Farmers' perspectives on challenges in the food system: a collaborative research partnership

Lead Research Organisation: University of Leeds
Department Name: School of Earth and Environment

Abstract

In Ghana and Tanzania the majority of the population engages in different ways with farming and food production. However, these countries fail to feed all their people with healthy, sufficient food for all. Many vulnerable groups do not have enough nourishing, good quality food when and as they need it all year round. This is all the more serious as many people are actually producing food for the market: they are small scale farmers and often struggle to feed themselves and their families. Farming is labour intensive, prices for food crops are low, pest control is challenging, finance for small farms hard to obtain and many international interventions - especially those providing technological packages for new seeds, fertilisers and pesticides - are often inadequate to local conditions and needs and end up being ineffective when not causing harm. Moreover, the voices and interests of small scale farmers is hardly ever heard in national-level debates, not to mention international ones. A lot of research on food in Africa is top-down, agendas are set somewhere else, without consulting farmers. This research engages the two main small scale farmers' organisations in Ghana and Tanzania as equal partners, to carry out research with them rather than for them with the goal of advancing the interests of small scale farmers, making them more visible and heard in the national debate, with the longer-term objective of shifting the terms of this debate to put small scale farmers' interest centre-stage. The team in this research include researchers from universities in the UK, Tanzania and Ghana working together with farmers' organisations on issues identified by farmers themselves. We will train a group of young academics and activists to give them the tools to carry out research that matters to farmers' organisations. Some of these problems are rooted in the history of food and farming in Ghana and Tanzania - others in global politics. We will share with these young scholars all the ways in which academic research nowadays can be applied to big picture issues so that they will go on after us to use research to be of service to their people. By doing this, we also make sure that these scholars become people the farmers' organisations can rely upon when they need research on urgent issues.

Planned Impact

This project will enhance the way research is conducted and communicated in Tanzania and Ghana and beyond, through partnership development and training activities. The beneficiaries from this project will be:

Two partner Farmers' Organisations: MVIWATA and PFAG, both through the generation of useful data about their members' needs, priorities and perspectives and their experience in the partnership. They will learn new ways of working that will enable them to become more effective learning organisations from this experience which will help them in a) commissioning research in partnership with academics and b) influencing policy makers, at both local and national levels, through more informed advocacy. We also hope that the project will catalyse south-south learning between the farmer organisations in the project and beyond.

We plan for the lessons from our research partnership to be shared with other chapters of La Via Campesina in Africa (a nascent network in which our partner Farmer Organisations are chapters). A liaison officer for La Via Campesina is based at MWIVATA and is well-placed to share lessons more widely across the network.

Other farmer networks such as Fairtrade Africa will also benefit from the lessons from the partnership building and farmer voice, and are also interested in the findings of the pilots where they link to their own objectives with respect to farmer incomes and livelihood diversification.

Twenty Early Career Researchers and food and farming activists will benefit from training on the SoP methodology, and six in each country will further benefit from the internships that will deliver the pilot research projects. This will be useful career development for the selected trainees and interns, as well as research capacity building in both countries, and will supplement the pool of appropriately qualified researchers in the Ghana and Tanzania who can work on food system topics from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Six academics will benefit from the partnership development, participation in the workshop and training activities, and also through the academic writeshop that will help them enhance their ability to write for, and be published in, international journals.

Academics and other stakeholders involved with the Global Food and Environment Institute from a variety of disciplines will benefit from the lessons on partnership building that we plan to document, as well as extending their network of contacts and partners that the GFEI will be able to engage with in the future for the benefit of further projects.

Ultimately the project will benefit the members of the farmers' organisations so that they can better articulate their voices within their own organisations, and also so that these organisations can advocate more effectively in the national and international political debate on food and agricultural policies, putting farmers' voice centre-stage.
 
Description Academic: the generation of new knowledge about the priorities of smallholder farmers by the early career researchers trained through the project and which have been shared with the farmer organisations. These pilot projects reinforced the importance of property relations surrounding land for generating benefits to farmers, and sustaining their role as food producers, especially in the context of land acquisition by large investors. Related to this they were concerned about relations with buyers, and impacts of contract farming. Whilst concerned about selling their crops, small farmers were also concerned about sustainable sources of inputs such as seeds, and more environmental practices. However, with regards to the production of agroecological crops, farmers lacked access to marketing infrastructure, and struggled to justify the greater investments required - especially labour - associated with agroecological methods). These insights are not necessarily novel, but they are frequently omitted in discussions of value chains for example.

Networking: We have contributed to educating and sustaining the networking activities of a new generation of researchers who are trained in political economy and have a commitment to undertaking research from the perspective of the small-scale farmers who are members of the farmers organisations. The small farmers organisations were pivotal to this project both in its design and delivery. Both farmers organisations are keen to sustain links with the ECRs who were trained, and in Ghana in particular there is a new and active network of activists and researchers emerging facilitated by PFAG. In Tanzania, the project has renewed some of the links MVIWATA had with Tanzanian university staff.

Project development and management: we faced numerous challenges in sustaining this project. Where we see the shoots of new relationships this is thanks to both a commitment to sharing knowledge and experience but also to building relationships and persevering with conversations to develop viable plans, and to build up a shared understanding of good practice. Amongst the team we have generated knowledge about how to 'do' research and to co-produce outputs by a team of researchers based in Africa and the global North. Lessons are summarised in the Final Technical Report with respect to:
• Network development between farmer organisations and academics
• Project administration and funding relationships where non-academic partners are involved
• Digital divide and challenges of online communications
• Adaptation of project during a Pandemic
Exploitation Route PFAG plan to use the evidence generated in their advocacy work on Ghanaian agriculture.
The PI is exploring how the small farmer insights might be incorporated into academic work on value chains, based on links with FSNet-Africa and Shifting South projects
Sectors Agriculture

Food and Drink

Education

URL https://environment.leeds.ac.uk/see-research-innovation/dir-record/research-projects/1769/farmers-perspectives-on-challenges-in-the-food-system-a-collaborative-research-partnership
 
Description Developing evidence for policy and advocacy by Farmers Organisations: PFAG is compiling the Ghanian ECRs' reports a single electronic document /website with downloadable soft-copy reports to be made available to members and shared and with key stakeholders, such as the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Ministry of Finance and the Heads of the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) where the respective research projects were undertaken. For the latter, each report will have a corresponding two-page policy briefing /executive summary document. Building up capacity of a new generation of researchers: the Ghana country lead is working with other Ghana-based academics in the network to explore the potential produce peer-review journal publications in partnership with the ECRs where there are complementary themes (for example, three of the case studies address cases of biofuels. While each report is based on a limited survey (geographically and temporally), together they provide valuable insights on the strengths and weaknesses of the broader developmental approaches to addressing climate change mitigation, and wider thematic examination of processes of dispossession. Other papers may be grouped around issues of indigenous knowledge systems and challenges in promoting agroecological methods. These are both core policy advocacy areas adopted by the collaborating, Peasant Farmers' Association of Ghana. This is an ongoing process being carried forward by the Ghana country lead who has secured a postdoctoral grant that can cover some additional hours beyond the GCRF project funding. Academic- farmer organisation networks: Beyond the preparation of research reports for publication, participants in the training, including the ECRs who did the research internships, are keen to foster further collaborative relationships with PFAG. They have created a WhatsApp Group which is serving as an avenue for information sharing for the members and some of them have participated in both virtual and some in-person sessions organized or facilitated by PFAG or other members of the platform. A specific example of collaborative activity that has emerged as a result of the training is the involvement of project members in the development of a network of rice farmers across Ghana. Some ECRs are leading the exercise in the various regions and districts. PFAG has reported that "there are constant interactions with them on the page and we hope to even deepen their involvement with us".
First Year Of Impact 2023
Sector Agriculture, Food and Drink
Impact Types Economic

 
Description Case Study of project focusing on reducing inequalities for World Day of Social Justice 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Case study of the project written from the perspective of reducing inequalities and the importance of developing equal partnerships in research - posted on University webpage and also new UniLeeds Global LinkedIn page
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
URL http://www.leeds.ac.uk/global/dir-record/profiles/21731/giving-smallholders-a-stronger-voice-through...
 
Description Invited presentation at workshop on Agro-Ecology for World Food Day by FSNet Africa project team at University of Pretoria 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The PI was invited to participate in the Food Systems Research Network for Africa (FSNet-Africa) event for World Food Day, 13-14 October 2022, entitled Finding pathways towards agroecological transitions in Africa Programme at the University of Pretoria. ,
The PI was invited to make a contribution to a panel on Diverse Agroecology Practices/Perspectives and Integration into Agricultural Production. Her presentation on "Supply chains - the missing & misunderstood middle in sustainable production and consumption" included reflections on factors influencing success of co-production between farmer organisations and academics.

The in-person audience included academics, practitioners and early career researchers who are undertaking two-year Fellowships supported by FSNet Africa, a partnership between University of Pretoria, FANRPAN and University of Leeds, and is funded by UKRI, GCRF and ARUA. The two-year fellowships create structured opportunities for twenty early-career researchers at the academic partner institutions to work with senior academic and practitioner mentors from Africa and leading researchers from the University of Leeds in the UK. This enables early-career researchers to conduct impact-focused interdisciplinary research related to African food systems, build lasting research networks across Africa and the UK, and develop their skills to translate and communicate their research effectively to diverse audiences.
https://fsnetafrica.com/fellowship/


The event was live-streamed and was advertised internationally.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://fsnetafrica.com/event/invitation-fsnet-africa-world-food-day-event/
 
Description Invited presentation at workshop on Regional and Domestic Value Chains at University of Manchester 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Involved in a two-day workshop on Regional and Domestic Value Chains co-organised by Global Development Institute (University of Manchester) and Centre for African Studies (University of Edinburgh) and their partners across Africa (19 and 20 Feb 2023). This was organised by Dr Matthew Alford, Prof. Stephanie Barrientos, Dr Andrew Bowman, Dr Hazel Gray, Dr Jayne Cathcart. The workshop was aimed at sharing findings from a GCRF-funded project (Shifting dynamics of regional agri-food chains in Sub Saharan Africa - implications for economic and social inclusion and exclusion) and to generate ideas for further research, first through a day of invited academic presentations followed by a policy and practitioner workshop the next day to generate research priorities for agri-food value chains. I presented reflections from the Farmer Perspectives project (presentation title "Grounding value chain inclusion- conceptual and empirical considerations from engagement with small farmer organisations in Tanzania and Ghana") and contributed to the generation of research priorities for follow-on work.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023