Future scenarios for family farming in 2015

At the end of September 2006, Vredeseilanden hosted an International Forum in Alden Biesen (Belgium). During this forum, 25 people coming from various countries where Vredeseilanden is active sat together and discussed the following question: what will market access for family farmers striving for sustainable farming look like in 2015?

We did not only invite people we work with, people who have the same world vision as we do. We explicitly opted for involving other people in the dialogue as well: people whose work or interests are linked up with this theme in one way or another: farmer leaders, company people, governments, etc. For, we intended to unravel the future from different perspectives and visions on the future, and put our own visions to the test and to learn from this.

The selected participants went through a scenario building exercise on what the future might look like as far as market access and participation for family farmers is concerned, analysing key drivers for the scenarios and giving insight and inputs from the external environment. This exercise resulted into three story lines, and opportunities and threats to Vredeseilanden in the environment.

>>> Here you can download the report of the workshop (1,4 MB)

This whole process started in 2005. The different Country Offices of Vredeseilanden in Asia, Latin-America, Africa and Belgium started to explore the future by desk studies, interviews and workshops with different stakeholders, including people from private sector, public sector, civil society and especially farmer organisations. The key question was: how would ‘market access for family farmers’ look like in 2015?  

Here you can download the reports of the preparatory sessions in each country:

 

For more background information on the methodology of scenario building, you can contact chris.claes@vredeseilanden.be