Introduction to the workshop by program director, Tom Randolph

 

5 Comments

 

  1. Keith_Child 23. March 2015

    Nice intro Tom.
    I like this format for a meeting. In an ideal world it would be nice if we could combine virtual presentations with a shortened, face-to-face, live meetings.

  2. ibaltenweck 23. March 2015

    thanks Tom for setting the scene. It's interesting that you started by talking about 'for the poor' yet at the beginning of the CRP, we really focused on 'by the poor'. Recall you had the VC diagram, to explain why we need to focus on a specific VC and doing integrated work. Both sides are important of course (and tomorrow I present on ASFs). So the articulation on why we should work on 'for' and 'by' got clearer with time, and we need to sharpen our argument further.

    • Tom Randolph 23. March 2015

      Thanks Isabelle, the 'for the poor' was certainly highlighted in the original proposal for the program. I think the expectation was that we would start seeing a shift to a consumer perspective as we conducted the value chain assessments and, importantly, develop a policy analysis capacity across the value chains, beginning with the Situation Analyses. These have been areas where we have made very little progress, and as the result we have generated little if any information and evidence to help guide and shape our work from this perspective. Our current attempt to engage with the nutrition and food technology sector on the role of animal-source food is one way to give it more attention, but we still need to find a way to get more analysis done within our value chains to help drive it. How can we make that happen?

      • ibaltenweck 23. March 2015

        I'm still wondering where we need to focus on... increasing availability through increasing productivity of ASFs (and this is what we've been doing so far, I think) or should we also work on e.g. improving the accessibility issues (e.g. milk dispensers to decrease costs). We also need to differentiate the dairy VC and the live animals VCs as the pathways are different. Have we ever articulated this clearly? and if it's about 'for the poor', shouldn't we work on poultry?? this relates to Karen's question on VC selection. Paula's work in peri urban Nbi shows than 85% of hhs consumer eggs at least once a week, and the reason for not consuming is price.

  3. SMacMillan 23. March 2015

    I like Tom's reminders about the BIG things this program said it was out to accomplish. I like that we are making ourselves accountable for BIG things. Hard things to deliver on, to effect, to assess, to prove, but the important things.

    What I worry about---it takes so long for most multi-institutional programs to jump on new things, opportunities, ideas. How to we help farmers and processors and marketers jump-start their enterprises when we have such difficulty just changing course a tiny bit?

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