From Food Production to Food Security - Global Environmental ...

organizations made up of numerous national governments, to national and local governance structuresin the country in question, agree that there is a problem and understand and concur on its severity.This consensus-building is very difficult and in many situations is often based on the quantitativeremote sensing imagery that provides irrefutable evidence of a significant reduction in foodproduction. Although everyone agrees that political and economic factors are usually far moreimportant in determining food access and ultimately food security of a region, it is often thebiophysical evidence that all parties can agree upon as being ‘real’, valid and conclusive. This putsremote sensing at centre stage in famine early warning systems, even in an era of widespreadtelecommunication systems that have greatly increased information availability from remote regions.Once stakeholders agree to the nature and scope of the problem and come to the table to discuss whatto do about it, then they are able to address the underlying political and economic causes of theproblem through efforts to engage partners to provide income support, clean drinking water, healthinterventions and other responses appropriate to the situation in addition to food aid.As stakeholders continue to increase their attention and focus on food security issues outside of foodavailability, the pressure will grow to transform the food aid system to provide information on thewider food system’s functioning during a crisis (Okali et al., 1994; Haggar et al., 2001; Brown, 2008).How to engage stakeholders in research planningAs noted above, stakeholder engagement is of great importance in the research design phaseand a combination of approaches (consultancies, agenda-setting workshops and informalapproaches) can be employed to help set the agenda. Each of these is discussed below.Consultancies. Consultancies, where researchers are hired to ascertain stakeholder views,prove particularly effective in determining information need from stakeholders who wouldnot normally participate in, or feel comfortable at, an ‘academic’ brainstorming workshop.Examples of stakeholders who would be consulted for regional-level input include seniorpolicy advisors from intergovernmental organizations or regional bodies (e.g. SouthernAfrica Development Community, SADC; European Commission), resource managers (e.g.operations managers of major/trans-boundary irrigation schemes), and representatives fromspecific target groups (e.g. farmer associations or major supermarkets). Careful selection ofconsultants is important: local researchers who are experienced in stakeholder dialogue(rather than international experts) usually have the best feel for the nature of the issues atregional level, and generally have the best contacts (sometimes personal, sometimesprofessional) and hence access to interviewees. A small team might be needed to collectivelycover the main science areas. A ‘down side’ of this process is that interviewees may notstrongly feel part of a collective agenda-setting exercise, and do not benefit from discussionwith others in a workshop setting.Agenda-setting workshops. These bring the researchers together with the various stakeholdersand are commonly used in designing research projects. They have the advantage of sharinginformation more openly. Workshop outputs can be seen to be a product of collective76