Dr Lucy Carter presented to the SSEAC in University of Sydney on Lessons from working at the agriculture-health interface (Nutrition-sensitive Agriculture) in the Food Systems Innovation (FSI)

1. Lessons from the Food Systems
Innovation (FSI) initiative
Taking a Wider View: Health Impacts on Agricultural
Productivity in Southeast Asia, SSEAC, University of Sydney
14th November 2014
Dr Lucy Carter
CSIRO Land and Water Flagship

2. Sharing lessons from FSISlide 2
Sharing experiences and lessons from the FSI partnership
 CSIRO’s experience in partnering at the agriculture-health interface
 Some of the lessons which have emerged for us as:
Scientists working in a very large and diverse research organisation;
Partners in a cross-sectoral, cross-disciplinary, cross-organisational project;
An organisation with a strong history in traditional AR4D;
As a team with very diverse backgrounds and skills.

3. The FSI Initiative
A partnership between CSIRO, ACIAR, AIFSRC and DFAT
 “Doing development better”
Improving effectiveness of Australian-sponsored ODA
Translating research into use
Opening regional dialogue and engagement
Synthesizing existing knowledge; capturing and sharing lessons
 Delivered through 3 focal themes:
Private-public partnerships and market-based approaches;
Managing for impact;
Agriculture-nutrition linkages.

4. More integrated cooperation
Philosophy behind the FSI approach, the agriculture-nutrition theme
 Enhance sustainable development outcomes through:
Delivering more integrated programming;
Shared understanding across sectors and responsibility/ownership;
Systems perspective (food and health systems);
Tackling a complex problem eg. Food and nutrition security;
Across lifespan, gender roles, ecosystem interactions;
Using transdisciplinary approaches
FSI attempts to bring together 4 organisations with a range of mandates, agendas
and timelines to improve food and nutrition security outcomes

5. A Convergence Approach
Experiences and lessons from doing this work
 Cooperation across disciplines/sectors/scales helps to facilitate improved
development outcomes: A noble sentiment but what does it mean?
“What does it mean for the way I work?”
Communicating the agriculture-nutrition-health impact chain
Valuing learning and ‘failure knowledge’; identifying synergies
“How do I go about it?”
Finding sensible, useful ways to communicate demonstrable impact
Multi-stakeholder, multi-level engagement;
Often requires the help of ‘intermediaries’

6. What has it meant for FSI?
Transdisciplinary science
 Multiple scientific disciplines, local communities, government and extension
services working together to co-produce new knowledge
Requires: trust- building; resource-intensive; capacity-building; strong
facilitation and communication skills.
Brokering (of knowledge and partnerships)
Requires skills not common to scientists! Mediation, translation, event
management; strong interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence; flexibility
and adaptability
Re-orientation from research to development; action-research
 Research-into-use; applied and development-focussed

7. Creating an enabling
environment
Challenges experienced by researchers working across boundaries
 Research organizations are often fragmented entities containing highly specialized
experts working in isolated pockets.
“How can we get a paper out of this?”
“I’m not a broker/facilitator/translator, nor do I have time for this”
“Improving agricultural productivity is about yields, not health”
 Supportive performance and incentive structures to do development
science; plus
Supportive organizational culture

8. Lessons for CSIRO from FSI
Resisting temptations and old habits
 Fighting the urge to overlay research problems with ‘home’ disciplinary lens
Focusing on development problem rather than research problem has helped us
create space for conversations cross-institutionally
Viewing science impact differently – not just about papers but policy and
community impact.
Meeting internal resistance to this way of working is inevitable: ‘applied science’ is
still viewed by many researchers as secondary to ‘traditional pure science’

9. Our FSI experience – A new
way of working
Don’t expect results fast nor comfortably
 It took us out of our comfort zone
 Continues to test us individually, organisationally, and across partnership
Deep organisational buy-in essential
 Identify individual champions who keep driving the agenda forward
 Build a pool of trusted delegates who can attend partnership meetings,
translate science to practice and policy, help build momentum

10. Our FSI experience – A new
way of working
Find common ground first
 Utilize existing strategies, products, systems which help catalyze dialogue
 Be transparent about individual, shared goals
 Shared vision of success is essential
Foundations need to be strong
 Identify (internal) organisational barriers to cooperation and address these
 Value diversity of skill-sets, perspectives, stakeholders in the process
 Turbulence, unease, periods of vagueness and discomfort are inevitable

11. Successes so far
FSI has created a neutral space to challenge existing systems
Daily interaction across organizations
‘A seat at the table’ in an intense programming/policy environment
Capacity built at multiple levels

12. Thank you
Insert document title hereSlide 12
Dr Lucy Carter, CSIRO Land and Water
Ecosciences Precinct, Dutton Park, Brisbane
Tel: +61-7-3833 5685
lucy.carter@csiro.au
Food Systems Innovation (FSI) initiative
http://foodsystemsinnovation.org.au/