Agricultural Knowledge Systems: Issues of Accountability

Abstract

Formal knowledge creation is a critical part of food systems. It occurs in various social spaces: the state (public sector), the market (for-profit private sector), and civil society (formal and informal groups of citizens). These sectors can overlap in a variety of ways. Further, they differ in terms of accountability. They have different stakeholders, different expectations, and different sanctions where those expectations are not met. In this chapter, I discuss the accountability of each of these “intellectual spaces”. First, I present the general situation for each of the three separate spaces, which impacts the degree to which accountability can be achieved and the mechanisms chosen to meet those goals within the knowledge systems. Then I present expectations for knowledge systems that emerge from the different spaces in terms of societal resource stocks and flows: human, social, natural and financial. Finally, I discuss the relations among the sectors in terms of accountability, focussing on what civil society might expect from the market and the state in terms of knowledge systems. The focus is on publicly supported agricultural knowledge systems.