Research-policy disconnect undermines agric interventions — Experts

By Cynthia Alo Agricultural experts have attributed the disconnect between farmers, researchers and policymakers as a major factor undermining the effectiveness of agricultural policies and interventions. This is even as they called for greater farmer participation in research design and policy formulation. According to them, research priorities were often determined without adequate consideration of farmers’ immediate needs, while policy implementation was constrained by funding limitations, institutional bottlenecks and poor communication of research findings.

The experts spoke during the virtual inaugural episode of the Agricultural Policy Circle, organised by Farmosphere, with the theme, “Finding the Gap where Research, Policy, and Practice disconnect.” Agriculture researcher, Ifunanya Orisekeh,said research questions were sometimes determined before researchers reached farming communities, leaving farmers to respond to problems that might not reflect their immediate realities.

She said research agendas were often shaped by funding calls, academic requirements and institutional timelines, while the time required to generate findings further widened the gap between research and practice. She said: “Research agendas are shaped before a funding call comes up. For example, if there is a project that needs a student already set, by the time you reach the field, the question is already printed and the farmer is there to answer your question.

“So we can become very good in the research perspective. We are very good at answering questions that farmers have never asked.” Orisekeh said research could take three to four years to produce findings, by which time the conditions confronting farmers might have changed. She also questioned the practice of measuring project success by the number of farmers trained without establishing whether they continued using the recommended practices after project support ended.

Using conservation agriculture as an example, she said, “It is widely promoted and many farmers have widely dropped it as well once the project and even the report is over.” She identified the mismatch between research schedules and farming seasons, inadequate representation of different categories of farmers and failure to return research findings to communities as other weaknesses.

Also speaking, Founder of AgricIncome Hub and Chief Executive Officer of Maxipharo Farms, Olaoluwa Farotimi, identified inadequate access to credit, unstable markets, poor extension services, logistics challenges and climate-related risks as major constraints confronting farmers. He said agricultural financing often failed to reflect production cycles, while farmers had little control over market prices and could suffer losses from sudden policy changes.

He said: “There is no access to credit for farmers. For example, you have a production cycle of two months or a month, and you have to pay back in six months while your crop is still in the field’’. Speaking from the policy perspective, Dr. Gideon Tups, an Economic Geography expert and Agricultural Policy and Global Bioeconomy specialist, said money and power are major constraints to translating research evidence into agricultural transformation.

Tups, a former Policy Adviser for Food Systems Transformation at GIZ, said governments needed to prioritise investments that delivered economic, environmental and social benefits, while recognising that agricultural transformation could face resistance from farmers, businesses and political interests.