Reframing technical change: Livestock Fodder Scarcity Revisited as Innovation Capacity Scarcity: Part 2. A Framework for Analysis

This is the second in a series of three papers that develop a conceptual framework for a project on livestock fodder innovation. The paper begins by reviewing the evolving paradigms of agricultural research and innovation over the last 30 years or so and explains the emergence and relevance of the innovation systems concept to agricultural development. The paper then presents a framework for exploring fodder innovation capacity. This framework gives particular emphasis to the patterns of interaction needed for innovation and the policy and institutional settings needed to enable these processes. The paper concludes with some comments on the difficulties of measuring institutional change and the desirability of tracking institutional change and its relationship to welfare outcomes.

Key words: livestock innovation systems; innovation capacity; institutional change; fodder; welfare outcomes; counterfactual; parallel universe; plausible causal connections

UNU-MERIT Working Papers ISSN 1871-9872