Three workshops to propose promising options
Reminder :
Within a given context (country, territory), three workshops are organized in order to propose options for crop-livestock systems.
Workshop #1
This workshop aims to describe current farming systems and their main issues. It allows participants to identify potential changes in current farming systems.
It involves various types of stakeholders such as public agents (rural/agricultural development, natural resources preservation), actors of nature conservation institutions (e.g. National Parks), private sector actors, citizens, and scientific experts. The number of participants should not exceed ten people.
Outcomes of Workshop #1 are qualitative descriptions of contexts for innovation:
Main biogeographical features of the area (soil characteristics, climatic information, etc.)
Main farming systems and existing alternative farming systems by production sector
Main commercial supply chain and existing alternative supply chains
Major environmental and social challenges
Current and future dynamics and trends in farming systems and in their socio-economic and environmental contexts
Workshop #2
This workshop aims to identify options for Mixed Farming Systems and Integrative Crop Livestock Systems; it results in a portfolio of promising options described with their advantages and constraints. It mainly involves technical experts (farmers, advisers; up to 10 participants).
A six phases focus group method is used during this workshop.
The first phase is a presentation of the outcomes of Workshop #1: within a particular context, what are the main farming systems and their driving forces? what are the challenging issues for crop-livestock integration? It allows participants to well understand the context in which innovation will take place.
The second phase is a presentation by the facilitator of the typology of crop-livestock integration (see Unit 1). It helps participants understand what are the types of options they could propose.
The third phase is an individual reflection to propose options for Mixed Farming Systems and Integrative Crop Livestock Systems. A Post-it® Note Brainstorming is used: each participant writes down ideas (i.e. options), one per Post-it® Note.
The fourth phase is a collective time to share and organize ideas written on Post-it® Note. The discussion that follows aims to explain ideas, to group those that are similar, and to add new ideas that emerge from the discussion.
The fifth phase is an exploration of options. Participants work at strengthening these options to make their description as complete and concrete as possible, i.e. to describe technical, practical and organizational, and even institutional, characteristics of each option. They also have to describe the biotechnical and socio-economic conditions and potential lock-in to the implementation of each option.
The sixth phase is the conclusion of the workshop.
Outcomes of Workshop #2 are grids describing options.
Example :
Here is an example of the grid filled with information about an option in a particular case study in Spain:
Workshop #3
This workshop aims to assess options proposed in the previous workshop and to select the most promising ones. Participants are the ones of Workshop #2.
To qualitatively assess options, a multicriteria grid is used. This grid is presented during 45 minutes (description of the criteria/sub-criteria and how to rate them), filled by each participant for one or more options (30 minutes), and discussed together beforethe animator of the workshop synthesizes information (2 hours). The grid allows participants to identify the main advantages and disadvantages of each option and to select the most promising ones.
The grid is composed of 47 sub-criteria that have to be qualitatively assessed, from "this option has a strong negative impact on this sub-criterion with respect to a reference situation" (rate: -2) to "this option has a strong positive impact on this sub-criterion with respect to a reference situation" (rate: +2). The reference situation is defined at the beginning of the workshop (for each sub-criteria, the option is worse (rate: -2, -1), equal (rate: 0) or better (rate: +1, +2) than the reference situation). Sub-criteria are then combined into 12 criteria; weighting between sub-criteria is discussed during the workshop. Values of the 12 criteria are then reported on a radar diagram. Sub-criteria and criteria have to be meaningful to participants as well as quite easy to understand and to rate. Furthermore, only sub-criteria relative to crop-livestock integration are taken into account.
Outcomes of Workshop #3 are the assessment grids as well as the selected options.
Example :
As an example, two parts of the assessment grid for an option are presented below (the two parts are the economic one as well as the production one); the radar diagram is also presented. In the following images, criteria for crop perspective appears in green; criteria for livestock perspective appears in red; synthetic criteria to be reported in radar diagram appear in orange.
If needed the whole grid is available here [pdf].