Complexity-aware principles for agri-food system interventions: Lessons from project encounters with complexity

CONTEXT

Complexity has long been recognised as a key feature of agri-food systems. Yet, it remains largely theoretical or poorly addressed in practice, hampering the potential of international development projects to address agriculture and food-related challenges in the Global South.

OBJECTIVE

The paper identifies and examines six sources of complexity that can manifest in projects, namely: unpredictability; path dependencies; context-specific dynamics; power relations; multiple temporal and spatial scales. It then proposes and tests six agri-food system principles that could be drawn upon to more successfully navigate this complexity. The aim of the paper is to illustrate how these principles could help projects respond to the changing circumstances and unpredictable turns of agri-food systems contexts in a different way, which flexibly embraces complexity. This flexibility is essential in an age of uncertainty and transformation.

METHODS

Comparative case study analysis of six projects implemented by the CGIAR: aflatoxin control in groundnuts in Malawi (1), pigeonpea in Eastern and Southern Africa (2), sorghum beer in Kenya (3), sweet sorghum for biofuel in India (4), precooked beans in Uganda and Kenya (5), Smart Foods in India and Eastern Africa (6). The projects aimed to either increasing smallholder farmers' incomes or addressing food and nutrition security, or both. They were specifically selected as all they were affected by some of the sources of complexity, which hampered the projects to different extents. This makes the cases relevant for not only illustrating manifestations of complexity, but also help reflect on alternative strategies to tackle it.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION

The analysis of the case studies reveals how complexity can frustrate objectives of development interventions under several aspects. It also serves to discuss how complexity can be more successfully navigated (within but also beyond the selected cases) by applying the set of proposed agri-food system principles. The principles are also presented as ways future interventions could avoid clinging to what is “known to work” and instead venture into more powerful pathways of change.

SIGNIFICANCE

The following complexity-aware principle are proposed: Welcome surprises and openly discuss trade-offs; Shun orthodoxies; Engage with context-specificity; Expose patterns of power; Embrace the lengthy nature of change; Understand the multi-scale (in terms of space and time) nature of agri-food systems contexts. These principles could be used by project designers and implementors to cope with the complexity and uncertainty that will inevitably be encountered in agri-food system interventions, and can no longer be ignored.