Unpacking the agricultural innovation and diffusion for modernizing the smallholders in rural China: From the perspective of agricultural innovation system and its governance

IF 5.1 1区 社会学 Q1 GEOGRAPHY
Cheng Chen , Jinlong Gao , Hui Cao , Wen Chen
{"title":"Unpacking the agricultural innovation and diffusion for modernizing the smallholders in rural China: From the perspective of agricultural innovation system and its governance","authors":"Cheng Chen ,&nbsp;Jinlong Gao ,&nbsp;Hui Cao ,&nbsp;Wen Chen","doi":"10.1016/j.jrurstud.2024.103385","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Innovation is perceived as a crucial tool for addressing the serious global challenges faced by the agriculture sector. This paper focuses on a new local public agricultural innovation project in the context of rural China, and intends to capture the embodied agricultural innovation and dissemination network for modernizing the smallholders. Through integrating the concepts of Agricultural Innovation System and Agricultural Innovation Governance, we develop a comprehensive framework for understanding the partnerships between agri-technicians and small farmers within the network structured by innovation governance practices. In-depth interview and network analysis methods were used to scrutinize the linkages among actors engaged with the agricultural innovation programme in case area and detect the achievements in enabling smallholders to upgrade technical trajectories in production and fostering modern farmers at the local levels. Our empirical analysis suggests that the single-center and multi-level network produced in the agricultural innovation practices, which is distinctive to the previous simplistic linear model for technology transfer, demonstrates obvious effectiveness in diffusing the new knowledge both vertically and horizontally, and that the grassroots sub-network generates the interaction space between agronomic experts and farmers for building mutual trust and co-producing technologies suitable for local conditions. Through allocating financial resources and supervising the public agricultural innovation projects, the provincial government indirectly dominates the directionality of local agricultural innovation for enabling smallholders to learn emerging technologies and cultivating the new generation of professional farmers. Nevertheless, the current agricultural innovation practice in case area has not completely avoided the social selection bias due to the clear marginalization of some vulnerable smallholders, and the duration of innovation projects imposed negative influence on the persistent collaborations between agri-technicians and smallholders in places. It is argued that for meeting the national agenda of agricultural modernization and common prosperity in rural area, how to reform the management measures of public innovation projects and enable the vulnerable farmers to equally engage with the innovation activities and share the interests brought by new technologies are the urgent challenges need to be addressed in the future.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":17002,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Rural Studies","volume":"110 ","pages":"Article 103385"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Rural Studies","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074301672400189X","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"GEOGRAPHY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0

Abstract

Innovation is perceived as a crucial tool for addressing the serious global challenges faced by the agriculture sector. This paper focuses on a new local public agricultural innovation project in the context of rural China, and intends to capture the embodied agricultural innovation and dissemination network for modernizing the smallholders. Through integrating the concepts of Agricultural Innovation System and Agricultural Innovation Governance, we develop a comprehensive framework for understanding the partnerships between agri-technicians and small farmers within the network structured by innovation governance practices. In-depth interview and network analysis methods were used to scrutinize the linkages among actors engaged with the agricultural innovation programme in case area and detect the achievements in enabling smallholders to upgrade technical trajectories in production and fostering modern farmers at the local levels. Our empirical analysis suggests that the single-center and multi-level network produced in the agricultural innovation practices, which is distinctive to the previous simplistic linear model for technology transfer, demonstrates obvious effectiveness in diffusing the new knowledge both vertically and horizontally, and that the grassroots sub-network generates the interaction space between agronomic experts and farmers for building mutual trust and co-producing technologies suitable for local conditions. Through allocating financial resources and supervising the public agricultural innovation projects, the provincial government indirectly dominates the directionality of local agricultural innovation for enabling smallholders to learn emerging technologies and cultivating the new generation of professional farmers. Nevertheless, the current agricultural innovation practice in case area has not completely avoided the social selection bias due to the clear marginalization of some vulnerable smallholders, and the duration of innovation projects imposed negative influence on the persistent collaborations between agri-technicians and smallholders in places. It is argued that for meeting the national agenda of agricultural modernization and common prosperity in rural area, how to reform the management measures of public innovation projects and enable the vulnerable farmers to equally engage with the innovation activities and share the interests brought by new technologies are the urgent challenges need to be addressed in the future.

解读中国农村小农现代化的农业创新与扩散:从农业创新体系及其治理的角度
创新被视为应对农业部门面临的全球严峻挑战的重要工具。本文聚焦于中国农村背景下的一个新的地方公共农业创新项目,旨在捕捉体现农业创新和传播网络的小农现代化。通过整合农业创新系统和农业创新治理的概念,我们建立了一个全面的框架来理解农业技术人员和小农户在创新治理实践所构建的网络中的伙伴关系。我们采用了深入访谈和网络分析方法,仔细研究了案例地区参与农业创新计划的行动者之间的联系,并发现了在使小农户提升生产技术轨迹和在地方层面培育现代农民方面所取得的成就。我们的实证分析表明,农业创新实践中形成的单中心多层次网络,有别于以往简单的线性技术转让模式,在新知识的纵向和横向传播方面效果明显,基层子网络为农技专家和农民之间建立互信、共同创造适合当地条件的技术提供了互动空间。省级政府通过财政拨款和监督公共农业创新项目,间接主导当地农业创新的方向性,使小农户能够学习新兴技术,培养新一代职业农民。然而,当前案例地区的农业创新实践并未完全避免社会选择偏差,一些弱势小农户被明显边缘化,创新项目的持续时间也对当地农业技术人员与小农户之间的持续合作产生了负面影响。本文认为,为实现国家农业现代化和农村地区共同富裕的目标,如何改革公共创新项目的管理措施,使弱势农民平等参与创新活动,分享新技术带来的利益,是未来亟待解决的挑战。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
求助全文
约1分钟内获得全文 求助全文
来源期刊
CiteScore
9.80
自引率
9.80%
发文量
286
期刊介绍: The Journal of Rural Studies publishes research articles relating to such rural issues as society, demography, housing, employment, transport, services, land-use, recreation, agriculture and conservation. The focus is on those areas encompassing extensive land-use, with small-scale and diffuse settlement patterns and communities linked into the surrounding landscape and milieux. Particular emphasis will be given to aspects of planning policy and management. The journal is international and interdisciplinary in scope and content.
×
引用
GB/T 7714-2015
复制
MLA
复制
APA
复制
导出至
BibTeX EndNote RefMan NoteFirst NoteExpress
×
提示
您的信息不完整,为了账户安全,请先补充。
现在去补充
×
提示
您因"违规操作"
具体请查看互助需知
我知道了
×
提示
确定
请完成安全验证×
copy
已复制链接
快去分享给好友吧!
我知道了
右上角分享
点击右上角分享
0
联系我们:info@booksci.cn Book学术提供免费学术资源搜索服务,方便国内外学者检索中英文文献。致力于提供最便捷和优质的服务体验。 Copyright © 2023 布克学术 All rights reserved.
京ICP备2023020795号-1
ghs 京公网安备 11010802042870号
Book学术文献互助
Book学术文献互助群
群 号:481959085
Book学术官方微信