Scaling International Agricultural Research: Exploring frameworks, contexts and pragmatics of scaling outcomes to reach impact

Abstract

Agricultural innovation has been among the most influential drivers to alleviate poverty, enhance nutritional health, mitigate conflicts arising from scare water resources and empower food secure communities. Agricultural innovation drives productivity, enabling the economies to redirect its capital, labour and skills development into sectors that diversify and stabilise the economy, and raise the overall Gross-Domestic Product (GDP) of nations (Ortiz-Ospina and Lippolis, 2017). To date agriculture research and development remains one the most direct and influential mechanisms to reduce poverty, alongside education and health care interventions (Alene and Coulibaly, 2009; Gassner et al., 2019; Rosegrant et al., 2023). The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) is a government foreign aid organisation that administers a portfolio of around $100-130 million AUD invested towards the agricultural research for development across the Indo-Pacific. In the Midterm Review of ACIAR’s 10-Year Strategy (2018-2027) the final report recommended that ACIAR consider; “adopting frameworks to assess development effectiveness, whilst not compromising the quantum of research funding” (ACIAR, 2022). This thesis evaluated a scaling framework previously developed to assesses the scaling potential of agricultural innovations targeted at addressing challenges such as global food security (Herrero et al, 2020; Thornton et al., 2024). Scaling is only one measurement of development effectiveness however, and hence researchers should also consider principles of responsible innovation and the sustainability implications of outputs to safeguard against undesirable future outcomes (CSIRO, 2022; Robinson et al., 2022). The framework consists of eight accelerators considered critical to scale uptake and adoption (Thornton et al., 2024). Qualitative research methodologies including thematic and narrative analysis of ten ACIAR Research Projects across the Indo-Pacific region at mid-term or final review phases, were used to evaluate the scaling framework. Synthesis of themes and findings from data collected by fifteen expert interviews included the project leaders and project reviewers, as well as the mid-term and final review reports for those projects. Results and analysis findings suggest that the scaling framework provides an effective and consistent assessment tool to investigate scaling potential of ACIAR research outcomes, however research limitations and potential bias risks warrant further and more rigorous research to ensure confidence and validity of these research outcomes. A draft report has been compiled for ACIAR on the analysis findings and recommendations from the participants about the contexts of scaling agricultural research and the role ACIAR could provide in supporting research seeking to transition to development. This will be refined postthesis submission and be presented to ACIAR to facilitate discussions that will further insights and explore the value of expanding the research in subsequent studies.