Approaches for strengthening stakeholders abilities (23)

Post by Andrea Rudiger (FAO) and Chiara Ferri (FAO)
Photos by Michela Baratelli (FAO) and Chiarra Ferri (FAO)

The FAO Research and Extension Branch has jointly presented three of its initiatives at the third day of the Global Share Fair under the title “Approaches for strengthening stakeholders’ abilities to generate, adapt and share experiences”.

1. Food Security through Commercialization of Agriculture (FSCA/PISA)

“What I hear, I forget. What I see I remember. What I do, I know.”

Participants from seven Western African countries, in which Food Security through Commercialization of Agriculture (FSCA/PISA) Projects are being implemented, met in Dakar in 2010. In a workshop participants learned ten new communication tools, such as SWOT analysis, open space, mind mapping, chat show and mapping of communication flows. They used them actively for knowledge exchange and learning from local solutions to challenges common to all FSCA/PISA initiatives. Even though the participants did not all share a common language, the interpretation as well as focussing on visual methods was very helpful in establishing exchange that continues beyond the workshop.

2. Applied Technologies and Practices for Small Agricultural Producers (TECA)

 

Using the example of a sweet potato disease outbreak in Eastern Uganda, the aims and functions FAO’s online platform for applied technologies and practices (TECA) were illustrated. Partners of TECA such as NARO (National Agricultural Research Organisation in Uganda), the International Potato Center (CIP) and DIFID have shared sweet potato technologies on TECAs online knowledge base. The manager of a local NGO, who has direct contact with local farmers, used TECA’s Exchange Group to alert other stakeholders to the problem and was put in touch with a CIP researcher. TECA enabled this NGO to respond more effectively to the problem on the ground.

3. Rural and Agricultural Development and Communication Network in Egypt (RADCON)

 

RADCON addresses the communication gap between research centres, extension services, the ministry of agriculture, the private sector and above all small farming communities with a special focus on women and youth. The network facilitates the sharing of knowledge among all stakeholders. At the core of the network are the RADCON centres, to which individual farmers can go to ask specific questions concerning their farming practices. These centres are linked to five so called expert systems (on rice, tomatoes, wheat, grapes and beans), to which village facilitators send the inquiries and receive feedback from specialists. Similar projects are being implemented for example in Bhutan, Uganda and Armenia as part of the Virtual Extension and Research Communication Network (VERCON).

All of these initiatives face challenges, which were discussed in some detail in the session.

To make these communication tools and systems work, building capacities for technology and empowering local actors is often necessary. In some cases this means to train basic computer skills (as in the case of VERCON Bhutan). In other cases a face-to-face interaction of an online community might be necessary, thus realising the human component of technology adoption.

Another challenge is to build sustainable solutions, which will endure when the external resources are no longer available. All three initiatives require commitment of human and financial resources by the partners, particularly governments. In the case of TECA the team at FAO can support partners (like research institutes or development agencies) by providing the software for a decentralised platform, but they will have to commit resources to its adaptation to their needs and its maintenance.

Build competitive business relationships between smallholder supplier groups and agribusinesses (7)

Post by Siobhan Kelly (FAO) and Denise Senmartin
Photos by Denise Senmartin.

The World Cafe session shared experiences from three cases pilot tested under FAO’s business model approach. Discussions at the coffee tables focussed on challenges that each of the pilot cases have been confronted with during implementation and as a result some strategic activities and ideas have been proposed that can be adopted during the last months of the projects. Some ideas proposed have been:

 

THE CASE OF RICE IN MALI

Should FAO encourage the Federation to get a new loan to be able to increase volume?

• An upcoming feasibility study needs to focus on understanding if significant improvement in quality can make the business model profitable.

THE CASE OF CASSAVA IN ZAMBIA
To promote and strengthen the competitiveness of the industrial sector, should FAO and other projects work with commercial farmers in order to satisfy the procurement needs of the industrial buyers?

• Engagement with commercial farmers should be accompanied by strengthen of district farmer associations in agribusiness skills and contract management to ensure equitable bargaining power.

THE CASE OF PISTACHIO IN IRAN
How can trust and collaboration be stimulated within a supply chain to improve overall competitiveness and introduce win-win solutions for all chain players?

• Sharing technology and know-how which stimulates linkages vertically and horizontally in the chain.
• Implementing rigorous quality control to improve buyers trust in the chain.

 

 

The World Café methodology allowed for a dynamic exchange for every participant to express their ideas. The word from some of the them?

“I enjoyed the approach of the World Café. Working for a NGO, I am interested in learning and capturing FAO´s experience as they can reach the policy levels. There is still work to do and the discussion, for example in the Cassava project, can help.” And then, at the stairs “It was my first session like this, I´m an intern at IFAD, so had not much ideas to provide yet but learnt a lot!”

Thanks for the meaningful, inspiring and energetic conversations, even though we forgot the candy!

Mobile agri-business in Congo (133) - matchmaking challenges and promises

On Tuesday 27 September, Narcisse Mbunzama Lokwa
exposed his mobile agro-business enterprise. Mobile phones – and particularly short messenging services (SMS) - offer opportunities for farmers to develop their capacities, share information about their products and connect with markets in real time. This helps them increase their knowledge about the possibilities to sell their products, increase their productivity and their revenues. The overall objective is to develop food security and better health of the poor in rural Congo and other areas.

The 8 participants to the session questioned the business model of Narcisse, who pays for the service (the connecting service is free except for farmers that wish to sell their products in that way), the connectivity of farmers (who do have access to mobile phones in the areas where Narcisse is working) and the potential to scale it up to other, perhaps more deprived, areas (which seems to be a challenge at this stage). One of the participants suggested introducing positive competition among farmers by increasing the transparency of their offers, to stimulate better productivity and a more effective matchmaking.


The session was short but showed there is potential to expand this kind of mechanisms and to connect with similar initiatives in the region (Congo-Brazza, Cameroon etc.).

Growing local farmers: De-rooting poverty (194)

The Topic: An agricultural enterprise uses some of its excess capacity to provide support to smallholders in Ethiopia  
The Owner: Amare Abebaw Woreta (Frag Agro Industry)  
The facilitator/blogger: Riff Fullan (HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation)

The session: Amare told the story of how he - after graduating from school - established a small agricultural enterprise which became profitable after some time. But Amare noticed that the vast majority of farmers in the Amhara region where he was located were not improving their lives, they were only just getting by. They only had around 1/2 hectare of land per family and mostly relied on rain-fed agriculture. Amare's company decided to invite farmers to see what the company was doing and - for those who were interested - take up interest-free loans (based on a group of farmers, so the group would collectively have responsibility for repayment) to buy inputs and take up some of the company's practice of focusing on more profitable crops. The company also helped 'graduates' of its demonstration activities to form cooperatives and worked to ensure the coops had access to market information and could take advantage of the best prices. Half of the target group were female-headed households, half male-headed.

Following Amare's story, we decided to have a short Q&A followed by a loosely structured peer assist. The idea was to have a conversation triggered initially by immediate questions and observations from participants in the group, then to move on to a couple of key questions from Amare's side for which he was seeking input.

What did participants have to say? One of the first questions was why Amare did not charge interest on the loans. How could it be sustainable? Amare responded that it was a trust issue: farmers were used to seeing microfinance institutions providing loans - often at high interest rates - that also required collateral (e.g. a goat, a cow), which represented a huge risk for the farmers. Amare wanted to invite interested farmers to take part in the innovative behaviour based on their experiences of seeing how things were done on the company farm, and without having the risk overhead.

Still, there was a feeling that the company could charge a small amount of interest in order to support the continuing program of farmer training, especially after its initial success with several groups of farmers over several years (totalling around 70 farmers so far). What else? Maybe forming a marketing company that could help farmers and coops link up more effectively to markets. Other ideas around sustainability included:

• the notion that support for the whole value chain needed to be considered (finance, marketing, information, logistics, etc), and that part of the sustainability equation was capacity building of these new coops (where most members might be illiterate and/or have little education or experience along the value chain);
• another is that farmers needed to have a sense of ownership for such coops to thrive. In this context, the voluntary and low-risk nature of the venture really helps;
• a third is the possibility to mobilize educated youth who could help with some aspects of running/organising activities and thereby generate a bit of income for themselves while filling some of the skills gaps the farmers have;
• in terms of changing production processes, the idea was raised that processing of agricultural outputs (e.g. mangoes into mango juice) and selling a higher value-added product could help on the sustainability front.

The final two threads that were briefly covered in our group peer assist/conversation, included the potential for additional activities to be boosted, given that the normal agricultural season runs from roughly April-Oct, so there is usually some time when farmers are not so busy, especially if they depend on the rains. Second was the whole challenge of climate change......most farmers have heard little or nothing about it, and anyway look at the vagaries of the weather as God's will rather than being tied to climate change. How can dialogues be undertaken that respect different world views yet still promote active adaptation? One idea was raised that had been mentioned in another sharefair session, the 'theatre of the oppressed' a methodology made famous by Brazilian Augusto Boal in the 60s and influenced by the 'pedagogy of the oppressed' methodology of his countryman, the educator Paulo Freire.

In a nutshell, both approaches work to engage community members in describing/perceiving and transforming the contexts in which they live. They aspire to a high level of ownership and definition of the problematique and approaches to overcoming key challenges by those whose lives are most directly affected. This could be a way for the farmers in this Ethiopian case to incorporate climate change issues and solutions into their own worldviews and ways of living.

All-in-all, a very interesting and wide-ranging conversation. I know Amare will go home with lots of ideas to try out!

Highlights from Marc Davies' keynote on 'Demystifying Private-Public Partnerships'

A well told story: Effective communication for development

A inspiring talk opened the first day of the Share Fair unfolding in Rome from today to Thursday 29 September. Rob Burnet leads Well Told Story, a multi-award-winning Kenyan communications company which pulls together comic books, syndicated FM radio, SMS, social media, web, video animation, strategy and science to help change the way people live, think, act and govern in East Africa.

In his talk, he shared with the audience his experiences and focussed specifically on how to make agriculture more attractive to young people in Africa. In this interview, he summaries the main points of his key note address.

According to Rob, when you want to reach young people with ideas about agriculture, it is about taking the research that we know it works and getting it into the life of people that need to benefit from it.

Secondly, it has to be about 'pull', and it can't be about 'push': "it is about packaging ideas that the youth will take and run away with" says Rob.

Moreover, according to Rob it we fell short of making good research outputs and ideas accessible form the ones that have to benefit from them, "we might as well go home".

In this sense, Rob concludes with a provocative statement as he encourages the CGIAR to spend 30% its budget on research communication, making sure that the research outputs produced during the past 10 years reach the people they are intended to benefit. "We do this, and we really can change the world."

Share Fair Day 0 - A conversation with Etienne Wenger

There couldn't have been a more inspiring keynote speech to open the Day 0 of the Share Fair here in Rome today. Etienne Wenger, a globally recognized thought leader in the field of social learning theory, communities of practice and their application to organizations, deliver a keynote address on “Communities of practice and strategic capabilities”. In fact, Etienne's talk was not just the usual key note address: after providing food for thought on communities of practices, he involved participants in lively fish bowl conversation.

After the session, we had the chance to talk with Etienne and to capture the essence of his talk in the short interview below.

   

According to Etienne, communities of practices are a vehicle to develop strategic capabilities within an organisation. He also underlines how the discourse around knowledge sharing and CoPs needs to change somehow: too often we focus only on the operational level of knowledge sharing, as opposed to a more strategic conversation about the domains where an organisation needs to excel, and the creation of spaces where staff can engage and develop those capabilities.

What is cooking for the Second Global AgriKnowledge Share Fair #sfrome: 26-29 September 2011 at #IFAD HQ

When I interviewed Willem Bettink - one of the co-organizers of the Second Global AgriKnowledge Share Fair just before he left for his well deserved summer holidays, I could not imagine that we would all have an intense working holiday.

As it turns out, those of us on the road and those in the office, have been glued to our computers, Blackberries and emails. And we've done so with gusto and pleasure!

So, you are wondering what the share fair steering committee is up to? Well, apart from being glued to our electronic devices, the organizing committee composed of colleagues from Bioversity, CGIAR, CTA, FAO, IFAD,and WFP, is finalizing the share fair programme which promises to be an exciting four day event, taking place from 26-29 September 2011 at IFAD headquarters.


We love suspense, so you need to wait a bit more to get the full-fledged programme, but in the meantime just to whet your appetite here are some of the highlights of this unique event:

• a number of prominent personalities will share their inspiring experiences and insights


• colleagues from all over the world in over 150 sessions, will share their knowledge and wisdom on a variety of rural development and agriculture related topics such as: food security, climate change, environmental friendly innovations, emerging trends in use of ICTs, new technologies and innovative agricultural and farming practices, market access, water, livestock, knowledge sharing, networks and communities of practice


• participants can benefit from numerous training sessions on knowledge sharing methods, social media tools, emerging trends and lessons learnt


• stunning art for AIDS exhibit


• lots and lots of social reporting - you will see knowledge sharing methods and social media tools put to practice.... We WALK the TALK!!

We'll be webcasting the plenary sessions and a team of social reporters will bring you live this four day event. We'll be using a number of social media channels, such as Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and more. Make sure you follow #sfrome.

And we hope to see you all in Rome. If you do not want to miss this event, please make sure you register. For now goodbye and good night. A presto as they say in Italian!