摘要：The Latin America and Caribbean region (LAC) has been
undergoing an evolutionary process in its agricultural research
and extension systems in recent years. This transformation
of agricultural innovation systems has been explained
metaphorically as following the nature of an ¡°intelligent living
organism¡± that must learn and adapt to changes in its environment
in order to be successful. What was once a linear
process, driven by a top-down action plan where research and
advisory services were dominated by government agencies, is
slowly being transformed into a network of diverse stakeholders
influencing the process of agricultural innovation.
Traditionally, the unidirectional process of
research and extension has been initiated by an
agricultural agenda defined by the central government,
for which the national agricultural research
institutes (INIA for its Spanish acronym) were tasked
with identifying strategies to address these priorities.
The research was then implemented and finally
its results disseminated to the farmers for adoption.
The current incarnation of agricultural innovation
systems have been typified by the engagement of a
wider set of actors, including universities, farmers,
input suppliers and other private sector interests,
who offer their unique insights to feed the process of
innovation in a practical and demand-driven manner.
As such, the concept of ¡°innovation¡± extends beyond
the formal research and development (R&D) to
more effectively incorporate learning through experience,
which has proven more circular in nature, with
the intention of more directly contributing to improved
rural livelihoods. On the institutional side,
these reforms have led to greater specialization, with
policy formulation, financing and implementation
being increasingly separated from one another.
