Farmer led innovations: Retrospect and prospects

Abstract

Agricultural development in any country is innovation driven. At the end of the development process, innovation makes the difference in farmers’ adoption decision. Indian farmers have also been in the process of continuously improving available technologies and innovating new ideas for more efficient and cost-effective farming, which has resulted in numerous innovations over the generations. It helped not only to improve farming practices but also to ensure better livelihood options. Despite its relevance and importance, it has neither been documented nor recognized. Even if the documentation has been done, the Intellectual Property Rights on the innovations made by the farmers has often been ignored. The innovations have neither been properly institutionalized for their horizontal and vertical expansion nor properly disseminated. Though, initiatives by government and non-government bodies to identify and document the farmer led innovations have taken place in recent past but in a limited scale only. It is therefore necessary to provide sufficient and suitable institutional support to the farmers for the promotion of farmer led innovations and to document, validate and scale up of these innovations. The institutional arrangements for networking of stakeholders need to be devised to translate the challenges faced in the institutionalization of farmer led innovations into opportunities. The present article is an attempt to document the importance of farmer led innovations, role of institutions in promoting it, reasons for slow pace of spread and strategies for scaling up the farmer led innovations with special emphasis on Indian conditions.