Efficacious pre-harvest interventions are either available or will very soon enter the marketplace. Yet optimism surrounding these technological advances is somewhat tempered because none of these interventions are a 'silver bullet' even though their efficacy is consistent from study to study. The question then is, 'should we adopt these imperfectly efficacious interventions?' To help answer this, we might quantify the expected public-health benefits as impact is function of both efficacy and extent of adoption. In other words, broad adoption of a poorly efficacious product can improve public health whereas a hypothetical 'silver bullet' has no impact when left on the shelf. Consideration of adoption, therefore, is just as important as consideration of efficacy. Since adoption requires a behavioral change among producers (e.g., adoption of a new technology or best practice), we should explore not only the role of economics but also other critical determinants of behavior that include knowledge and a range of social norms and felt moral obligations. A quantitative understanding of these subjective and normative values facilitates construction of scenarios (or alternative operating realities) to test whether interventions are likely to be implemented or not. Ultimately, interventions must be perceived to be implementable by those responsible for that implementation and producers must also perceive that implementation is advantageous and results in some benefit. In this symposium, we will present information on efficacy, impact and challenges to adoption from an industry perspective then delve into avenues to effect behavior change through ‘knowledge as in intervention’ and systems thinking.

Presentations