Project Inception Meeting

The project Inception Meeting was held in early February. Over three days with a combination of internal and external engagement, we discussed project processes, explored how we can build on existing work, showcased the different research activities being undertaken, and looked at options for engaging with external partners.

Day One

The Inception Meeting that commenced on 7th February 2022 opened up a fantastic possibility for all the participants to learn from the previous work and observe activities progressing and integrating together.

The first session began with an ice-breaker warmup activity to help participants feel at ease. Tamara Jackson, UoA began the first presentation with a project overview focusing on research themes, project objectives, activities, and outputs.

Avinash Kishore, IFPRI provided a lucid presentation defining the scope of diversification. Followed by Brendan Brown, CIMMYT who provided a comprehensible overview of thinking behind where we select to work for the duration of the project through his presentation on defining the target population.

Tamara Jackson, UOA highlighted the issue of publication and authorship, presented the authorship policy of the University of Adelaide and ACIAR’s expectations, making the team aware.

The second session of Day 1 was more activity-focused where participants were divided into groups as per the location and an in-depth discussion was initiated regarding the expectation of projects outputs and outcomes. This session helped participants brainstorm about the location-specific priorities and align them with the project work.

The meeting concluded with Kuhu Chatterjee, UoA collecting ideas from the participants that would help prepare for the remainder of the meeting.

Day Two

Day 2 of the Inception Meeting highlighted the ways in which Rupantar builds on existing work undertaken in SDIP and other projects. After a project overview, we explored the different elements of transformation; including technologies, scaling interventions, and the enabling environment. The current status of diversification in the broader project area shows high spatial variability, and this will be interesting to explore within Rupantar. Current work also shows that some previously tested technologies (e.g. CASI) can enable diversification, and highlights farmers’ preferences for the kinds of diversification options they might be interested to explore. This will be further quantified in the baseline survey being developed, and the processes of change explored through case studies where there are high levels of existing diversification. Partner experiences with the scaling interventions they have used highlighted the need for multi-stakeholder partnerships, but also the ways in which these interventions evolve with time depending on the issues they are addressing, and how they are shaped by external settings (e.g. policies, programs, and projects). In Rupantar, the development of an assessment framework will be applied to existing scaling mechanisms to draw out lessons for success and inform future scaling plans. It was interesting to hear some examples of how others have previously structured assessments, and what can be learned from them. The enabling environment for diversification has been contextualised through previous approaches like Foresight for Food Systems, and work to understand gender settings in the region and the evolution of groundwater trends, and how this has influenced the current levels of diversification. This prior knowledge and evidence can inform the next steps for Rupantar, which will focus on understanding the relevant policy settings and their implementation, and existing market systems. Throughout the session, our Advisors challenged us to redefine the term “farmers” from a gender and inclusion perspective – reminding us that farmers are not a monolithic group. Diversification preferences and effects will be varied for different household and community members, and there are many issues that are highly gendered and must be conceptualised from the beginning of the project. It was recognized that there is still work to do to explore the different factors that influence livelihood diversification. There is potential to use a Food System mapping approach to characterise local systems. These statements highlight the need to ensure that the knowledge and evidence generated in previous projects can be used to inform Rupantar strategies and research, which is already a key part of the project's initial work in understanding the context for diversification. We were pleased to hear that they consider the project to be a promising initiative, very well conceptualised and timely for the Region.

Day Three

The final day of the workshop was to connect with audiences external to the project team to inform them about the project, and included other ACIAR funded projects in Bangladesh, the private sector and other donors. In the initial session, an overview of the context and Objectives 2 and 4 were presented. These objectives focus on integrating and communicating lessons from Objective 1 – the different elements of transformation. Brendan Brown, CIMMYT, provided a succinct presentation on the proposed approach to implementing diversification pathways in selected locations. These pathways are a package of technology and scaling mechanisms, implemented within an enabling environment, and will be used as research and demonstration sites to understand the processes and effects of systems change. Hasneen Jahan, BAU coordinated a session on potential collaboration opportunities with other ACIAR projects in Bangladesh. The Project Leaders of a range of projects from breeding (Wheat blast resistant breeding - Pawan Singh, CIMMYT), nutrient management (NUMAN - Richard Bell, Murdoch University), coastal zone salinity management (CSI4CZ - M. Mainuddin, CSIRO), Ethical Community Engagement (SIAGI - Wakilur Rahman) made short overview presentations and identified ways they could link and benefit from the Rupantar project. The final session of the day focused on National/State/Provincial Government programs which are well funded, and where the Rupantar project could align and converge to cover a larger area of pilot demonstration and scaling out. This included programs and projects in Bangladesh (Wakilur Rahman, BAU), India projects (Apurba Choudhury, UBKV) and Nepal (Pashupati Pokharel, Planning and Monitoring Division of Province 1).