Innovation platforms and institutional change: the case of small-scale palm oil processing in Ghana

Abstract

-Oil palm is an important industrial, livelihood and food crop in Ghana. Smallholders produce the bulk of the palm fruits and small-scale processors, mainly women, produce most of the crude palm oil. Poor practices lead to a high proportion of free fatty acids in the crude palm oil and the processors thus cannot access remunerative national and international markets. Exploratory and diagnostic studies identified the absence of rules and regulations governing processing as a major factor. An innovation platform was convened and facilitated to remove the identified institutional constraints. Based on event tracing, this paper reports a study of the effects of the innovation platform's interventions and how these were achieved. Institutional entrepreneurs are shown to play important roles: they mobilised resources such as expertise, knowledge, access to information and high-level political power to influence small-scale processors to adopt alternative practices. The institutional changes observed are shown to arise in cooperation between traditional authorities (chiefs), the district legislature and authorities at the national level, who together institutionalised the experimental actions and processes taken in the study area. The institutional elements they most affected were: rules and regulations, the legitimacy of new practices and organisational arrangements, co-generation of knowledge, material resources, and the strategic and communication skills of key actors.

From Agroforestry to Agroindustry: Smallholder Access to Benefits From Oil Palm in Ghana and the Implications for Sustainability Certification

“…Where we somewhat depart from Adjei-Nsiah et al (2012) and Adjei-Nsiah and Klerkx (2016), and much of the other research on smallholder production in southeast Asian countries without a long history of domestic production (e.g., Pichler, 2013;van Opijnen et al, 2013;Brandi et al, 2015;Hidayat et al, 2015;Jelsma et al, 2017), is in equating smallholder welfare and access to benefits from oil palm with access to industrial and export production. Instead, we argue, further research is needed that expressly recognizes local and domestic production and markets as legitimate systems in their own right, with their own knowledge systems and unique contributions to local culture and livelihoods.…”

“…Our findings on the importance of smallholders in sustainable palm oil production are corroborated by other studies. For example, Adjei-Nsiah et al (2012) and Adjei-Nsiah and Klerkx (2016) have conducted two studies in the Kwaebibrim and the Ahanta West Districts of Ghana which identify and critique the lack of support for smallholders in sustainable oil palm production. These authors argue for the importance of changes in institutional conditions that would encourage smallholder farmers and processors to modernize their methods of production and processing.…”

A scoping review of market links between value chain actors and small-scale producers in developing regions

“…High transaction costs are generally driven by additional risks or monitoring costs both parties incur during the interaction 24,40,[49][50][51] . Buyers fear side selling while farmers fear product rejection [52][53][54] . In addition, transaction costs and capacity constraints can be exacerbated when infrastructure is poor and the relationship involves the poorest and most marginalized producers [36][37][38][55][56][57][58][59][60][61] .…”

Practices of Engagement in Innovation Platforms: Sustainably Overcoming Complex Societal Challenge Landscapes

“…[RE2] have adopted several perspectives when investigating IPs. The innovation systems perspective remains one of the most common of these, especially the agricultural innovation systems perspective, likely because of the popularity of IPs in various smallholder agriculture settings in Africa (see for example (24)(25)(26)). Recent studies have also employed a value chains perspective to investigate the formation and functioning of IPs in healthcare (27)(28)(29).…”