Method for a shared understanding: A systems-based workshop

Eighteen (18) participants took part in the one-day workshop in June 2015, facilitated by staff from the Australian National University and the University of the Philippines, Los Baños. The participants were purposefully selected by the research team and SEARCA as future leaders of the ISARD program and therefore central to the development of transdisciplinary programs in the region. Workshop participants included university researchers and local government representatives from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and the Philippines. This workshop formed part of the initial phase of the co-design of longer-term transdisciplinary endeavours in the region. Each of the selected countries face major food and nutrition security challenges in urban and rural contexts (Table 12) ranging from food availability (Cambodia and Laos) to nutritional quality of available food (Thailand and Cambodia). The participants are heavily involved in transferring research to applied agriculture contexts, and are highly familiar with their local farming communities and landscapes (Table 13). The Thailand group had researchers who worked actively with the national department of agriculture. Participants from Cambodia and Laos were all researchers involved in extension services with farmers. The Philippines group included a mix of researchers and government officials who have been commissioned to collaborate and work on future ISARD projects, and had the highest number of attendance due to logistical feasibility. These Philippine participants were the first to work with SEARCA in advancing ISARD through pilot projects, with Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand as possible future pilot countries. The higher number of participants from the Philippines was due to the fact that SEARCA has two pilot projects in Leyte and Mindoro islands in the Philippines, which SEARCA aimed to establish shortly after this study. As this was a qualitative study, we did not assign greater value to the themes and ideas to groups with more participants. Rather, the higher presence of Philippine participants meant that we could split the country groups into sub-groups and allowed them to interact with each other. This allowed for greater range and diversity of Philippine ideas for the SEARCA projects they expect to run in the future. The nature of sustainable development challenges makes workshops and conference based analysis useful for exploring complexity and dominant framings of problems (for examples, see Alders and Kock, 2017; Bednarek et al., 2018; Carlsson et al., 2017; Cleland et al., 2012; Picchioni et al., 2017).

All participants were expected to develop proposals in their home countries for future funding from SEARCA with explicit transdisciplinary design. The omission of other major food systems actors, such as farmers, non-government organisations, and business, was explicit in the workshop design. This workshop targeted government agencies and researchers that SEARCA frames as partners in developing and conducting transdisciplinary research. Similar future activities with broader food systems actors remain part of the broader ISARD program.

Table 12: Food and nutrition security context of Cambodia, Laos PDR, Thailand, and The Philippines

Countries Child malnutrition Absolute Poverty Dietary energy supply/balance Prevalence (%) Number of children below 5 Prevalence (%) Millions of people Dietary energy supply (per capital kcals/day) Dietary energy balance (per capita kcals/day) Cambodia 28.30 472,383 17.70 3 1974 -246 Philippines 20.20 2,255,249 25.20 24 2356 136 Thailand 9.20 369830.8 12.60 9 2334 114 Lao PDR 26.60 236527 23.30 1 2143 -77 Relevant

reference (Department of Science and Technology, 2013; Ministry of Health, 2012; National Institute of Statistics, 2010; National Statistical Office, 2012)

(World Bank, 2010;

World Bank, 2012) Based on Smith et al. (2000)

Table 13: Overview of participants present at workshop

Country Number of

participants Participants’ profile

Cambodia 3 University lecturers, agronomy extension experts

Laos 2 University Deans and Vice-Deans of agricultural systems and food science Thailand 2 Assistant professors, communication

extension experts

Philippines 11 Local government unit representations from agricultural departments, President of leading agricultural university, various lecturers, agricultural extension officers

The steps for carrying out the systems workshop were as follows9:

1. We introduced the human ecology framework (Figure 14, Table 11) and provided participants with a guide on creating systems diagrams10. We gave participants the focus variable level of food and nutrition security as this the key normative objective of the ISARD program and an indicator of sustainable development.

2. Each group was asked to prepare before the workshop five slides on the food insecurity context of their food system of interest (Table 12). They were asked to present those slides.

9 Facilitation note: The table facilitator role was to only assist in probing the group towards thinking in systems by linking their variables to other variables. The feedback processes are to be captured by the groups.

10 See supplementary material (Appendix 2). This guide can be used by readers to design similar workshops. The central variable is adaptable to any sustainability problem being studied.

3. Participants were grouped by their country of origin.

4. Each group was asked to identify by brainstorming the different environmental, social, institutional, and conceptual variables that they saw as the primary change driver in whichever commodity type was most relevant to them. The specific focus on a commodity allowed participants to provide in depth insights into the challenges and opportunities for working within their immediate food system.

5. Each group was asked to follow the guide and develop a systems diagram to identify the major drivers that influence food and nutrition security in their contexts. The diagrams could be drafted and revised during the group discussions.

6. Once a major systems diagram was developed by each group, they were asked to identify the primary variables that they saw as being affected as the focus variable of food and nutrition security changed due to feedbacks.

7. Finally, they examined any emerging behaviours that resulted from an affected variable feeding back to influence change in a driving variable.

8. Participants were then asked to share with the whole workshop why they had chosen the variables that they did, how they had constructed their diagrams including how the variables affected one another, and what key behaviour they thought it revealed. The outcome of this group activity was one systems diagram per group showing the drivers of food and nutritional security, and the patterns of change resulting from the feedback between driving and affected variables. All diagrams were hand-drawn on large pieces of paper and colourful cards. Towards the end of the day, the final diagrams were prepared in Vensim by the research team and discussed with participants for feedback. Participants were asked to group the variables they wrote down under the state of ecosystems, state of institutions, and state of human wellbeing components of the framework. These four diagrams formed the primary data that was used to analyse the links between the four meta-variables in the human ecology framework for the primary commodity for each country.

After the workshop, the facilitation team used the four final group diagrams to populate the framework in Figure 14. The state of discourses was developed by the research team only based on diagram results from the workshop and paper records of the explanation given by the participants at the time. The research team grouped these and integrated the major themes into the human ecology framework to discuss dominant framings of food and nutrition security. Using the workshop material to populate the framework enables research managers and policy makers to see what generic aspects can be transferred to other cases, and what elements are specific to a local context.

Our method is limited by the purposeful selection of participants from four countries, which binds analysis to policy and research perspectives on food systems. Parallel activities with smallholder farmers are ongoing and beyond the scope of reporting in the aims of this paper. Another limitation was the participant’s focus on a specific agricultural commodity, which sets an immediate boundary for the system. To reconcile this, the open discussions throughout the day aimed to draw

links with broader food system elements. The boundary around one element, however, allows participants to have a coherent sense of the scale they seek to influence. All participants spoke professional level English, and completed the exercises in English, although they were given the option of having their group discussions in their own language. The integration of findings into the conceptual framework was a theoretical exercise by the authors for linking empirical observations from the workshop with sustainability science frameworks and food systems debates, and as a heuristic device for conveying the participants reception to ISARD back to SEARCA.