Agricultural research in the Global South : steering research beyond impact promises

Agriculture is at the heart of many burning global issues, and agricultural research for development (AR4D) is increasingly called upon to address multiple social challenges related to demographic, food system, ecological and climate transitions. However, funding for AR4D is shrinking. Funders and policy makers are asking researchers and their institutions to demonstrate convincingly not only how public investments in research generate excellent scientifi c results, but also how they contribute to producing innovations that have tangible impacts on development. Such impacts may relate, for instance, to food security, sustainable development or climate change adaptation.

ImpresS adopts a participatory approach that incorporates the viewpoints of the diff erent actors involved in a given innovation process.In 2015, the ImpresS method was applied to 13 case studies covering clusters of projects over the long The impacts of agricultural research for development are long-term and very diverse -positive, unexpected, sometimes negative.To assess and understand these impacts, ImpresS, a participatory evaluation method that incorporates the viewpoints of actors on the ground, was tested on 13 research case studies conducted by CIRAD and its partners in diff erent countries.The central conclusion is that research institutions and their funders need to change their practices if they wish to achieve long-term impacts at scale.For research, this means accepting to play multiple roles, collaborating with innovation and policy actors, fostering learning, and developing explicit hypothetical but plausible ex ante impact pathways.For sponsors and funders, it implies considering a wider range of impacts, planning action in the long term, fostering articulation between projects with similar goals, and supporting adaptive learning and management.
term, illustrating the diversity of research conducted by CIRAD and its partners in a variety of contexts and partnership set-ups in Southern countries.These case studies span three continents and a broad range of technical and social innovations.
The ImpresS method starts by reconstructing the narrative of the innovation process and identifying its different phases.A timeline represents this narrative, while a map of key actors shows their interactions all along the innovation process.It then identifies the different positive or negative impacts produced by the innovation process, as reported by actors.Finally, based on the "impact pathway" concept, ImpresS identifies research outputs and describes how actors appropriate them, leading to changes in practices or organisations (outcomes) related to identified impacts.
ImpresS thus seeks to establish causal links by analysing the contribution of research at every stage of the impact pathway.This analysis emphasises capacity strengthening for the different stakeholders, identifying learning situations.Interactions with public policy actors are also of special interest.Key actors involved in the innovation process or affected by the changes it brings about contribute to the evaluation at different moments.Participatory tools make it possible to better understand the causal mechanisms and to identify diverse, sometimes unexpected impacts.The actors involved thus helped to identify more than 100 impacts for the 13 case studies.Each impact is characterised by quantitative and qualitative indicators emerging from the participatory process, and relates to one of 11 generic domains of impacts proposed by CIRAD.An expert panel grades the achievements of the case studies in each impact domain based on the impact indicators.

Key lessons from ImpresS
Interacting with all actors is critical to generate impacts • The 13 CIRAD case studies have shown the importance of researchers interacting with other actors at every stage of the innovation process.In the impact pathway, these interactions produce a series of outcomes representing essential steps towards impact: changes in farming or management practices, coordination mechanisms, innovation platforms, new organisations, the creation of companies, and the drafting of standards or policies.As with outcomes, many outputs are actually co-produced in the context of participatory research involving researchers and other actors.This co-production implies that the researchers operate within spheres that facilitate or structure such interactions.Researchers are also expected to interact with a range of political actors, who play a pivotal role in the construction, appropriation and especially the scaling of an innovation.
Capacity strengthening during the innovation process is a catalyst for impacts • In order to understand how capacity strengthening contributes to impacts, ImpresS identified the formal and informal learning situations that play a part in the construction of outputs and outcomes.Researchers participate directly or indirectly in these learning situations.The capacities thus built are diverse -technical, managerial, the ability to experiment, learn, or interact with othersand their importance varies according to the innovation in question.They enable the actors concerned, including researchers, to enhance their capacity to innovate.
Impacts are diverse and built over the long term • The impacts identified and characterised for the 13 case studies are manifold: an increase in production and income, better natural resource management, improved access to remunerative markets, new public policies, etc.Some impacts differ from those anticipated by research and may even be negative.In most cases, impacts appeared only in the long term, after 20 years or more, and resulted from the successive contributions made by several projects rather than by individual projects.
Impact pathways are built over much longer periods than research projects.Moreover, the impacts observed in the long term are often not those initially planned.This unpredictable, long term process means it is neither possible nor advisable to plan research based on the promised impacts of a single project in isolation.Researchers' and funders' practices need to evolve; they need to operate on longer timescales and to reflect a better understanding of the mechanisms that generate impacts in order to boost their ability to achieve them.The length of bars represents impact intensity, from -5 to +5, and the width of bars represents impact scope, from 1 to 3.
The 11 axes of the radar represent the 11 impact domains identified by CIRAD; they correspond to five Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): responsible consumption and production (SDG 12); no poverty and zero hunger (SDGs 1 and 2); partnerships for the goals (SDG 17); and life on land (SDG 15).In the example, five impact domains are concerned, corresponding to SDGs 1, 2 and 12.

Implications for research institutes
Assuming the multiple roles of research and engaging in innovation systems • The specifi c context in which an innovation is developed means that research needs to assume multiple roles in order to generate impacts, in addition to its traditional knowledge production role.Based on the 13 CIRAD case studies, we have identifi ed fi ve generic roles played by research at diff erent stages of the impact pathway: producing and disseminating knowledge; co-designing innovations; managing resources needed for actions; building capacity; and supporting actors and promoting the innovation.These roles are particularly diverse in the Global South because of relatively weaker public policies and development and advisory institutions.
For a given innovation process, the relative emphasis to be placed on these diff erent research roles depends on the importance of scientifi c knowledge, on the willingness and capacity of actors to engage in the innovation process and, fi nally, on the overall socio-technical context.An individual researcher cannot play all of these roles, and they should instead be assumed collectively: research projects therefore need to pay greater attention to how to allocate tasks and orchestrate them over time.
Fostering interactions with innovation actors and political actors • To maximise the chances of achieving impacts in research projects, it is essential to foster interactions with the diff erent actors all along the impact pathway through innovation systems, networks or platforms.These interactions oft en result in co-produced innovations, which are more relevant and more likely to produce impacts if they start occurring early in the process.
Through these interactions, researchers must also facilitate capacity strengthening for all stakeholders.Learning situations may be formal, such as organised workshops, or informal, such as the repeated interactions taking place within an experimentation process.They may be planned or may arise as the project progresses.
Finally, it is essential to foster interactions between researchers and policy makers at diff erent scales, upon whom the achievement of impacts and scaling oft en depend.This requires fl exibility from researchers on how to interact with such actors, including through informal relationships, and the capacity to take part in coalitions for favourable public policies.
Setting out the hypotheses for impact pathways • When designing research projects, it is fi rst important to put them in context by relating them to previous interventions, be they public or private projects and programmes, and then to those that would currently interact with it, or might do so in the future.
The next step entails going beyond the conventional identifi cation of project outputs to produce ex ante hypotheses about what they will become, through multiple interactions that should occur between actors to produce outcomes and contribute to achieving impacts.These hypotheses concern critical points along the impact pathway, the diff erent roles research will have to play, the partnerships that need to be in place, and more generally, the conditions for achieving these impacts.As far as possible, these hypotheses should be developed with the actors involved through a participatory approach.Lessons learned from previous experiences or projects may help to determine their plausibility.

Implications for research sponsors and funders
Considering a broad range of possible impacts • The fact that expected impacts, whether positive or negative, may emerge over long time spans has multiple implications.
Beyond the strict agenda of funders or the research institution itself, and beyond specifi c demands that triggered research intervention, it is important to monitor all eff ects and impacts resulting from these actions.To do so, the 11 impact domains proposed by CIRAD, which relate to the Sustainable Development Goals, can be used as benchmarks.This also implies defi ning coherent clusters of projects in order to conduct an ex ante analysis of risks (potentially leading to negative impacts), and monitoring these over time.
Planning action in the long term • Because the economic, social, environmental and territorial impacts of research are produced over a long period (20 years or more), projects lasting 3 to 5 years are not an adequate or suffi cient framework to obtain and measure these impacts.Taking on board the concept of a "cluster of projects" around a specifi c innovation trajectory, targeting a given region or population, would foster the continuity and capitalisation of research and partnerships with innovation actors.The ex ante impact hypotheses for research projects would then be based not only on a scientifi c literature review, but also on an analysis of previous or ongoing projects of a similar nature, with a view to better identifying their specifi c contribution to the desired impacts.The 13 case studies analysed by ImpresS, CIRAD's participatory method to assess the impacts of research.
Range of impacts for varietal improvement of rainfed upland rice in Madagascar: ImpresS grading established by the expert panel, according to 11 impact domains.