Book of Abstract (incl. addendum) - IFSA symposium 2012

Workshop 1.1 Knowledge flows in pluralistic research and advisory systems: how do advisors
keep up-to-date and to what extent is their advice evidence-based?
Convenors:
Laurens Klerkx and Pierre Labarthe
The role of advisory services in bridging science and farmers’ practices seems crucial in a context of
diversification of challenges faced by agriculture regarding public goods issues; together with an
exponential growth of academic publications related to these various challenges. The risk of an
increasing gap between science and advisory practices at field level is often stressed by various
stakeholders at both sides. We propose to discuss about how different institutional configurations of
Agricultural Knowledge Systems tackle (or not) this challenge in various countries.
Beyond fragmentation and disconnect: networks for knowledge sharing in
the English land management advisory system
Laurens Klerkx and Amy Proctor
Wageningen University
Laurens.Klerkx@wur.nl
The growing multifunctionality in agriculture, combined with privatisation of previously state-funded
agricultural extension services, has resulted in a pluralistic land management advisory system. Despite
benefits in terms of increased client orientation and greater advisor diversity, it is argued that these
changes have resulted in the fragmentation of the land management advisory system and a reduction of
interaction within the advisory system and between the advisory system and science. Hence, concerns
have been voiced as regards the capacity of the advisory system to be able to incorporate new
knowledge and skills to offer adequate advisory services, resulting in a growing interest in how
advisors obtain and construct the knowledge and skills necessary for offering adequate advisory
services to their clients. In this paper we explore how advisors (land agents, applied ecologists and
veterinarians) develop their knowledge and skills by engaging in different kinds of networks. Key
findings suggest that advisors draw upon informal ‘communities of practice’ within their own advisory
profession, but also draw upon broader ‘networks of practice’ involving multiple advisors from
different advisory professions, resulting in knowledge sharing, brokered around the complex queries of
clients. Whereas fragmentation and disconnect due to competition and epistemological differences do
play a role; they do not appear to prevent overall knowledge sharing among advisors within and across
different professions. Assumptions of a collapse of interaction within the land management advisory
system are not supported by the evidence. However, to optimize interactions between professions, and
between advisors and the science systems, informal or formal brokers in the form of professional
associations or other organizations could play a bigger role.
Privatization of extension services: which consequences for the quality of
the evidence produced for the farmers?
Pierre Labarthe, Faïz Gallouj and Catherine Laurent
INRA, France
Pierre.Labarthe@agroparistech.fr
This paper aims at better understanding the consequences of the privatization of extension services on
the quality of the knowledge produced for and with the farmers. The originality of the study is that it
does not focus on the front-office dimension of the services (the direct interactions between farmers
and advisers), but rather on the back-office one (R&D investments in field and experimental trials,
scientific watch, training, etc.). In that respect, we combined two analytical frameworks: i) the
advances of service economics, which allow to better understand the strategies of private firms of
extension services; ii) the debates derived from evidence-based policy approaches in public decision,
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