research can be used more effectively to improve agricultural production and farmers' livelihoods in developing countries. Many of the challenges the programme encountered were a result of contested visions o...

The question of how agricultural research can best be used for developmental purposes is a topic of some debate in developmental circles. The idea that this is simply a question of better transfer of ideas from research to farmers has been largely discredited. Agricultural innovation is a process that takes a multitude of different forms, and, with...

Over the last 10 years much has been written about the role of the private sector as part of a more widely-conceived notion of agricultural sector capacity for innovation and development. This paper discusses the emergence of a new class of private enterprise in East Africa that would seem to have an important role in efforts to tackle poverty redu...

This report — prepared to inform OECD’s green growth strategy 2011 — reviews the role of agricultural innovation — R&D, technology and the use of these and other sources of knowledge in agricultural production systems — toward greener growth in agriculture. The overall aim of the paper is to illustrate agricultural innovation and the circumstances...