Abstract
The aim of this paper is to document agricultural innovation systems (AIS) in Australia. We identified eleven broad categories (actors) in terms of their activities, namely: policy, education, finance and credit, marketing, input supply, research, extension and information, logistics, processing and storage, farmers and farm organisations and consumers. Survey results reveal that 11 kinds of innovation-related activities of research and education organisations with corresponding percentage weight are directly involved in innovation diffusion. Twelve pre-identified goals of innovation related activities of the above organisations surveyed with their corresponding percentage weight have also been revealed. The study reveals that the majority of funding (more than 80%) for innovation activities comes from the Federal Government and funding bodies. Finally survey results indicate that the main constrains/incentives are other issues such as funding, lack of qualified staff, equipment, environmental and Government policy issues etc.
Highlights
Agriculture can be defined as the science and practice of cultivating the soil and rearing farm animals (Moore, 2002)
In order to develop a picture of the agricultural sector, data were sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and Australian Food Statistics (AFS)
Using a sample of organisations/centres identified via web-search in 2005, an explanatory letter and questionnaire was distributed by post
Summary
Agriculture can be defined as the science and practice of cultivating the soil and rearing farm animals (Moore, 2002). Agricultural innovation can be differentiated into three categories as follows: Product innovation – such as pesticides, new seed varieties, new types of animal feed, treatments and veterinary medicines etc. For these sorts of products, the commercialisation of science is done by industry (mainly in industries like chemicals), and typically involves large multinational firms. As a result information about the new product is driven by the firms in the form of product marketing. It is not transferred directly from the researcher to the farmer. The driver is the producer (e.g. Monsanto etc.), and the link is more likely to be the local distributor/retailer agricultural supplier
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