Systems approaches to innovation in crop protection. A systematic literature review

By M. Schut, J. Rodenburg, L. Klerkx, A. Ast, L. Bastiaans. 2014

136 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The objective of this paper is to explore the extent to which systems approaches to innovation are reflected in the crop protection literature and how such approaches are used. A systematic literature review is conducted to study the relation between crop protection and systems approaches to innovation in 107 publications. The analysis of the crop protection literature demonstrates that only a small fraction is systems-oriented as compared to the bulk of publications with a technology-oriented approach. The analysis of agricultural innovations systems literature shows that, although crop protection is addressed, the potential of this systems approach remains largely unexplored for crop protection innovation. A large share of the publications included in this review focus on cropping or farming ‘systems’ while ‘innovation’ often equals the development, transfer, adoption and diffusion of crop protection technologies at farm level. There is relatively little attention for the institutional and political dimensions of crop protection and the interactions between farm, regional and national levels in crop protection systems. The traditional division of roles and responsibilities of researchers as innovators, extension personnel as disseminators, and farmers as end-users, is challenged only to a limited extent. The majority of publications discusses ways to optimise existing features of crop protection systems, without exploring more structural transformations that may be required to enhance the resilience of crop protection systems.

Subfields: General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e66f27ddefec687d8485a81bec62e15afea637a4

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

1. L. Klerkx
2. M. Schut
3. C. Leeuwis
4. L. Bastiaans
5. J. Rodenburg
6. A. Ast
7. H. Jochemsen
8. S. Wigboldus

In Plant Science

1. L. Klerkx
2. M. Schut
3. C. Leeuwis
4. J. Rodenburg
5. L. Bastiaans

Citations in the corpus

• How is innovation in aquaculture conceptualized and managed? A systematic literature review and reflection framework to inform analysis and action (2017, background): “From an IS perspective, the main driver of innovation is not exclusively research, because the role of research is broader than technology creation if the role of designers, facilitators, and policy influencers in innovation is taken into account (Schut et al., 2014).”
• Systemic perspectives on scaling agricultural innovations. A review (2016, background): “Scientific disciplines usually focus on one or two specific aspects, but complex problems such as those generally related to scaling usually involve many (Schut et al. 2014a, b).”
• RAAIS: Rapid Appraisal of Agricultural Innovation Systems (Part I). A diagnostic tool for integrated analysis of complex problems and innovation capacity (2015, methodology): “Despite the recent development and application of a variety of methods that can support AIS analyses (e.g. World Bank, 2012), the potential of the AIS approach to address complex agricultural problems remains underutilized in many fields of study (e.g. Schut et al., 2014a).”