Laurens Klerkx

University of Talca and Wageningen University

Increasingly, European member states are using remote sensing technologies to determine if farmers comply with measures of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Member states use satellite images, aerial photographs and geotagged pictures, and combine this with advanced algorithms and machine learning to determine if farmers comply with requirement...

One largely neglected focus in the analysis of mission-oriented innovation policies is mission cocreation between stakeholder groups advocating different solution directions. In this paper, we introduce the innovation management concept of ambidexterity to study how mission cocreation in different mission arenas is influenced by actors aiming to co...

The multi-actor approach in the EU’s Horizon 2020 program has seen use across a large number of research projects. However, there remain questions about the extent and depth of participation that is achieved in these research projects, and how it may enable joint production of scientific theory next to readily applicable practical knowledge. This a...

CONTEXT Within agricultural systems design, there is increasing focus on transformative change, moving beyond productivity as the sole aim and towards systems that are beneficial for both society and nature. With this trend, it has become common in agricultural systems design approaches to include non-economically driven objectives, such as animal...

Literature on mission-specific innovation systems (MIS) highlights the crucial role of directionality when achieving sustainability transitions, while diversity literature emphasizes the need to keep diverse directions open. Like directionality, diversity is created by innovation system actors to tackle the complex and uncertain nature of transitio...

Monitoring systems that incentivize, track and verify compliance with social and environmental standards are widespread in food systems. In particular, digital monitoring approaches using remote sensing, machine learning, big data, smartphones, platforms and blockchain are proliferating. The increasing use and availability of these technologies...

Este artículo explora las implicancias de la incorporación de sistemas de ordeña automatizados en las prácticas laborales de trabajadores de lecherías del sur de Chile, a través de una investigación cualitativa y transversal. El trabajo de campo consistió en observaciones en terreno y entrevistas semiestructuradas a productores y trabajadores ubica...

Climate change poses a risk to agricultural activity. Understanding farmers' behaviors is increasingly important for managing climate risks and improving their adaptive capacity. This study aims to identify the key risk-related drivers influencing several adaptation and mitigation strategies by adopting various Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) techn...

Sustainable Public Food Procurement (SPFP) is gaining recognition for its potential to improve the sustainability of food systems and promote healthier diets. However, SPFP faces various challenges, including coordination issues, actor dynamics, infrastructure limitations, unsustainable habits, and institutional resistance, among others. Drawing up...

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to analyze how promotional and advisory efforts address climate change mitigation in Norway and to learn how advisers navigate between governmental goals to address the common good and farmers’ private needs. Methodology Empirical data was obtained through semi-structured in-depth interviews with eight agricultu...

Context The notion of simply transfering agricultural innovation from suppliers to receivers as a strategy to improve agri-food systems globally has been strongly criticized and has raised debates in the field of agricultural technology development and innovation. Previous studies have shown that there is translational work to be done within agricu...

AgriFoodTech start-ups are coming to be seen as relevant players in the debate around and reality of the transformation of food systems, especially in view of emerging or already-established novel technologies (such as Artifical Intelligence, Sensors, Precision Fermentation, Robotics, Nanotechnologies, Genomics) that constitute Agriculture 4.0 and...

Transformative innovation policies are gaining currency worldwide, but have been mainly studied in a Global North context and in the energy sector. This paper focuses empirically on Costa Rica's Climate Smart Agriculture policy mix. It addresses key knowledge gaps on the dynamics of transformative policy development in the agrifood sector in a Glob...

CONTEXT Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) aims to address climate change, climate variability, and food security while sustaining productivity. The literature on acceptance and adoption of CSA technologies recognizes the importance of the policy environment in shaping farmers' decisions, particularly the policy mix, including economic, regulatory, an...

Supporting transitions to sustainable, resilient agri-food systems is important to ensure stable food supply in the face of growing climate extremes. Agroecology, or diversified farming systems based on ecological principles, can contribute to such systems. Based on a qualitative case study of Nicaragua, a forerunner in agroecology, this paper unpa...

Precision agriculture is often seen as disembodied and placeless, promised to either bring about a fourth agricultural revolution or as the start of dystopian rural futures, where farmers and their knowledge will be replaced by machines. A growing body of literature shows more nuanced ways of working with precision agriculture. This illustrates the...

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...

Professorial Academic Lecture as Professor of Agrifood Innovation and Transition at Wageningen University

Mission-oriented agricultural innovation systems (MAIS) are becoming more prevalent in view of tackling the challenges of agri-food systems transformation. In this perspective, we argue that the politics of MAIS requires more comprehensive and considerable attention in the field, given the contested and deeply normative nature of the direction of i...

In the debate on food systems transformation, there has been a lot of discussion on different transition pathways to achieve transformation, such as Agriculture 4.0 and Food 4.0, regenerative agriculture, nature-inclusive agriculture, protein transitions, and agroecology. Each transition pathway encompasses different values, practices and technolog...

Food systems transformations require coherent policies and improved understandings of the drivers and institutional dynamics that shape (un)sustainable food systems outcomes. In this paper, we introduce the Chilean National Organic Agriculture Law as a case of a policy process seeking to institutionalize a recognized pathway towards more sustainabl...

Sustainable agricultural knowledge networks consist of heterogeneous actors who collaborate and share knowledge to advance the goals of sustainable agriculture. We analyze how the structure of sustainable agriculture knowledge networks is related to the social-ecological context across 57 counties in California. We apply a population ecology approa...

Assemblage thinking is an increasingly influential approach in critical studies of food and farming, and particularly in research on new agri-food technology such as precision agriculture (PA). This research is important in highlighting the distributed forms of power and agency through which farming worlds are assembled, and what these engender for...

This article explores how digital agri-food system transformations are framed and by whom. To answer these questions, we searched for webpages linked to Twitter and by Google that describe the role of emerging digital technologies in agri-food systems. From these, we characterize three framings of transformation. The first framing proposes that dig...

Recent times have seen the rediscovery and adaptation of mission-oriented innovation policies (MIPs) for driving transformative change. While such policies seek to mobilise and align stakeholders, little is known about how missions feature in policy coordination processes. We argue that to facilitate the still troublesome operationalisation of MIPs...

Agroecological techniques (AET) have been recognized by many farmers, NGOs, and farmers’ organizations (FOs) as a promising solution for slowing down the persistent soil fertility degradation in West African drylands. In the context of Burkina, the promotion of AET is the result of the interactions between NGOs and farmers’ knowledge through the in...

In recent decades, the concept of inclusive innovation has been used to refer to how innovation can include actors that are considered marginalised from its processes and outcomes. Contrary to the ‘expert-driven’ approaches prevalent in evaluating the legitimacy of such processes, this paper examines the legitimacy of inclusive innovation from the...

CONTEXT Digital technologies nowadays play a major role in innovation within the agri-food domain. The evolution of IT systems has currently arrived at a level that involves complex systems integration and business ecosystems in which many stakeholders in different roles are involved. A new paradigm for digital innovation is needed that copes with...

In this paper, we discuss how agrifood systems transformation is addressed by the Aotearoa New Zealand agrifood innovation system, and to what extent it can be mission-oriented in view of emerging Agriculture 4.0 technologies. There are several initiatives that work on different transition pathways towards agrifood systems transformation, and hence...

Agri-food value chains are complex systems comprising of a network of interlinked and interdependent actors. To foster collaboration between these actors, trust between actors and in value chains is considered to be key. Despite growing scholarly attention an overview of to what extent and how trust is the role of trust in agri-food value chains is...

Digitalisation is a disruptive socio-technical process that goes beyond digital technologies and their use within an organisation, and involves besides (in many cases radical) technological change, social, institutional and economic change. This creates uncertainties for value chain actors and the trust relationships between them. In this paper we...

The implementation of climate mitigation measures at the farm level is highly dependent on farmers' willingness to make adjustments to their farms. While many studies have identified various barriers to climate mitigation in agriculture-among them farmers' weak interest in climate-there has been less research focused on the different kinds of influ...

This study is focused on unsustainable agri-food systems, especially intensive livestock farming and its resulting environmental harms. Specifically we focus on the development of technologies that seek to mitigate these environmental harms. These technologies are generally developed as incremental innovations in response to government regulation....

Artificial intelligence and robotics have increasingly been adopted in agri-food systems—from milking robots to self-driving tractors. New projects extend these technologies in an effort to automate skilled work that has previously been considered dependent on human expertise due to its complexity. In this paper, we draw on qualitative research car...

This paper explores the complex relationship between intellectual property (IP) and the transdisciplinary collaborative design (co-design) of new digital technologies for agriculture (AgTech). More specifically, it explores how prioritizing the capturing of IP as a central researcher responsibility can cause disruptions to research relationships an...

CONTEXT It is still an open question how to assess the contribution of digitalisation in agriculture to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, and how digitalisation then can be done in a responsible way. A socio-cyber-physical system (SCPS) concept can help this analysis, but little experience exists with its operationalisation and app...

Multi-stakeholder networks fulfil crucial functions for transforming our food systems in the face of climate change and other global crises, as the COVID pandemic has shown. However, there is scant research on how the form of these networks is connected to particular aims. Based on interviews with leaders or founders of 14 multi-stakeholder network...

There is promising evidence that public food procurement from family farming (PFPF) can serve as a powerful policy instrument in transitions towards more sustainable food systems. Despite the evidence around PFPF, there is lack of systemic and actor-oriented approaches analysing the relational and interactional dynamics among the multiple and diver...

This editorial observes 200 volumes of Agricultural Systems. Volume 1, dated January 1976, began with an article by the inaugural editor, C.R.W. Spedding (1976), that laid the foundations for this journal. We echo that first editorial with this contribution to begin Volume 201 and review some aspects of the history of the journal. To celebrate thos...

In remote peripheral regions like the Arctic, research networks have been identified as an important mechanism for nurturing science-informed innovation. Given that relatively little is known about the network structures that support Arctic innovation processes, we employ social network analysis techniques to examine the structural organization and...

While attention to how extension and education support learning and innovation on technical topics is and remains important, farming entails much more than managing technical issues. A range of social, economic, financial, and human resource issues as well as physical and mental health factors of farmers and other farm workers come into play in ove...

CONTEXT In May 2020, approximately four months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the journal's editorial team realized there was an opportunity to collect information from a diverse range of agricultural systems on how the pandemic was playing out and affecting the functioning of agricultural systems worldwide. OBJECTIVE The objective of the special iss...

We witness a promotion of hybrid partnerships, where actors with different competences and resources collaborate for smallholder inclusive value chain development. To better understand the functioning of these partnerships, we used institutional theory and studied the context of a global and emerging regional food value chains in Ghana, the blendin...

The agricultural innovation systems (AIS) in many Sub-Sahara African (SSA) countries lack the structural capacities to support smallholder-inclusive innovation. Multi-stakeholder Innovation Platforms (IPs) have been proposed as systemic instruments to improve the functioning and building of the structural capacities of the Innovation System (IS). T...

In the context of emerging digital advisory services that can make a potential difference in sustainable farming practices, this article analyzes the connection between on-farm human interaction and digital advice. Based on an experimental case from China's largest ever national research initiative on reducing agrochemical use in agricultural produ...

Increased pressures on agri-food systems have indicated the importance of intermediaries to facilitate sustainability transitions. While producer organizations are acknowledged as intermediaries between individual producers and other food system actors, their role as sustainability transition intermediaries remains understudied. This paper explores...

With the concept of resilience being increasingly applied in farming systems research, there is general agreement that the resilience theory should be supported by sound assessment methodologies. Yet, in the extant literature, definitions and measures of resilience as a system outcome, a system capability or a process are often conflated, causing c...

This editorial introduces a special issue (SI) concerning quests for responsible digital agri‐food innovation. We present our interpretations of the concepts of responsible innovation and digital agri‐food innovation and show why they can and have been productively interrelated with social science theories and methods. First, each of the articles i...

Accelerating food systems transformation in the face of climate change and other global crises requires myriad changes across all levels, themes, and geographies. This calls for re-thinking the roles of agricultural research for development (AR4D). In this perspective article we use the metaphor of ‘swarms’ and ‘swarming’ to illustrate a more distr...

International agreements have been adopted in recent years to disseminate animal welfare standards worldwide, similar to the situation for environmental and social sustainability standards. Scholars who have analyzed such initiatives argue that this calls for contextualized strategies for a successful implementation of international animal welfare...

With a rise of 1.5°C in global temperature, climate change is projected to cause massive destabilized climatic events that will affect people’s health, environment, biodiversity, and food security. One of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change is agriculture because farming relies heavily on planning for weather and seasons according to expe...

Vertical farming can produce food in a climate-resilient manner, potentially emitting zero pesticides and fertilizers, and with lower land and water use than conventional agriculture. Vertical farming systems (VFS) can meet daily consumer demands for nutritious fresh products, forming a part of resilient food systems—particularly in and around dens...

Vertical farming can produce food in a climate-resilient manner, potentially emitting zero pesticides and fertilizers, and with lower land and water use than conventional agriculture. Vertical farming systems (VFS) can meet daily consumer demands for nutritious fresh products, forming a part of resilient food systems—particularly in and around dens...

Scholars have often applied the concept of boundary work and its conceptual progeny to explain how science, policy, and practice collaborate to introduce change into agrifood systems. However, previous studies focused primarily on specific boundary elements (i.e., boundary spanners, boundary organizations, and boundary objects) or particular innova...

Precision technologies and smart farming practices are spreading globally. However, there are still limited insights into how these technologies develop in newly adopted countries and adapt to different local systems, especially in emergent economies. This article aims to diagnose the technological innovation system of precision technologies within...

Agroecology has been recognized as a paradigm that can offer multiple ecological and socioeconomic benefits. In many developing countries, the promotion of agroecology is facilitated by intermediary organizations such as Farmers' Organizations (FOs). Detailed studies on how FOs support their farmers in the adoption of agroecology innovations are st...

Human-Centred Design (HCD) approaches are adopted to develop digital agriculture interventions inclusively and responsibly. Whether these approaches indeed lead to responsible designs remains unclear, especially for Low-Income Countries. Using a Rwandan case study, we contribute to debates on inclusive, participatory, and responsible design by deve...

Dominant agricultural and food systems lead to continuous resource depletion and unacceptable environmental and social impacts. While current calls for changing agrifood systems are increasingly framed in the context of sustainability transitions, they rarely make an explicit link to transition studies to address these systemic challenges, nor do t...

In the past few years, we have seen growing calls for a transformation in global food systems in response to multiple challenges, including climate change. Food systems are responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions from human activity and agricultural yields are at risk due to climate change impacts. Although many proposals have be...

The use of digital technologies with the aim to improve African smallholder agriculture is a trend today, and expectations of the benefits and transformative capacity of these technologies are high. In practice, digitalisation comes with trade-offs, and benefits, and potential harm are not equally distributed. This chapter unravels how processes of...

With digital agriculture as a path to transforming the agricultural sector in the Global South, there has been a rise in digital service provision. To counteract potentially negative ethical, social justice, and environmental impacts of digital agriculture, Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has been offered as a possible solution. There are...

Transition scholars devote surprisingly little attention to the sustainability of digitalization. We call for more work on digitalization in transition studies. We offer a number of perspectives to study the roles of digitalization in sustainability transitions.

Purpose Digital extension is widely embraced in African agricultural development, promising unprecedented outcomes and impact. Especially phone-based services attract attention as tools for effective and efficient agricultural extension. To date, assessments of digital extension services are generally ex-post in nature, thus consideration of users...

With digital agriculture as a path to transforming the agricultural sector in the Global South, there has been a rise in digital service provision. To counteract potentially negative ethical, social justice, and environmental impacts of digital agriculture, Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has been offered as a possible solution. There are...

While transition research (Konrad, Truffer, and Voß 2008; Raven 2007; Wirth and Markard 2011; Papachristos, Sofianos, and Adamides 2013; Geels 2007) and innovation studies (see e.g. Perez 2009; Freeman and Louçã 2001) have long recognized the importance of interactions across sociotechnical systems in shaping change processes, there has been limite...

The Mansholt lectures, named for the great Dutch European politician and thinker Sicco Mansholt, are organised by Wageningen University & Research to discuss European policy and issues in our domain: nutrition, agriculture and sustainable livelihoods. In 2016 WUR started to organise the annual Mansholt lectures. During the lectures WUR presents mu...

During the 2021 Mansholt Lecture, which was presented to the European Commission in Brussels on 22 September 2021, WUR presented the options and challenges for stakeholders in the transition towards a sustainable digital innovation ecosystem. In this accompanying policy article we argue that Europe needs to consider creating an integral European po...

El objetivo de este trabajo es realizar un diagnóstico y priorización de los factores DAFO (debilidades, amenazas, fortalezas y oportunidades) condicionantes de la TD en el corto/medio plazo en el olivar de Andalucía. Este documento presenta los principales hallazgos encontrados en el diagnóstico y las posibles líneas de acción que se deberían prom...

The field of research on agricultural and rural extension and education, also referred to as advisory services and intermediaries, has always engaged with different aspects of the spaces in which agricultural producers (farmers, growers, ranchers) are situated and operate. In this editorial, I will reflect on the elements and environments which joi...

Despite the growing importance of the digital transformation (DT) of the agrifood sector on the political agenda, traditional policies are not enough to provide proactive responses to rapid technological changes and new approaches for policy planning are necessary especially at regional level. This manuscript proposes and illustrates the implementa...

Digital technologies are often seen as an opportunity to enable sustainable futures in agriculture and rural areas. However, this digital transformation process is not inherently good as it impacts on many aspects (e.g. economic, environmental, social, technological, institutional) and their relations. The responsible research and innovation approa...

El objetivo de este trabajo es determinar los factores condicionantes del proceso de transformación digital del sector olivarero de Andalucía en el corto y medio plazo. Estos factores se pueden clasificar en debilidades, amenazas, fortalezas y oportunidades (DAFO) y en políticos, económicos, sociales, tecnológicos, legales y ambientales (PESTLE). A...

Existing research suggests that regions can develop their long-term competitive advantage through well-functioning interregional innovation cooperation. In this article, we use the example of innovation in small and medium-sized agri-food enterprises (SMEs) to scrutinise and compare regional innovation approaches on each side of the Dutch-German bo...

Purpose – This paper aims to contribute to deepening insights on social media in agricultural research by presenting a case study on how a research and education centre in Mexico connected, communicated, and interacted in a research and education community on Twitter. Design/methodology/approach – By using a Social Network Analysis (SNA) approach,...

Purpose This article addresses the gap in understanding the performance of emerging private agricultural advisory service (AAS) models in developing country contexts, in relation to their dual objectives of supporting farmer-clients and becoming profitable agribusinesses themselves. Methodology Multiple case study of Service Providers Enterprises...

While agency has received considerable attention in recent sustainability transitions studies, as well as in the literature on socio-ecological systems and sustainability transformations, the focus has been on the agency of humans. Given the emphasis on infrastructures and material culture in sustainability transitions studies, it is surprising tha...