Our Objectives

The project has four objectives to understand, test, monitor and communicate diversification options that contribute to transformation of food systems in the EGP.

The project will take a phased approach, to first understand the context for diversification in the region including technical options, scaling intervention and policy settings. This will allow the project team to understand the big picture context, and distil key lessons from existing initiatives. These key lessons will then be applied and tested at the local level in subsequent activities. Implementation will be complemented by monitoring change and ensuring strategic communication to change makers. Ultimately, we strive to ensure the processes and practices are incorporated into existing programs, leading to self-sustaining promotion, and expansion of the approaches promoted from the project.

  • Understanding the current context for diversification in the EGP is a key goal of the project, to help identify key elements that will be needed for food systems to diversify in the future. We will learn from situations where smallholder farming systems have previously diversified, to better understand how change happens, and to provide a deep understanding of the enabling environment for diversification.

    A range of existing interventions and institutional arrangements that aim to scale technologies to diversify smallholder farming systems will be identified and critically assessed, and the potential for selected interventions will be analysed at local levels for contextual relevance. Alongside this, technological options will also be explored. When paired, these processes will allow co-development of locally relevant pathways with communities and local stakeholders (government, development, private sector), with the goal of diversification at community and landscape levels.

    Existing food and agriculture policies and programs in the three countries (including central and state/provincial policies) will be analysed to better understand their effects on diversification, drawing lessons from contrasting policy settings and innovative programs or policies.

    A suite of activities will aid in identifying knowledge gaps regarding scaling and maintaining diversified food systems. The project will then help fill these gaps from technological, social and policy standpoints. This knowledge will serve as the foundation for the co-development of diversification pathways and communication to our broader networks.

  • We will bring together specific diversification pathways – which are a combination of appropriate technologies, scaling interventions and policy settings - based on co-developed visions, and implement these in selected locations with experienced implementing partners in Bangladesh, India and Nepal.

    Diversification is defined as the reallocation of household resources to alternative economic activity outside of traditional production patterns. Both agricultural diversification (to high value crops, livestock, fisheries, and agroforestry) and livelihood diversification (e.g. commercial opportunities such as seed production and animal feed production; agricultural service provision; non-agricultural opportunities) are included.

    Communities and other local stakeholders will be urged to investigate their possibilities for diversification and their goals in this project, with an emphasis on inclusive procedures. To minimize possible drawbacks and guarantee that better food systems can be sustained over the long term, the task is to combine these technological solutions with household (women and men) and community preferences, equitable concerns, and a supportive enabling environment. This means we will be testing different pathways in different locations.

  • The ability to add to the body of current knowledge by observing the synergies and trade-offs that arise with any new system at various scales is one of Rupantar’s major opportunities. This will help build a credible case to support promotion of different diversification pathways. It includes monitoring changes occurring at the household and community levels; and defining potential impacts on a series of indicators that are characteristic of a sustainable food system.

    All aspects of the project will be centered on equity. When creating and putting into practice scaling mechanisms and agricultural policies, it is important to consider the complicated impediments to change faced by women and minority groups. Through Rupantar, inclusive, diverse system opportunities in the EGP that align with long-term forecasts for the environment, human nutrition, and water availability will be identified. It will track change at several levels to show how low-level changes on the ground may scale up (from individual to organizational levels), as well as how high-level policies can scale down and be implemented in a variety of ways.

  • The project recognises an explicit connection between the knowledge that is produced, and the networks and stakeholders that need to be targeted for strategic communication. The ultimate goal of the project is to identify and test processes and outputs to support diversification that align with and are applied in existing programs and interventions, such that they are self-sustaining at the end of the project. Integrating project outputs is a critical part of this objective, to distil and highlight the processes and practices that can enable transformation towards sustainable, diversified food systems in the EGP.

    The project adopts a comprehensive strategy built on best scaling practices and prior experiences in enabling sustained change, i.e. "convergence" with government and development programs, with the goal that key actors can continue their promotion of activities with associated impact after the project has ended.