BukinaFamily_1997BurkinaZai_1997Photo-SeedSamplesInSenegalZimbabweMaize+CottonMarketing_1988

 

 


A new way to reward innovation in African agriculture:

Prize royalties for the adoption of new technologies

William Masters and colleagues are building a novel approach to development assistance, through which donors could reward innovators for the new technologies needed to help African farmers raise their incomes and reduce malnutrition.  These “prize rewards” would be cash payments, made to innovators after their technologies are adopted, like a royalty payment for non-market services.  Prize rewards would be strictly proportional to the extent of adoption and impact, using verifiable data from controlled experiments and farm surveys to document which new techniques work best in what areas.

 

 

In a nutshell…

 

The proposal is for a specific way to deliver cash payments to innovators, in direct proportion to the social benefits generated by farmers’ adoption of the techniques they helped to develop and disseminate.  These prize rewards would help innovators expand their activities, and also attract private investors and other donor funding to help to spread the most successful new technologies.

 

To earn prize royalties, innovators would submit data from controlled experiments and adoption surveys to a prize secretariat, which would audit the data and submit certified results to donors for disbursement against lines of credit allocated for this program.   Payment rates would depend on the available prize funds and the extent of measured gains in each time period. 

 

For example, a million dollar prize fund might elicit a total of $36 million in documented benefits, in which case each applicant would receive a payment equal to 2.8% of the gains they generate.   Typical applicants would be consortia of public agencies and private firms, who would be motivated by the prize program to generate the greatest possible verifiable gains. 

 

 

 

Funding and implementation

 

Development of the initiative has been generously supported by grants from the Adelson Family Foundation of New York and the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, DC.  The approach has been endorsed by FARA, the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa, and it builds on a decade of USAID-funded training workshops and case studies, led by Prof. Masters and his colleagues in West Africa. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The proposal is

detailed in a range

of publications for

various audiences:

 

 

·  a new paper (June 2008) on innovation incentives with detailed motivation for when prize rewards are needed and how they relate to other means of promoting innovation;

·  another new paper (June 2008) on contest design, with a formal model of equilibrium response to proportional prizes in a very general setting;

·  a survey article focused on African agriculture published in Journal of International Affairs (2005) providing detailed motivation for how and why prizes are needed to alleviate poverty and promote economic growth;

·  a one-page summary, with links to source materials and contact information;

·   the first article on prize rewards, from AgBioForum (2003) and a longer article published in International Journal of Biotechnology (2005);

·  a set of presentation slides (in PowerPoint) and as a handout (in PDF)

·  press coverage from ABC News. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Public presentations

on the initiative

include:

4/08/08

11/13/07

10/18/07

8/20/07

7/31/07

3/31/07

2/20/07

2/22/06

9/29/05

7/26/05

6/02/05

4/29/05

4/15/05

3/10/05

10/11/04

5/20/04

3/12/04

3/06/04

9/30/03

7/28/03

6/10/03

2/28/03

 

IFPRI Conference on Agricultural Innovation (Addis) [slides]

Lisbon Workshops on Research and Policy (Lisbon, Portugal) [slides]

UN ESA Division for Sustainable Development (New York) [slides]

African Assoc. of Ag. Economists (Accra, Ghana)

Am. Agric. Econ. Assoc.  annual meetings (Portland, OR)

Jenny Lanjouw Memorial Conference (U.C. Berkeley)

 X Prize Foundation (Los Angeles, CA)

CropLife International Conference (Geneva, Switzerland)

International Food Policy Research Institute (Washington, DC)

Am. Agric. Econ. Assoc.  annual meetings (Providence, RI)

CropLife Annual Conference (Brussels, Belgium)

The World Bank (Washington, DC)

Woodrow Wilson Center (Washington, DC)

USAID (Washington, DC)

Columbia Univ. (establishment of advisory board) (New York, NY)

Columbia Univ. (Life Science Conference) (New York, NY)

ETH-Zurich (Zurich, Switzerland)

NC-1003 conference on agricultural research (St. Louis MO)

Columbia Univ. (Development Seminar) (New York, NY)

Am. Agric. Econ. Assoc. annual meetings (Montreal, Canada)

Intl. Conference on Agricultural Biotechnology (Ravello, Italy)

NC-1003 conference on agricultural research (Rutgers University, NJ)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An advisory board of prominent scholars support the initiative

and

its methodology:

 

 

 

 

·   Simeon Ehui  (World Bank)

·   Robert Evenson  (Yale University)

·   Richard Nelson  (Columbia University)

·   Phil Pardey  (University of Minnesota)

·   Carl Pray   (Rutgers University)

·   Jeffrey Sachs  (Columbia University)

·   Pedro Sanchez  (Columbia University)

·   Brian Wright  (U.C. Berkeley)

·   David Zilberman  (U.C. Berkeley)

Advisors met in New York on October 11, 2004, to review and approve the proposed prize criteria; each is acting in their own capacity as specialists in impact assessment and financing of agricultural research.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many other researchers have endorsed the broad lines of this initiative: 

 

·     Walter Alhassan  (former Director General, CSIR, Ghana)

·   Julian Alston  (U.C. Davis)

·   Jock Anderson  (Consultant, World Bank)

·   Alain de Janvry  (U.C. Berkeley)

·   Monty Jones (FARA)

·   Bruce Gardner  (see U. of Maryland obituary here)

·   Anil K. Gupta  (Founder, National Innovation Foundation, India)

·   Michael Kremer  (Harvard University)

·   Jenny Lanjouw  (Please visit memorial sites at Berkeley and CGDEV)

·   Richard Mkandawire (NEPAD)

·   Oumar Niangado  (Syngenta Foundation and former Dir. Gen., IER, Mali)

·   George Norton  (Virginia Tech) 

·   Rob Paarlberg  (Wellesley and Harvard University)

·   Prabhu Pingali  (FAO)

·   Per Pinstrup-Andersen  (Cornell Univ. and former Director General, IFPRI)

·   James G. Ryan  (former Director General, ICRISAT)

·   Eugene Terry  (former Director General, WARDA)

Endorsers include are eminent researchers and policy-makers from a wide range of backgrounds, including the former leaders of several national and international research services in Africa.  They are not currently leaders of organizations that might be eligible for prizes, and can provide impartial advice on an informal basis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo info:

(photos by Will Masters,
various years and locations)

 

From left to right:

  (1) a farm family in Burkina Faso, with

  (2) their field in microcatchments for soil and water conservation;

  (3) samples of traditional and improved seeds, and

  (4) marketing a bumper crop of maize and cotton.

 

 

 

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 last updated July 2, 2008