Farmer First Revisited 12 – 14 December 2007 at the Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, UK Presentation, Theme 2a, Public–private linkages Discussant: Ian Scoones (IDS and STEPS) [standing in for Rasheed Sulaiman (CRISP)]

Public-private partnerships Discussant overview: Session 2a

Opportunities and challenges PPPs can help overcome many of the impediments posed by market failure, institutional constraints, and systemic weaknesses in agricultural research and technology delivery by building on complementarities, exploiting synergies, and distributing costs and risk between the public and private sectors (Gospel Omanya) But what are the challenges? Partnerships are constrained by conflicting incentive structures, high transaction and opportunity costs, competition and risk associated with proprietary assets, and mutually negative misperceptions. (Gospel Omanya)

But what actually are PPPs? Resourcing partnerships Contracting partnerships Commercialising partnerships Frontier research partnerships Sector/value chain development partnerships (Spielman et al)

Papers Glover – Monsanto smallholder programme in India Teme – Syngenta Foundation and IER in Mali Omanya – African Agricultural Technology Foundation Peters – The Global Alliance for Livestock Veterinary Medicines - GALVMed Speilman – PPPs and the CGIAR

Agreement that… The private sector has long been involved in innovation – often in joined up, integrated ways that have often been ignored by the public sector (innovation systems ideas came from private sector – inc. long established debates in industrial and business development) User engagement (as future customers) by the private sector is standard practice – e.g. notions of distributed innovation etc. PPPs offer important potentials for new innovation pathways – new capacity, new skills, new markets, new hardware and software. Links with the private sector often missed in early FPR, but cannot be today. Changing patterns of R and D capacity, global markets etc, mean that FF approaches cannot be a public sector/NGO affair.

But, we must ask… What justifies public expenditure in PPPs? Investment in new R and D trajectories, ensuring access to privately held proprietary technologies, leveraging private sector skills and reach in delivery, reducing costs etc…But how focused on poverty reduction (public good aims) are these? What is the business argument for PPPs? Public relations, extending market reach, philanthropic concern, or what? What are the values and objectives that define the ‘partnership’?

…. and…. Are PPPs about getting farmers involved setting R and D priorities and directions… or are they seen more as passive recipients of new/existing pipeline products? What risks arise from the (power and funding) imbalances of PPPs? Focus on existing on- the-shelf technologies, distortions in markets and delivery systems, diversion of resources/skills/efforts in public sector…

Some lessons (from nascent experiences)… Poor mapping of impact pathways – cannot really say they are pro poor or not… Exclusive licensing arrangements emerge – excluding opportunities not expanding them – negatively affecting market structure Publicly funded CG centre facilities, staff, funds allocated to high value cash crops – diverting capacity and resources Market segregation (subsidies for the poor) approaches with unknown, potentially negative impacts In sum: lack of risk management of PPPs, and poor poverty targeting and analysis (from Spielman)

What needs to be done… Develop partnerships around real demands for new technologies, not supply of old (but expensive/unavailable ones) Involve farmers upstream in technology development, as well as downstream in technology transfer. Link R and D and technology transfer with learning by doing (participatory monitoring and evaluation by multiple stakeholders) Build platforms for partnership development (avoid ad hoc supply driven responses) – a genuine demand led approach. Address power imbalances in partnerships explicitly, negotiating objectives and claims Develop strategies to manage and mitigate the range of potential risks (inc around regulatory, IP issues) Analyse impact pathways - and base pro-poor claims on better evidence

And, finally, a worry… Are we stuck in a supply-driven, product-oriented, technology-led, pipeline model in PPP initiatives for development? Have debates about innovation and PPPs elsewhere moved on….? Are there some lessons to be learned? [E.g. NESTA Innovation Gap report, 2006]