Agricultural science and technology policy in Africa

Abstract This paper addresses the central problem facing agricultural policy makers in Africa today, namely, how to promote self-sustaining processes of growth fueled by technological advances, concentrating on small-scale agricultural production and trade. At bottom, the argument is an epistemological one, but with several practical implications. The dominant theoretical perspective on technical change and innovation in small-scale agriculture (choice under constrained maximization) is argued to be highly effective in identifying problems with small-scale agriculture. But its reliance on equilibrium notions renders it silent on solutions, i.e. each component of an equilibrium affirms the others, very often none more or less critically than the rest. Left vague are the processes through which the low-level technologies that purportedly underpin small-scale agriculture’s problems actually come to be chosen, time and again. An alternative view is proposed, focusing on learning, adaptation, and problem-solving. Scope is thus identified for “out-of-equilibrium” improvements in smallholder production and trading systems, with important implications for policy.

[1]  A. Janvry,et al.  Quantitative development policy analysis , 1994 .

[2]  Marcel Fafchamps,et al.  Cash Crop Production, Food Price Volatility, and Rural Market Integration in the Third World , 1992 .

[3]  Marcel Fafchamps,et al.  Peasant Household Behaviour with Missing Markets: Some Paradoxes Explained , 1991 .

[4]  J. Gans,et al.  A Technological and Organisational Explanation for the Size Distribution of Firms , 2000 .

[5]  S. W. Omamo.  Transport Costs and Smallholder Cropping Choices: An Application to Siaya District, Kenya , 1998 .

[6]  Y. Hayami,et al.  Agricultural Development: An International Perspective. , 1972 .

[7]  Bart Minten,et al.  Social Capital and Agricultural Trade , 2001 .

[8]  W. Jones.  Environment, Technical Knowledge, and Economic Development in Tropical Africa , 1965 .

[9]  D. Watts.  Networks, Dynamics, and the Small‐World Phenomenon1 , 1999, American Journal of Sociology.

[10]  Marcel Fafchamps,et al.  Networks, communities and markets in sub-Saharan Africa: implications for firm growth and investment , 2001 .

[11]  Adaptive stability with limited structural knowledge , 1992 .

[12]  R. Chambers.  Whose reality counts? Putting the last first , 1997 .

[13]  R. Eccles,et al.  Networks and Organizations: Structure, Form, and Action , 1992 .

[14]  A. Rodrı́guez-Clare,et al.  The division of labor and economic development , 1996 .

[15]  G. Dosi,et al.  An introduction to evolutionary theories in economics , 1994 .

[16]  B. Beattie.  Science Under Scarcity: Principles and Practice for Agricultural Research Evaluation and Priority Setting , 1995 .

[17]  Richard W. England,et al.  Evolutionary Concepts in Contemporary Economics , 1994 .

[18]  N. Smelser,et al.  Handbook of Economic Sociology , 1994 .

[19]  Giovanni Dosi,et al.  Institutions and Markets in a Dynamic World , 1988 .

[20]  Bart Minten,et al.  Returns to Social Network Capital Among Traders , 2002 .

[21]  John Hicks,et al.  The Theory of Wages , 1933 .

[22]  Nathan Rosenberg,et al.  Perspectives on technology , 1977 .

[23]  J. Dillon,et al.  Agricultural Decision Analysis , 1977 .

[24]  Joseph E. Stiglitz,et al.  Moneylenders and bankers: price-increasing subsidies in a monopolistically competitive market , 1997 .

[25]  G. Norton,et al.  Economic Issues in Agricultural Research Priority Setting , 1992 .

[26]  S. Winter,et al.  Understanding corporate coherence: Theory and evidence , 1994 .

[27]  Bruce F. Johnston,et al.  Agricultural Change in Tropical Africa , 1978 .

[28]  Theodore W. Schultz,et al.  Transforming Traditional Agriculture , 1964 .

[29]  Peter B. R. Hazell,et al.  Mathematical Programming for Economic Analysis in Agriculture. , 1987 .

[30]  Nathan Rosenberg,et al.  Exploring the Black Box: Technology, Economics, and History , 1994 .

[31]  W. Arthur,et al.  The Economy as an Evolving Complex System II , 1988 .

[32]  Stephen Biggs,et al.  Stakeholders, science and decision making for poverty-focused rural mechanization research and development , 1997 .

[33]  K. Arrow,et al.  Increasing Returns and Economic Analysis , 1998 .

[34]  T. Reardon,et al.  Promoting sustainable intensification and productivity growth in Sahel agriculture after macroeconomic policy reform , 1997 .

[35]  I. Singh.  Agricultural household models : extensions, applications, and policy , 1987 .

[36]  Andrei Shleifer,et al.  Industrialization and the Big Push , 1988, Journal of Political Economy.

[37]  Mukesh Eswaran,et al.  ACCESS TO CAPITAL AND AGRARIAN PRODUCTION ORGANISATION , 1986 .

[38]  Scott R. Pearson,et al.  Food Policy Analysis , 1983 .

[39]  Stanley Wasserman,et al.  Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications , 1994 .

[40]  G. Dosi,et al.  Substantive and procedural uncertainty , 1991 .

[41]  D. Tschirley,et al.  Successes and Challenges of Food Market Reform: Experiences from Kenya, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe , 1999 .

[42]  E. Gabre-Madhin,et al.  Reforming Agricultural Markets in Africa , 2002 .

[43]  Kiminori Matsuyama,et al.  Start-Up Costs and Pecuniary Externalities as Barriers to Economic Development , 1993 .

[44]  Stephen Biggs,et al.  Beyond methodologies: Coalition-building for participatory technology development , 1998 .

[45]  Robert H. Bates,et al.  Markets and States in Tropical Africa. The Political Basis of Agricultural Policies , 1981 .

[46]  Steven B. Andrews,et al.  Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition , 1995, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[47]  Ronald A. Heiner,et al.  Imperfect decisions in organizations: Toward a theory of internal structure , 1988 .

[48]  J. Chavas,et al.  On Risk, Transactions, and Economic Development in the Semiarid Tropics , 1989, Economic Development and Cultural Change.

[49]  Beyond the Miracle of the Market: The Political Economy of Agrarian Development in Kenya , 1989 .

[50]  C. Barrett.  How Credible are Estimates of Peasant Allocative Scale, or Scope Efficiency? A Commentary , 1997 .

[51]  R. Chambers,et al.  Rural Development: Putting the last first , 1983 .

[52]  Ronald A. Heiner,et al.  The origin of predictable dynamic behavior , 1989 .

[53]  Mark R. Rosenzweig,et al.  Behavioural and material determinants of production relations in agriculture , 1986 .

[54]  S. W. Omamo.  Farm‐to‐market transaction costs and specialisation in small‐scale agriculture: Explorations with a non‐separable household model , 1998 .

[55]  R. Burt.  The Social Structure of Competition , 2004 .