Contributions

CRS Pathway to Prosperity initiative: CRS is actively engaged in GLDC value chains in a number of SSA countries, including a large USDA-funded soybean project in Tanzania (Soya ni Pesa¹⁶⁴) and a large Food-for-Peace project in Malawi (UBALE¹⁶⁵) which is strengthening farmer participation in the pigeonpea, groundnut and cowpea value chains, and promoting doubled-up legume systems.

In order to incubate and implement on-the-ground at-scale innovation that is driven by market opportunities, it will be necessary for CoA2.1 to marshal and apply skills in business systems. These skills include knowledge about how to match a particular opportunity with an appropriate business model; methods to design the “value proposition” for a business opportunity (business “canvasses”); methods for customer engagement and market testing; and communication, marketing approaches and business incubation. CSIRO and ICRISAT have been pursuing these approaches in recent years as part of technology and business incubation programs; for example innovation acceleration program¹⁶⁶ in CSIRO and ICRISAT-AIP. CoA2.1 will draw on this experience and the methods associated with it in the incubation of selected opportunities.

The CoA2.1 outcome is business models, organizational and institutional innovations, partnerships and governance arrangements that link farmers to input and output markets and that support the development of equitable, transparent and sustainable value chains. Its will achieve this by creating clusters of implementing and supporting actors actively engaged in incubation of selected opportunities. The CoA 2.1 outputs are:

Feasibility studies and business plans for identified crop-utilization opportunities.

Ex-ante appraisals of impacts and trade-offs of identified crop-utilization opportunities.

Technical and nutritional appraisals of food processing and product development options targeting identified crop utilization opportunities, focusing on addressing malnutrition, hidden hunger and lifestyle diseases.

Appropriate post-harvest management practices and other technology solutions for identified challenges associated with targeted GLDC opportunities.

Benefit-sharing arrangements in value chains.

Platforms and other multi-stakeholder engagement mechanism that align agendas and priorities to support agri-food system transformations associated with identified crop utilization opportunities.

A set of validated and scalable business models, and associated institutional arrangements that are inclusive, economically and environmentally sustainable and that contribute to the nutritional security of poor women, children and men.

CoA 2.2 Tools, models and processes to support at-scale innovation

The tools and processes from CoA 2.2 are those required to support the implementation of at-scale innovation. Through adapting and refining such tools and processes in the course of the CRP, a multi-disciplinary user-friendly toolkit of IPGs is created. The tools include agri-food system / innovation system lock-in analysis, innovation system diagnosis and learning, value chain bio-economic models^167,168, logistics analysis tools to understand the performance of transport, delivery and support networks for smallholder farmer inputs (e.g. seed) and outputs (e.g. grain)¹⁶⁹; geospatial farm production models to quantify the distribution of farm produce¹⁷⁰; earth observation to monitor smallholder farm operations and performance; technology adoption predictions¹⁷¹; foot-printing and lifecycle analysis¹⁷²; experimental learning tools; and household surveys linked to economic models to predict food demand, dietary profiles and market size and stakeholder performance analysis. Many of these tools are currently under development by CSIRO, the CGIAR teams and partners and will be refined and delivered to meet a range of potential applications during the course of GLDC.

In a similar vein, the development of a tool to conduct ex-ante impact assessment is particularly important to evaluate trade-offs among different, and often, competing performance measures (social, nutritional, economic and environmental). While value chain analysis¹⁷³ has provided researchers and practitioners an entry point to characterize and describe these systems, it has been limited in its ability to provide ex-ante quantitative insights on the impacts of revealed potential interventions¹⁷⁴. However, recent innovations have been made in the application of system dynamics (SD) models in value chain analysis, whereby the processes of the value chain are modeled alongside their interactions with markets, production patterns and challenges, investment options, and various types of social behavior and phenomena^175,176. By modeling the value chain in this fashion, alternative scenarios can be run to look at the impact of different value chain interventions on the profitability and performance of the system, teasing out impacts for different value chain nodes and typologies of chain actors (e.g. small vs. large farms).

The analytical tools and business systems will together provide FP2 teams in CoA 2.2 the means to analyze and deliver at-scale innovation opportunities. The CoA2.2 outcome is that the capacity of value chain and other AFS actors is improved to make informed decisions in the realization of agri-food system development opportunities. Cluster outputs are:

Decision support tools for agri-business and value chain development

Decision support and analytical frameworks for predicting and promoting nutrition, gender and sustainability outcomes in value chain development.

Analytical frameworks that diagnose agri-food system constraints that prevent the realization of crop-utilization opportunities and that prioritize interventions to address these constraints.

Policy and other stakeholder engagement tools.

Capacity building exercises to improve the skills of value chain and other agri-food system actors to apply tools and frameworks developed by this CoA.