UMR INNOVATION

The Joint Research Unit “Innovation and Development in Agriculture and Food” brings together participants from INRA, CIRAD and Montpellier SupAgro. Its mission is to inform private and public actors’ decision-making by producing knowledge on the processes of innovation and development in agricultural and food systems. Its research focuses on innovation processes, ranging from understanding the objectives of the actors wanting to innovate to analyzing innovations’ impacts on development. Its research also covers the methods required to support the actors who innovate. The Joint Research Unit carries out research in France and abroad. Its interdisciplinary nature brings together expertise in the agronomic sciences and the social sciences (economics, sociology-ethnology, geography, law, management sciences).

We analyze these actors’ systems (practices, strategies, discourses, networks, institutional context, etc.). We address several thematic domains: agricultural production systems, agrifood products and markets, access to food and consumer practices, territorial planning and urban agriculture, and R & D and advisory organizations. These themes are addressed at various levels (farm, territory, market, public policy, etc.), based on field work which focuses on and compares case studies. The Joint Research Unit has gained international recognition not only for its publications and thematic expertise in the agricultural and food sector, but also for its theoretical and methodological productions on innovation and development.

The Innovation Joint Resarch Unit aims at producing scientific knowledge and informing societal debates on innovation by discussing, analyzing, supporting and assessing innovation processes for sustainable development. Its research focuses on analyzing agricultural and food systems at the territorial level. It contributes to an understanding of the coexistence or confrontation between several development models. Our scientific project is based on four cross-cutting issues. 

• How does the coexistence of and confrontation between development models help reshape our understanding of situate d’innovation processes?

• How to co-design innovations and support the actor in a diversity of development models?

• What is the role of organizations and institutions in the processes of situated innovation? 

• How to assess the effects and impacts of situated innovations?

For six research groups

• Analysis et co-design of technical systems and agro-ecological innovation – Actina

• Territorial innovations within the city-agriculture relationship – AgriCités

• Food, Innovations, Territories and Regulations  – Alistar

• Coexistence of and confrontation between different forms of agriculture – Cocktail

• Food democracy in market dynamics – Dam

• Innovation and research system in agriculture and food – Sira

The Innovation Research teams working on rice are:

• Madagascar  : DP SPAD) : Africa-rice – FOFIFA – Université de Tana 

• Viet-name : Dp Malica) : ONG – Acteurs privat, IRRI – UNEP..

• Indonésie  : IRRI et UGM Uninersitas « Gadjag Madah »

• France  : Centre Français Riz, Parc naturel régional de Camargue; UMR Selmet

https://umr-innovation.cirad.fr/