Task force on Principles and Metrics for Innovation in Sustainable Agri-Food Systems

Task force on Principles and Metrics for Innovation in Sustainable Agri-Food Systems 

The Principles are currently in the piloting stage, to ensure the Principles, their Step-by-Step Guidance, the FAQs, and Glossary, are easy to use for all innovators and researchers. Some of agriculture’s influential innovators and investors, such as the World Bank and USAID, are already piloting the Principles.

A major challenge for both implementers and investors in innovation is deciding whether an investment in innovation ‘counts’ as likely to promote sustainable agri-food systems (SAS) or not. A way forward is to establish a clear set of principles for innovations and innovation processes that promote SAS, together with guidance and metrics supporting those principles. These can be used to plan, guide, and monitor progress against SAS objectives. See the final set of draft Principles here.

CoSAI has established a voluntary task force on Principles and Metrics, working with the USAID-funded Sustainable Intensification Innovation Lab at Kansas State University, and other partners to develop and agree a set of principles and metrics to guide and track innovation in SAI. The task force will bring together some key users of principles and metrics, including:

• Public and private funders of innovation in agri-food systems who need to ensure that their funds are appropriately used to support their sustainability goals.
• Managers and implementers of R4D and innovation programs, both public and private, who need to plan their work against SAS objectives.
• Certification and benchmarking organizations for the private sector, as well as civil society organizations, who are interested in holding public and private innovators to account and directing investment towards more sustainable and socially-positive and equitable innovations.

The main outputs of the task force are expected to be:

• A focussed set of principles for innovation for SAS, which address innovation in policies, social institutions, and finance, as well as science and technology.
• Guidance and metrics to support the implementation of the principles.
• Agreement of a group of volunteer users to pilot, improve and take forward the guidance and metrics (this piloting activity will continue beyond the end of the task force).
• Recommendations on further work required, including major gaps in available metrics for further investment.
• A suitable institutional home and process to take this forward from 2022.

The task force will operate over the period of May to March 2022. It will be supported by a small Expert Group that will develop proposals for the task force to discuss and make recommendations, as well as a wider Advisory Panel. The task force will be spearheaded by the co-chairs Dr Preet Lidder (FAO, Technical Advisor) and Professor P.V. Vara Prasad (SAI Innovation Lab, Kansas State University). The Expert Group assisting the task force will be led by Dr. Monika Zurek (ECI, University of Oxford).

A timeline of the work done by the task force, the expert team and the CoSAI secretariat can be seen below.

Related:

A December 2021 report from CoSAI (#38 p.), The Role of Extension and Financial Services in Boosting the Effect of Innovation Investments for Reducing Poverty and Hunger was launched on Tuesday 30 November 2021 as part of the GFRAS Side Event: Pathways and Instruments for Sustainable Intensification: Lessons for Extension Advisory Services from CoSAI. The new report, by Alejandro Nin-Pratt from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) shows that the combined effect of improved access to financial and extension services could reduce the number of poor people from 518 to 488 million and undernourished people from 463 to 428 million.

The GFRAS side event enabled an insight into how we can to broaden the extension toolbox to achieve impact within our complex food systems.