| Sumario: | Demand, is the often quoted link between biotechnology development and poverty alleviation.
Nonetheless, there is often little evidence as to the exact influence of demand on the research
processes. Therefore, the following paper explores the perceptions vs. the reality of demand-led
processes using examples from the livestock sector. First, an aspect of the literature, i.e.
community-based delivery systems was evaluated using the core issues raised in the wider literature
on demand. Second, the perspectives of 190 stakeholders were catalogued and disaggregated.
The example from the literature demonstrated that independent views were largely in the minority
with the discourse dominated by actors from donor-funded projects and programmes. The
exploration of researcher perspectives demonstrated that while the researchers themselves,
generally did not account for farmer demands, neither did they themselves appear to be driving
research agendas. Thus, on a wider paradigmatic level, the risk is that notions of demand will
simply mask the traditional drivers of biotechnology research with little overall impact on the
poor.
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