Agricultural Technology Policies for Rural Development

The contribution of farming to rural development is highly dependent on the generation and delivery of new agricultural technology. The conventional narrative about agricultural technology calls for a new Green Revolution, aimed at small farmers, and driven by publicly funded research. However, agricultural technology policy for the future will need to differentiate clearly between the needs of emerging commercial farmers, many of them engaged with global commodity chains and requiring support in managing information‐ and skill‐intensive innovations, and the needs of a semi‐subsistence and often part‐time sector, requiring simple, often labour‐saving, technology. The public sector has a role to play in both sectors, in research on its own account, but also in managing intellectual property rights, public‐private research partnerships, and information delivery to farming.