Making knowledge work in practice

Vellema, Sietze; Adomaa, Faustina Obeng; Schoonhoven-Speijer, Mirjam

doi:10.4324/9781003112525-23

Cited by 2 publications

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“…A limitation of our research is to link a contextualised understanding of frugal practices to an in-depth assessment of changes in the terms of inclusion (cf. Untari & Vellema, 2022;Vellema et al, 2022aVellema et al, , 2022b. Future research combining our process perspective with outcome assessments opens space for comparative studies of creating inclusion in different types of modus operandi (Hoffecker, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We present a case study tracing how the SME connected to a variety of other business actors, including a leading beer brewery looking for a consistent flow of raw materials and a diverse network of aggregators and distributors embedded in rural communities. We start from the socio-material practices of this SME operating in the middle of agri-food chains (Vellema et al, 2022a(Vellema et al, , 2022b. We build on the methodological guidance offered by Nicolini (2009) and zoom in on practices of handling cash and product flows (Schoonhoven-Speijer & Vellema, 2020; Schoonhoven-Speijer et al, 2017).…”

Section: Unit Of Analysis: Practices In the Middle Of Agri-food Chainsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Connecting the Concepts of Frugality and Inclusion to Appraise Business Practices in Systems of Food Provisioning: A Kenyan Case Study

Vellema

Schouten

Knorringa

2023

J Agric Environ Ethics

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Small and medium size business enterprises (SMEs) are the linchpin in systems of food provisioning in sub-Saharan Africa. These businesses occupy the middle of the agri-food chain and face a food security conundrum: they must ensure that smallholder producers of limited means can operate under fair terms while low-income consumers are supplied with affordable and nutritious food. This task becomes even more challenging when resources are scarce. This paper explores how resource-constrained SMEs arrange the terms on which both farmers and consumers are included in agri-food chains. To this end, it combines the concept of inclusion with that of frugality. We use the case of a Kenyan SME to demonstrate how a focus on frugality can advance our understanding of how business practices create thriving business relationships with smallholders while simultaneously ensuring access to affordable food for consumers. We additionally identify what conditions for inclusion emerge from this type of dynamic business practices. Our perspective departs from assessing induced organisational interventions, such as contract farming or cooperatives, which deliberately shorten the agri-food chain, thereby overlooking the skilful practices being employed by business actors in the middle of the chain.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Unit Of Analysis: Practices In the Middle Of Agri-food Chainsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Connecting the Concepts of Frugality and Inclusion to Appraise Business Practices in Systems of Food Provisioning: A Kenyan Case Study

Vellema

Schouten

Knorringa

2023

J Agric Environ Ethics

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The adoption problem is a matter of fit: tracing the travel of pruning practices from research to farm in Ghana’s cocoa sector

et al. 2022

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Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) are central to sustainability standards and certification programmes in the global cocoa chain. Pruning is one of the practices promoted in extension services associated with these sustainability efforts. Yet concerns exist about the low adoption rate of these GAPs by smallholder cocoa farmers in Ghana. A common approach to addressing this challenge is based on creating enabling conditions and offering appropriate incentives. We use the concepts of inscription and affordance to trace the vertically coordinated travel of recommended pruning from research to extension and farming sites, and to describe how pruning is carried out differently at each site. Our analysis suggests that enactments of pruning at the extension site reduce the number of options and space for interactions, and this constrains making the practice meaningful to farmers’ repertoires. The conventions guiding and legitimising actions at this site, reinforced by sustainability standards, certification schemes and associated inspections and audits, favour standardised recommendations and consequently narrow room for context-specific diagnostics and adaptions. Therefore, we reframe the adoption problem as a matter of fit between different sites in the ‘agricultural research value chain’ embedded in the operational cocoa chain. Our contribution problematises the dominant framing of low adoption and highlights that the movement of pruning and the sequential enactment at different sites constrain the affordances available for rendering the practice meaningful to farmers’ repertoires. Consequently, addressing the low uptake of GAPs requires institutional work towards conventions that can construct a fit between sites along the agricultural research value chain.

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Making knowledge work in practice

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Connecting the Concepts of Frugality and Inclusion to Appraise Business Practices in Systems of Food Provisioning: A Kenyan Case Study

Connecting the Concepts of Frugality and Inclusion to Appraise Business Practices in Systems of Food Provisioning: A Kenyan Case Study

The adoption problem is a matter of fit: tracing the travel of pruning practices from research to farm in Ghana’s cocoa sector

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