Local Innovation Support Funds (LISF)

Prolinnova is piloting a new mechanism to make funds for agricultural research and development accessible to farmer experimenters and local agencies supporting them. The Local Innovation Support Funds (LISFs), as described in IK Notes 85 (PDF File; size : 33 KB), will be managed and used by farmers and community-based organisations (CBOs), with initial support by local NGOs. The LISFs will give farmers some flexibility and independence in doing their own research that is relevant to solve local problems and that takes into consideration their values and knowledge, as well as in hiring external support to their research. Country-specific feasibility studies and activities to mobilise longer-term country-based funding are included in the pilots. The LISFs, if successful, will be extremely important to guarantee the long-term sustainability of farmer-led Participatory Innovation Development (PID) though the institutionalisation of supportive funding.

A proposal for FAIR (Farmer Access to Innovation Resources) (Word Document: size : 59 KB) was one of 12 winners in the DURAS (Promoting Sustainable Development in Agricultural Research Systems) Competitive Grant Scheme. Under FAIR, action research on setting up and managing LISFs is being carried out in Cambodia, South Africa and Uganda, while the Prolinnova Country Programme in Nepal is undertaking similar activities with their own funds. FAIR is coordinated and managed by the Farmer Support Group (FSG), the coordinating NGO for Prolinnova– South Africa. Similar organisations in the other counties are coordinating the ISF action research there.

In each country, in addition to the coordinating NGO, associated partners from different stakeholder groups are contributing to the design, implementation and monitoring of the pilot LISFs. Backstopping support is being provided by ETC EcoCulture, a unit within the ETC Foundation in the Netherlands, and its partners within the Prolinnova International Support Team.

The overall goal of the FAIR project is to mobilise area-based partnerships that:

stimulate local innovation and learning-centred action
give rise to more replicable and sustainable practice
lead to long-term improvements in farmer practices and resource management
impact favourably on the poor and their livelihoods in terms of processes, outcomes and spread.

The objectives of the project are:

to identify, design and pilot LISFs as promoters of local innovation
to document and disseminate lessons learnt re: appropriate ways, mechanisms and conditions for LISFs to become effective promoters of local innovation
to establish sustainable long-term LISFs actively supporting community-managed funds in the four countries.

Pilot LISFs are being set up in the following locations in the following countries:

Country	Location	Coordinating NGO
Cambodia	Battambang Province	CEDAC
Ethiopia	Axum in the north and Amaro in the south	AgriService Ethiopia
Nepal	Western Development Region	LI-BIRD
South Africa	Busingatha, Obonjaneni and Okhombe	FSG
Uganda	Central Region	Environmental Alert

The funding available for FAIR from DURAS is very limited in terms of both amount and time span (a total of USD 150,000 for four countries over two years). Additional resources are being sought to allow completion of setting up, monitoring, improving and institutionalising the LISFs in these and other countries. There is commitment to broadening the partnership, to the extent that the interests of field-based organisations in other countries and availability of financial resources allow this.

One of the first activities in the project is to make an overview of experiences worldwide with setting up and operating local funds for agricultural research and development.

PROmoting Local INNOVAtion ©
Copyleft Statement: "Anyone may use the innovations described here and modify or develop them further, provided that the modified or further developed innovations or any follow-up innovations, of which the innovation described here is an element, is likewise freely available and any description of it includes this proviso and acknowledges the source of information." Refer to Prolinnova Guideline #3 (IPR)