A Systemic Innovation Policy Framework: The Cases of Scottish and Dutch Agrifood Innovation Systems

The application of genetic selection technologies in livestock breeding offers unique opportunities to enhance the productivity, profitability, and competitiveness of the livestock industry in Scotland. However, there is a concern that the uptake of these technologies has been slower in the sheep and beef sectors in comparison to the dairy, pig and poultry sectors. This is rather paradoxical given the fact that Scotland’s research outputs in farm animal genetics are widely perceived to be excellent. A growing body of literature, popularly known as Innovation Systems theories, suggests that technological transformations require a much broader approach that transcends formal research establishments. Accordingly, this paper reports on preliminary work exploring whether and how an agricultural innovation systems perspective could help identify the dynamics of technology uptake in the livestock sectors in Scotland. Although the work has been undertaken in dairy, sheep, and beef sectors, in this paper, we provide the preliminary results obtained from a case study of the sheep sector only. The key objectives of this work were to map the sheep genetics innovation system in Scotland and identify the barriers prevailing within the system with regard to the uptake of genetic selection technologies. Although the sheep innovation system was characterised by the presence of all key domains and actors, it was found to suffer from some crucial weaknesses relating to network integration, technological infrastructure, and policies and institutional frameworks. The implications of these findings are discussed

Food System Resilience: Concepts, Issues, and Challenges

Food system resilience has multiple dimensions. We draw on food system and resilience concepts and review resilience framings of different communities. We present four questions to frame food system resilience (Resilience of what? Resilience to what? Resilience from whose perspective? Resilience for how long?) and three approaches to enhancing resilience (robustness, recovery, and reorientation—the three “Rs”). We focus on enhancing resilience of food system outcomes and argue this will require food system actors adapting their activities, noting that activities do not change spontaneously but in response to a change in drivers: an opportunity or a threat. However, operationalizing resilience enhancement involves normative choices and will result in decisions having to be negotiated about trade-offs among food system outcomes for different stakeholders. New approaches to including different food system actors’ perceptions and goals are needed to build food systems that are better positioned to address challenges of the future

Food System Resilience: Concepts, Issues, and Challenges

Food system resilience has multiple dimensions. We draw on food system and resilience concepts and review resilience framings of different communities. We present four questions to frame food system resilience (Resilience of what? Resilience to what? Resilience from whose perspective? Resilience for how long?) and three approaches to enhancing resilience (robustness, recovery, and reorientation—the three “Rs”). We focus on enhancing resilience of food system outcomes and argue this will require food system actors adapting their activities, noting that activities do not change spontaneously but in response to a change in drivers: an opportunity or a threat. However, operationalizing resilience enhancement involves normative choices and will result in decisions having to be negotiated about trade-offs among food system outcomes for different stakeholders. New approaches to including different food system actors’ perceptions and goals are needed to build food systems that are better positioned to address challenges of the future. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Volume 47 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates

Innovation in livestock genetic improvement

The application of genetic selection technologies in livestock breeding offers unique opportunities to enhance the productivity, profitability and competitiveness of the livestock industry. However, there is a concern that the uptake of these technologies has been slower in the sheep and beef sectors in comparison to the dairy, pig and poultry sectors. This article discusses how an agricultural innovation systems perspective can help identify the dynamics of technology uptake in the livestock sector using the adoption of Estimated Breeding Values (EBVs) in sheep production in Scotland as a case study. Five major (systemic) challenges were identified: a weakly integrated sheep supply chain (market structure failure); the presence of a powerful faction antagonistic towards EBVs (network failure); a challenging policy environment (hard institutional failure); a dismantled and weak advisory service with regard to EBVs (capabilities failure); and an outdated and inflexible data management system (infrastructure failure). Whilst efforts are being made to address the barriers individually it is argued that a more holistic approach is needed to innovation. The findings are shown to have wider implications for innovation within the agricultural sector of the European Union