Small Farms and Innovation

This chapter aims at building a conceptual framework that could inspire innovation policies able to take into account the emerging agricultural and rural agenda, based on a comprehensive conceptualization of the innovation system. The systems of innovation and the broader processes of knowledge creation (and co-creation), transfer and adoption represent a crucial set of conditions influencing family farms' trajectories in response to the various opportunities and drivers of change, as well as their capability to contribute to sustainable food systems and FNS. This chapter analyzes the concept of innovation in relation to transition towards new configurations with a non-linear and multidimensional vision based on actors assembling themselves in a geographical space where resources and information are used to generate change. This leads to consider knowledge as an asset co-generated by the interaction of different actors within agricultural knowledge and innovation systems (AKIS) (Leeuwis & van den Ban, 2004). Agriculture and countryside are experiencing deep transformations towards concentration and globalization on one side and post-productivism and rural development on the other (Van der Ploeg et al., 2000). These processes of change require innovation policies aimed at pursuing ‘second-order’ innovation based on new goals and new rules. From a transition perspective (Geels, 2004) these radical innovations can develop within niches to a certain extent protected from mainstream market forces, to be then progressively embodied into higher structuration levels (the ‘regimes’).