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Moderated conference on impact assessment of agricultural research: May 2014

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Mon, 19 May 2014 17:35:00 +0200
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This is Mario R Pareja, again. I have just posted a message with the experience we, as a team (with specialists in economics, sociology, environment, and institutions), developed during the evaluation of 20 years investment in agricultural research, development and innovation (R&D&I) by the Instituto Nacional de Investigación Agropecuaria (National Institute for Agricultural Research, INIA) in Uruguay. 



I am now replying to Message 49 by Dr. Doris Marquardt regarding partial adoption of innovations. I am in full agreement, and this derives from our own experience with INIA,  that you walk by and do not "see" the innovations... They are a result of a complex interaction of initial investment in R&D&I, often by various institutions, with the farmers practices. Each farmer may adopt and adapt the technology, the innovation, to his/her own farm and apply it accordingly. This poses, on one hand, a greater complexity on attribution issues when evaluating ag R&D&I institutions. But on the other, it is good that so happens. Farming is, usually, a complex system that cannot be reduced to a single technology or innovation. In other words, you cannot tell the difference between full and partial adoption of an innovation.



The latter issue leads us to the fact that impact evaluations of R&D&I must be done with a very open mind and looking at various levels: individual technologies, at the farm level, at the regional level and the country level. Our study of INIA concluded that the investment that this institution made during 20 years provided a benefit/cost ratio, at the national level, of more than 20/1 and that the Agricultural GDP without INIA would have been 11% lower than that achieved by the country.

  

 Mario R. Pareja

Ingeniero Agrónomo, M.S., Ph.D.

independent consultant 

Paraje El Colorado, Canelones,

Uruguay 

Telephone: 598-2-3654394 or 598-98372634

e-mail: parejamr (at) gmail.com



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