Rethinking the benchmarking of agricultural and rural innovation

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the role that benchmarking can play in rural and agricultural innovations. Although generally known as 'traditional sector', rural activities are far from static but rather driven by old and new challenges pleading for innovative responses. Despite the broad range of insights from the burgeoning literature on innovation systems during the last decade, most benchmarking thinking and practice still remains highly science-based and centred in promoting public R&D, especially in developing countries. This paper argues that a transition from simplistic to more dynamic forms of benchmarking needs to bring it closer to the contemporary understanding of processes of innovation and technological change, as a participatory process. This paper explores the advantages and challenges of re-defining benchmarking in an innovation systems framework. It particularly stresses the need to bring benchmarking closer to the contemporary understanding of processes of innovation and technological change. Efforts to creatively improve benchmarking in rural innovation would involve (1) expanding the set of current indicators to track underlying capacities; and (2) exploring new avenues and roles for benchmarking as a tool for dynamic comparison and as a learning mechanism.