Public institutions of science and technology (S&T), and research and teaching, have been pressured to provide answers and contribute to facing society's many challenges, both in Brazil and abroad. Although such institutions have multiple roles – generating knowledge, training human resources and promoting the advancement of science – this pressure has focused on the role and contribution of research to innovation. One concern in particular stands out: not everything that is produced is used. So what prevents technology from being transformed into innovation in Brazil?

A doctoral study by the Institute of Economics (IE), which focused on the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), suggested that some endogenous and exogenous conditions permeate the lack of definition of S&T for the country's economic development. These factors, at times, act to help and at others to inhibit technology transfer, particularly in agriculture.

Cássia Isabel Costa Mendes, author of the work, concluded that, “in the arid panorama of the relationship between science and innovation, it is necessary to get closer to the agents of the national innovation system to develop technologies that are even more appropriate to the productive and social environment”.

Even Embrapa, which stands out as a successful case in this scenario, is also under pressure to show that its work continues to positively impact Brazilian agribusiness. On the other hand, the company has been questioned regarding the appropriation, by farmers and society, of its researchers' technologies. Does it face problems transferring its technologies to those who should benefit from them? Does bureaucracy make it difficult to carry out a process that needs to be very fluid, dynamic, flexible to respond to the multiple situations and demands of the market and society? Or is it a little of everything?

To find out what actually happens, Cássia interviewed 57 experts in technological innovation and agricultural technology transfer: representatives from sectors of the National System of Innovation in Agriculture, national and international public and private institutions, research, teaching, rural extension, government , rural producers and directors of leading agribusiness companies.

Based on the interviews, she analyzed the factors that would be conditioning the transformation of knowledge and technologies generated in Public Research Institutes (IPP) in Innovation. It adopted the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) concept of innovation, which involves a new or improved product, process or service in productive and social use.

APPROXIMATION

Among the external factors evaluated, the research indicated that S&T has a leading role in the country, but only on paper. In practice, its insertion into the production system is fragile, and public policy does not have mechanisms to transform bench technology into innovation, nor to encourage its use in companies in general.

The current structuring of global production chains, highlights Cássia, requires a certain subordination of the farmer to the practices proposed by leading companies and disseminated among farmers through the companies' own financial and technological services provision network.

It is known that technological packages exist and that it is 'convenient' for farmers to adopt them as part of a broader relationship, which involves financing, advance purchase and sale of inputs and products, guarantee of storage and transportation, and assistance technique.

According to Antônio Márcio Buainain, IE professor and thesis advisor, the market game is heavier and more complex, and technology is just one part (not always the most relevant). If the technological offer is not involved in this game, which includes everything from financing to commercialization, it will be difficult to become dominant. 

The farmer, considers the professor, becomes increasingly subordinate to production chains, and technological options are very distant from him. In extreme cases, it is up to you whether or not to accept the technology offered. However, if he doesn't accept it, he is out of the supply chain. “Such subordination has an impact on technology transfer by Embrapa, especially in chains in which the company has little presence.”

Cássia comments that, in addition, the fragility of the rural extension system mainly impacts small farmers, who do not receive the attention of large corporations and are not fully inserted in the most dynamic agribusiness chains. So the dismantling of rural extension, she reports, produces pressure for Embrapa to take on this institutional void, which has brought confusion within the company.

On the one hand, there are those who favor a more active contribution to extension activities, to enable technology transfer; on the other hand, there are those who understand that this role goes beyond the limits of an R&D company, whose competence is focused on these activities and whose resources are already insufficient in the face of the growing pressure to generate technology.

“Regardless of contrary opinions, the research found that there is a lack of clarity regarding the appropriate rural extension model to collaborate in the process of technology transfer by Embrapa”, informs the researcher.

MODEL 

In its initial phase, says the doctoral candidate, this company successfully adopted the traditional linear model of technology transfer, with the source (research) on one side and the receiver (rural producer) on the other, with the intermediation of extension. It turns out that current conditions are different, and this model no longer responds to reality.

Agriculture became more complex, new challenges and a greater presence of the private sector emerged, requiring Embrapa to develop research in partnerships. In this new context, having or not the extension service would probably not solve the transfer problem.

At the same time, millions of small farmers were incorporated into the public policy agenda of the 1990s with the creation of the National Family Farming Support Program (Pronaf), becoming stakeholders of the innovation system. “The initial model failed because there was no effective rural extension system. Embrapa has always had technologies that could and can leverage these technologically excluded producers, but they did not and still do not reach them.”

For Buainain, the question that arises now is what should Embrapa do to mitigate or overcome this deficit? Very little, he says, “because the determinants of exclusion do not have to do with the quality of the technology but with factors beyond its reach, from financing to access to markets”.

INTERACTION

Evaluating Embrapa, Cássia noted that the adoption of its technology stems from its management model. The company treats, understands, analyzes and perceives the factors that influence technology transfer. But it lacks a systemic and horizontal organizational management model that is reflected in transversal research governance. This model must seek greater connection with the external environment, to work in the context of networks, in a continuous interaction between agents of the national innovation system in agriculture.

For this innovation to be effective, she states, R&D agents and agents responsible for the production, marketing, distribution and technical assistance of innovation must participate in the innovative process. This is an assumption of the interactive innovation model.

The interaction and complementarity of skills between agents are conditions to further reinvigorate Embrapa, in the context of the new phase of Brazilian agrarian development and the driving forces of agriculture of national and global dimensions.

Embrapa needs to operate with skills that go beyond research, the author emphasizes, intensifying its interactions with institutions that have market skills not only associated with S&T and R&D, since, alone, it does not respond to all agricultural innovation initiatives .

Thanks to the results of this study, Cássia, who also completed a master's degree at IE, has just received the award for best thesis in Rural Administration from the Federal Administration Council of the organization of the 53rd Congress of the Brazilian Society of Economics, Administration and Sociology and Rural (Sober) , in João Pessoa.  

MODEL 

Embrapa is one of the paradigms of the country's scientific and technological policy. According to Buainain, the fact that, when it was created 43 years ago, its founders realized that a research company is made with qualified human resources was a big factor. It was then that he sent around 1.000 researchers to study abroad. “At that time, technology was not generating. I was creating these conditions.”

The company realized it had to deal with more pressing factors in agriculture. It made a decade of investments, and key technologies for the occupation of the Cerrado emerged. What was seen as inappropriate, due to the technology of the time, is today the main agricultural area in the country.

Technologies such as biological nitrogen fixation in the soil boosted Brazil. Embrapa created a tool in which the plant itself fixes this element and reduces the use of nitrogen, which is 80% imported. It also brought the technology of minimum cultivation, suppressing plowing and land grading activities.

In the past, the earth was exposed, as this technology was from cold countries. “Winter came and protected the soil. With the heat, the microorganisms were destroyed and the soil hardened. There were compaction problems because of the machines. Agriculture in these conditions was unfeasible”, recognizes Buainain.

Currently, with minimum cultivation technology, the soil is no longer exposed to weather conditions. It increased productivity, reduced costs and allowed the planting of two crops. It was only planted in the summer. Now, Brazil is moving towards using the land 365 days a year.

“While in northern countries the land 'hibernates' in winter, in our country, when the harvest comes out, the cattle come in, the cattle come out and the new harvest comes in and there is also the use of the forest. The yield is high. This is the Crop-Livestock-Forest Integration program (ILPF)”, informs the advisor.

Publication

Tese: “Embrapa technology transfer: towards innovation”

Author: Cássia Isabel Costa Mendes

Advisor: Antônio Márcio Buainain

Each: Institute of Economics (IE)

Financing: Embrapa