Innovation in agriculture: An analysis of Swedish agricultural and non-agricultural firms

This paper contributes to the literature on innovation in agri-food sectors. It presents a quantitative analysis of how innovation and innovation capacities differ between agricultural firms and firms in other sectors. With unique survey data on Swedish firms, we show that one-third of the firms in the agriculture sector are innovation creators. Moreover, incremental innovations in the form of firm-level technology adoption are not more prevalent in agriculture than in other sectors. These results indicate that agriculture does not appear as a special case concerning innovation output, besides their higher incidence of process innovations. The peculiarity of the sector rather seems to be related to firm-level innovation capacities. Our results suggest that agriculture is different in how they source relevant knowledge, which is a finding that could question the design of innovation support policies that emphasize collaborative research. Our findings rather point to a need of strengthening in-house knowledge capacities in agricultural firms. That would improve their capacity to participate in and benefit from collaborations with partners operating at higher levels in the knowledge system.

Automated summary

This paper contributes to the literature on innovation in the agri-food sectors by analyzing the differences in innovation and innovation capacities between agricultural firms and firms in other sectors. The results suggest that agriculture does not appear to be a special case in terms of innovation output, but rather has a uniqueness in firm-level innovation capacities. Therefore, the design of innovation support policies that focus on collaborative research may need to be reconsidered, and strengthening in-house knowledge capacities in agricultural firms could be crucial.