Farmers’ Views on the Future of Food and Small Scale Producers

This summary reports the outcomes of an electronic conference (e-conference) designed to facilitate discussion among 227 small-scale food producers - women and men who produce and harvest field and tree crops as well as livestock, fish and other aquatic organisms - from over 30 developed and developing countries including communities, small farmers, and landless people. Used as a participatory research tool to gather information for policy makers from small scale producers, the e-conference, titled the 'Future of Food and Small Scale Producers.' was held in a series in 2005 and run in English, French, and Spanish.

According to the summary, "[T]he objectives of this electronic discussion forum were to:

1. Deconstruct the dominant discourse and re-think food, farming, and the use of land/water outside the existing mainstream policy and conceptual frameworks.
2. Encourage dialogue and exchange between indigenous peoples and small-scale food producers in developed and developing countries.
3. Bring the voices and priorities of small-scale producers to the forefront in policymaking on the future of food, farming and land/water use."

In the document, the views and analysis of small scale producer responses are organised in summaries of answers to specific questions posed to the group. Individual responses are cited as samples. For example, under the topic: 'A Vision for the Future', the first question is: What does sustainable agriculture and land/water use mean to you? Reponses led the editors to this summary point: "Participants were eloquent on how farming was to them something much more than just a food production system. In this respect there were two important and related angles: what farming means to people, and what landscapes result from farming,"- as well as this point: "Sustainable food production should also be associated with people’s health and wellbeing..."

The questions listed below are in sets that organise the document's response summaries. They also reflect a timeline of three week intervals of information gathering from the participants:

• Set 1
1. "What does sustainable agriculture and land/water use mean to you?
2. How would you like food, farming, and land/water use to look in the future?
3. What values, ethics, and worldview guide your own vision of food, farming and land/water use?"
• Set 2
1. "What prevents small-scale producers from achieving their vision?"
• Sets 3 & 4
1. "What needs to change to allow small-scale producers to achieve their vision?
2. What to do and how to organise?"

The book concludes with reflections on the process of conducting an electronic conference and addressing barriers such as language and illiteracy. For purposes of replication of this "bottom up" process, it includes organisational logistics, a hosting environment contact, a checklist of questions and indicators for evaluating an e-conference and its impacts, and evaluative information - e.g., "Methodologically, this combination of traditional forms of deliberation (village discussions) with modern internet-based communication proved to be an effective and trustworthy way of engaging non-literate producers in the E-Conference." The model, according to the editors, decentralises the framing of relevant questions, knowledge, categories, perceptions, and analyses.

In conclusion, the summary suggests that, through the e-conference technology tool, information from the socially excluded is made "to count along with ‘expert’ views", and people are brought together over otherwise insurmountable distances for an extended peer community.