Increasing demand for beef in Indonesia (Deblitz, Kristedi, Hadi, Triastono, & Puspadi, 2011) is reflected in heightened policy emphasis on domestic production. Local cow and calf production is being supported by a number of government programs. The great majority of Indonesian beef production, and cows and calves in particular, is in the hands of smallholder producers (Ilham, Saptana, Purwoto, Supriyatna, & Nurasa, 2015). A variety of constraints, however, limit the extent to which smallholders are accessing and using improved management and marketing approaches (Waldron, Mayberry, Marthen, Quigley, & Poppi, 2013). Smallholder producers are a diverse group, thus advancing their participation in the value chain is likely to require a variety of approaches. The current study discusses these constraints and proposes changes that will accelerate the future uptake of new management approaches and technology. This study therefore aims to produce a positive impact on the livelihoods of smallholder beef farmers through innovation interventions that help overcome constraints to economic progress. It identifies distinguishing features of smallholder producers by characterising these features in terms of business models — a process of identifying and actioning change to improve profitability for smallholder beef producers — and presents the identified business models as innovation-based mechanisms for engaging beef smallholders to improve their operational efficiency. This allows for effective targeting of innovation interventions according to needs and aspirations, rather than taking a broad-brush approach. Theories of business models are synthesised to provide an empirical classification method, identifying value proposition, value architecture and financing mechanism. Therefore, the innovation project describes a system for driving innovation enhanced business models in the Indonesian smallholder cattle value chain.

A survey of smallholder beef producers was conducted in two districts of the Indonesian island of Sumbawa in Nusa Tenggara Barat Province. Data collected included: households' production and marketing systems and performance" indicators of innovations" and intentions about implementing innovations. The innovations are then used to cluster smallholder producers. Alignment between observed innovation behaviour and the essential elements of business models allows identification of three distinct business models currently being applied by the smallholders. Those business models offer different entry points for extension services, and for technology adoption to address business model-specific constraints. The innovation is designed to serve smallholder farmers and is facilitated by policy and assistance from the Government of Indonesia, extension and government agencies, and buyers of cattle to facilitate farmers' practice change. An ex-ante simulation model is used to project gains in smallholder production and profits, associated with management and marketing change appropriate to the separate models. This is an alternative mechanism to the feedback mechanism from smallholder farmers, which could not be implemented due to mobility restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The ex-ante simulation model is employed to project benefits from adoption scenarios for targeted business models, avoiding expensive and inefficient more generalized extension solutions. The ex-ante has provided evidence regarding each business model: one business model does not include sales of animals, and this might be avoided by buyers and by extension agencies trying to commercialise smallholders. The ex-ante simulation, therefore, can also offer some insight to the interests of those users — extension and government agencies, and buyers of cattle, and the results have been discussed with representative of advisory services and government agency. Those users should be able to use the study's results about the innovation project and around interventions that lead to improvements in productivity — these actors could scale up interventions and generate further impacts.

The context-based research presented in this study and its findings make important and original contributions to knowledge of business organisation theory, in four key ways. First, we observed innovation via a survey of small farmers. Second, we used these innovations identify business models. Third, we demonstrate how business models can be used to make considerable progress towards achieve the objectives of national policy, including the promotion of market-oriented farming, the promotion of innovation and the improvement of the organization and livestock integration. Fourth, understanding the behaviour of interested parties when promoting innovation will (a) helps establish the business models by overcoming constraints, and (b) make the business models more productive by boosting adoption.

To complement an ongoing CCAFS project 'Enhancing capacities for MRV of sustainable livestock action in East Africa (Kenya and Ethiopia)', implemented by UNIQUE forestry and land use, ACIAR is supporting CCAFS to implement a Small Research Activity (SRA) entitled 'Building capacities for an integrated livestock MRV system in Ethiopia'. The objective of the SRA is to support improvements in methods and procedures used to produce and manage the livestock activity data required for measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) of greenhouse gases (GHG) in Ethiopia. The focus will be on administrative data that is needed for periodic MRV (including both the GHG inventory and mitigation reporting), and data gaps that can be filled through surveys. The SRA will be implemented between June 2019 and the end of December 2020. This report is the first deliverable under the SRA and describes the priority needs for improvement of livestock activity data in Ethiopia's national MRV systems.

Over recent decades, the Australian grains industry has faced various challenges arising from changing climate, increases in extreme weather events and declining public research, development and extension (RD&E). At the same time, there has been growing competition in Australia's main grain export markets. To increase the annual rate of productivity growth and maintain international competitiveness, more and better-aimed investments in agricultural RD&E are required. Equilibrium Displacement Models (EDMs) provide a framework for assessing the potential economic returns to investments in agricultural RD&E and the distribution of these returns along the industry supply chain.

In this paper, an EDM for the southern Australian grains industry, encompassing South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania, is developed as a companion to the previously developed EDM of the WA grains industry. Using the EDM, three hypothetical RD&E investment scenarios are examined: a reduction in the cost of farm production variable inputs resulting from new farm technologies or improvements in cropping processes and practices; a cost reduction in stockfeed manufacturing resulting from new technologies and improved industrial techniques; and an increase in the willingness of overseas consumers to pay for wheat due to quality improvements or promotion. The results show that, directing RD&E towards a market segment of the supply chain with high gross revenue generates greater returns to the industry as a whole. As such, RD&E investment aimed at either farm production or bulk wheat export-segments of the supply chain which account for substantial gross value at farm gate and port-can yield high returns. Additionally, producers gain a greater share of benefits when productivity-enhancing research is directed towards on-farm rather than off-farm processes. Furthermore, producers can accrue large shares of the total benefits arising from research that enhances the quality of bulk grain exports because of the high price elasticity of demand for export grains.

Research on the collaboration–innovation nexus emphasises that collaborations and innovation are multidimensional. Despite this emphasis, there is limited evidence on how firms' collaborative diversity affects their innovation diversity. This paper addresses this gap by examining the relationships between (i) a firm's functional diversity of collaboration (FDC) and innovation diversity, and (ii) innovation diversity and firm growth. We used longitudinal data from 738 Australian food firms, and our findings suggest that the positive relationship between FDC and innovation diversity reaches a point of saturation, beyond which additional collaboration negatively influences firms' innovation diversity. Moreover, innovation diversity depends on the motives behind alliance formation and the firm's focus on innovation. Finally, the association between innovation diversity and growth performance is heterogeneous across firms' conditional growth rate distribution.

The 'power' of digital innovation within the Australian chicken meat sector is projected by many analyses to lie in digitally enabled advances surrounding traditional strengths of productive efficiency, consumer acceptance, and relatively low retail prices. The power also lies in variations to conventional models so as to innovate into value-added products, particularly those bearing information-related attributes such as traceability. This report characterises the nature of benefits available and the prerequisites and mechanisms for capturing them. However, there is considerable variation among stakeholders in the industry and each is motivated by contextually specific potential gains and unique capabilities in securing them.

This scoping study collects, evaluates and presents available information so as to map relevant literature, experience and knowledge to the field of digital transformation in the Australian chicken meat industry.

The role of agency in women’s empowerment, whether individual or collective, has long been at the center of feminist discourse. Although, highly context dependent, studies on agency are less contextualized. Based on mixed methods, we generated in-depth understandings of what constitutes agency in livestock-based institutions, and associated contextual factors across three regions. Agency, the ability to make effective participation, conceptualization is based on four main dimensions, in turn associated with key agency enabling resources. The agency-enabling resources such as years of schooling, land holding, sheep flock size, number of women in the leadership committee, along with location and distance to extension services variables were associated with the ability to effectively participate. Study participants are aware of the influence of normative environment but lack the power to challenge it. If supported and used as a means, the collective action, breeding cooperative, itself could potentially generate its members such power.

In developing countries the most marginalised and disadvantaged people are in rural, remote and regional areas and social enterprises in these areas – rural social enterprises (RSEs) – have been identified as key development actors in this context. However, their impacts are rarely rigorously measured. Our study fills this gap by measuring an RSE’s social impact in a developing country. A smallholder farmers’ survey (n = 1021) is utilised in a propensity score-based method which allowed us to generate counterfactual and estimate outcomes between members and non-members of an RSE. This method was complemented by a stakeholder focus group discussion. Predictors of participation and social impacts of the RSE are identified besides an evaluation of its interventions. Results generate implications for social enterprise practitioners, supporters and policymakers interested in applying RSEs as local and regional development actors as well as researchers involved in social impact measurement.

This thesis provides empirical evidence on the benefits and value of sharing information about product quality vertically between upstream supply chain actors in the Australian beef and sheep meat industry. The central research objective is illustrated by five separate but interrelated papers: three aimed at revealing the linkages between information quality, information quantity, and firm performance" and two aimed at estimating the value placed on information about product quality by two actors in the red meat supply chain at two levels of information quality and quantity" and at identifying the determinants of producers' willingness to provide and willingness to pay for information about product quality in these supply chains.

A rigorous literature review is presented on the impacts of information quality and quantity on firm and supply chain performance, and past empirical work is further synthesised in a metaanalysis. From this work, a conceptual framework for provision and utilisation of meat quality information in the supply chain is developed and tested using Australian survey data contributed by stud breeders and livestock producers. Analysis of the survey data employs several techniques including structural equation modelling, binomial logit regression, and descriptive and summary statistics.

Each of papers in this thesis use a subset of data extracted from two surveys of Australian sheep and cattle breeders and commercial producers, with a total of 139 respondents. These two surveys were conducted on-line, from November 2017 to October 2018.

The samples drawn from these two surveys reflect the characteristics of Australian farmers as a whole, in terms of farmers' age and gender proportion. Although the limited sample size restricts the extent to which more sophisticated techniques can be used to examine the current issues in these industries, the data is presented as sufficient to address research problems and to test the conceptual framework at an initial stage.

Results generally validated the conceptual framework. They showed that the effects at firm and supply chain levels of information quantity and quantity, and the value placed on information, varied across information types in ways projected by the conceptual framework. They identified systematic differences between beef and sheep meat supply chains, and according to expectations of farmer and farm characteristics. Information quality influences firm performance more for some types of product information than for others, and is more influential overall than is information quantity. Results also reveal upstream producers' strong interest in improving the quality and quantity of this information. A comparison between two stages of the supply chain shows that stud breeders value this information more than do cattle producers. The identified asymmetric perception of value is considered as a potential cause of chain failure, constraining the maximization of supply chain surplus through use of information in management decisions, and in the longer term through reduced incentives to adopt information technology.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to assign value to different types of product quality information at separate points in the beef and sheep meat supply chains. It is also the first to assess quantitatively the role played by information quality and quantity in generating value for this industry and the first to detect empirically potential causes of chain failure in a vertically co-ordinated industry. Our results offer guidance to industry and government on improving red meat supply chain performance. Recommendations are made for future research.