From Farmer to Planner and Back:

Harvesting Best Practices

8 to 12 December 1997

Rome

A Workshop on

Gender and Participation in

Agricultural Planning

Women in Development Service

Women and Population Division

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Funded by the Government of Norway

About the workshop and this report

The From Farmer to Planner and Back: Harvesting Best Practices workshop was not typical. No one presented long-winded papers that can be collected here to document the workshop's discussions and outputs. Instead, this was an active workshop. The participants spent one week brainstorming among themselves and organizing their knowledge and ideas. The task for FAO is to use these inputs to develop a Framework that can provide planners and development workers with a guide on how to involve rural men and women in agricultural development planning at all levels and that responds to their distinct needs and priorities.

If I had to sum up this workshop in one word, I would say "flip chart". Working in small groups, the participants produced over 200 flip chart sheets upon which they recorded their thoughts, ideas, experiences and best practices. Working with flip charts indicates a certain mentality of being less formal, with your sleeves rolled up. We, as development workers, often use flip charts when we are out working in the villages. We record what people think and know on flip charts - and that is what this workshop was all about.

The sort of people who came to this workshop shared that mentality. They all have hands-on experience of working with rural people and dealing with the institutional constraints to getting them involved in planning processes in the agricultural sector that affect their lives. The workshop provided these front-line workers with the opportunity to share their experiences about workable approaches with each other and with FAO.

Not being a typical workshop, this report will diverge from the norm as well. Most of the workshop's outputs were written in the coded language of flip charts which may not be easy for the reader to interpret. For this special publication to celebrate World Food Day, the report provides a summary of the process that led up to the workshop, what the workshop was all about, how it was set up and what happened during the week. It also includes a synthesis - an interpretation - of the vision of agricultural planning that the participants expressed and what they felt was important to include in a framework.

The Workshop Reporter

The workshop symbol: the pomegranate

The From Farmer to Planner and Back: Harvesting Best Practices workshop was held in Rome from 8 to 12 December 1997. The workshop brought together nationals from a number of countries where FAO has collaborated with communities and institutions to carry out planning processes that involve rural women and men and address their different needs and priorities.

The symbol that we chose for the workshop - the pomegranate (Punica granatum) - is as much a part of the folklore as it is a part of the diet in many regions of the world. It is native to the Near East as well as to the Himalayas of Asia. Today, it is also widely cultivated throughout South Asia and the drier parts of Southeast Asia, the Americas and Africa. In other words, it is grown in all the regions represented by the workshop participants.

The pomegranate has been an important symbol since ancient times. For the ancient Babylonians, the tree was a very sacred symbol of everlasting life because it is almost evergreen, bearing leaves during the whole of the year. In Rome, especially in mediaeval times, the pomegranate tree was symbolic of partnership such as that in marriage. In ancient Sanskrit writings, the tree was regarded as representative of the vegetable world which supplies sustenance to man. At FAO, we associate the words sustenance with food security, everlasting life with sustainability and partnership with working together for development.

The open pomegranate, with its hundreds of seeds, is the most powerful symbol of all. It represents fertility and abundance. At FAO we talk a great deal about fertility - soil fertility, plant fertility, the fertility of livestock and the fertility of our seas and oceans. But we also talk about the fertility of our minds. And that is what this workshop was all about - harvesting the collective knowledge and experience of the participants about how to conduct participatory planning and how to change current planning procedures to make them more responsive to gender as well as other differences among farmers.

Each participant came with his or her own experience and field-based knowledge of the many lessons learned in carrying out the FAO pilot projects they had worked on. The first objective of the workshop was thus to provide an opportunity for the participants to share those experiences among themselves and with FAO in order to learn about what worked best. The second objective was to harvest this hands-on knowledge of best practices and use it to develop a global Gender-Responsive Participatory Agricultural Development Planning Framework. This Framework will provide answers to the "how to" questions - how to implement, how to support and how to facilitate gender-responsive participatory agricultural development planning. The challenge for the participants was thus to create something that did not yet exist; to pull all the pieces together into a more coherent framework for action.

Abbreviations

APRM

Accelerated participatory research methods

CAP

community action plan

DDC

District Development Committee

FAO

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

GA

gender analysis

GAD

gender and development

GAP

Gender Action Plan

GCP

Government Cooperation Programme

IRD

integrated rural development

MARP

méthode accélérée de recherche participative

MOA

Ministry of Agriculture

NAP

National Agricultural Policy

NAS

National Agricultural Strategy

NGO

non-governmental organization

PRA

participatory rural appraisal

PRAGEDEP

participatory, gender-responsive, agricultural development planning

RRA

rapid rural appraisal

SEAGA

Socio-Economic and Gender Analysis Programme of FAO

TCP

Technical Cooperation Programme of the FAO

TOT

training of trainers

PART 1

FROM FARMER TO PLANNER AND BACK:

HARVESTING BEST PRACTICES

WORKSHOP REPORT

Acknowledgements

The Women in Development Service would like to acknowledge and thank staff and consultants for putting in the effort to make this workshop a success.

FAO would like to take this opportunity to thank the Government of Norway for funding both the interregional project Improving Information on Women's Contribution to Agricultural Production for Gender-Sensitive Planning (GCP/INT/602/NOR) implemented in Namibia, Tanzania and Nepal which was the starting point of the whole learning process as well as the From Farmer to Planner and Back: Harvesting Best Practices workshop.

And finally, thanks to all the participants for coming to Rome to share your thoughts and experiences. Your contributions were invaluable and your participation provided an enriching experience for all of us.

This workshop report was written by Sally Sontheimer, a Consultant to the Women in Development Service of FAO, who had the task of reporting for the workshop. The opinions expressed in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

How it all came about

This workshop represents the mid-way point in a long process of testing methodologies for involving men and women in agricultural planning. We could say that it began with Beijing - that is with FAO's support to preparations for the Fourth World Conference on Women which was held in Beijing in 1995. In that year, the Women in Development (WID) Service of FAO provided funds for national committees to prepare sector reports on the situation of rural women. This was an area of reporting for the Conference that we felt was being largely ignored in the national reports that each country was required to prepare. When we reviewed the 40 reports on women in agriculture, we found several constraints to improving the situation of women that were common to every country. One of the key constraints recognized in all these reports is the fact that planners lack information. They have almost no information "from the source" about what men and women farmers' most pressing problems are, much less information on gender-based differences. Another related problem is the fact that rural people are rarely involved in planning processes. There are few formal mechanisms to inform planners of their needs or to create a space where rural men and women can express their views and participate actively in decision-making about how agricultural projects, programmes and policy are formulated and carried out.

To support local planning processes in which rural people, and especially rural women, would have a voice, FAO launched pilot projects in Namibia, Nepal and the United Republic of Tanzania.¹ The goal of these projects was to improve channels of communication between men and women farmers, extension agents and planners by using participatory research and planning exercises and consultative processes. A large focus of these projects was to train planners and extension workers in how to work with rural people in a participatory manner to help them solve problems of food insecurity and rural underdevelopment.

One of the biggest challenges for these projects was to move field-based information about people's needs, which was gathered through participatory rural appraisal, up the planning ladder. What we were trying to do was to make microlevel processes and gender relationships visible to planners working at all levels. Our expectation in supporting these efforts was that this information would influence how planners think and, more importantly, how they set policy and plan interventions.

Well down the road in the implementation of each of these innovative and experimental projects, we began to see that a great deal of useful lessons were emerging. For FAO, these were among the first projects to test how to do gender-responsive participatory rural appraisal, how to assure women a voice in cultures where men dominate decision-making, how best to best train extension agents to work with rural people and how to set up mechanisms for needs-based planning processes. To evaluate this experience, the Women in Development Service decided to organize a workshop that would bring together nationals who had worked on the three pilot projects.

When we began planning for the workshop, however, we found that many FAO projects were experimenting with similar issues in the nexus between gender, participation and planning. As we spread the word, a total of 12 FAO field projects expressed interest in sending national-based staff to participate. With funding from the Government of Norway, we were able to expand our original horizon and bring field staff from these projects to Rome to discuss and share their experiences.²

The central issues

· How to conduct planning processes that fully involve both rural women and men.

· How to influence current planning procedures to make them more responsive to gender and other differences among farmers.

· How to get agricultural planners and field-based workers to respond to the priorities of different groups of men and women farmers.

In preparation for the workshop, the Women in Development Service asked key project staff to prepare case studies looking at the lessons learned in 11 of the FAO pilot projects. These case studies described how project staff conducted participatory planning and/or how they influenced current planning procedures to make them more responsive to gender and other differences among farmers. The case studies analysed several important challenges to carrying out gender-sensitive and participatory planning, i.e. the entry point, tools, capacity building, linkages and institutionalization of the approaches. An issues paper was also prepared which reviewed and critically analysed the lessons learned from the case studies and put them into the context of the larger planning picture.

Background documents

Country case studies	Afghanistan, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Honduras, India (Sikkim), Namibia, Nepal, Pakistan, Senegal, Tanzania, Tunisia
Key issues paper	A review of the lessons learned from the case studies within the larger context of agricultural planning.

Who was there?

Twenty field staff from 11 FAO projects were the key participants in the workshop.³ They came from all developing regions and diverse technical areas, as can be seen in the profile provided in the table below. They had, however, one thing in common; hands-on, field experience in testing and implementing various approaches and methods designed to make agricultural planning more participatory and responsive to the needs of both male and female farmers.

Builders of the Framework

Regions	Sectors	Job profiles	Expertise	Institutional Affiliation
Africa Central America Near East Asia North America Europe	Agriculture Livestock Fisheries Forestry Rural development	Planners Economists Engineers Agronomists Foresters Extensionists	Gender issues PRA Training Communications	Ministries of agriculture, rural development or forestry Universities FAO field projects FAO Headquarters

A total of 15 FAO staff from the Women in Development Service and other technical divisions as well as a few international consultants who had been involved in the projects and had written the

country case studies also participated. Five of these FAO staff played a key role as facilitators for the working group sessions.

The workshop objectives, methods and agenda

The first objective of this workshop was to provide the opportunity for the participants to share their experiences and hear about those of others working in similar situations and facing similar constraints. From the expectations exercise held the first morning, it was clear that the participants were very keen on learning about other methods, tools and experiences in putting farmers' needs into planning processes. They were also interested in gaining a clearer idea of how to link planning processes at different levels, i.e. from the grassroots up to the policy level and vice versa.

The second objective was to harvest the participants' hands-on knowledge of best practices and use this collective knowledge to develop a global Gender-Responsive Participatory Agricultural Development Planning Framework.

Share experiences about best practices

Harvest the collective knowledge

Develop a framework for gender-responsive planning

What is a planning framework?

A framework provides direction, structure and methods to incorporate a core set of issues and questions into planning processes. It should provide guidelines on how planners can implement, support or facilitate a participatory process of agricultural development planning that is gender-responsive.

The workshop was therefore set up to give the maximum amount of space for discussion and sharing of ideas. It was a participatory workshop in which the participants were active, mobile and used visual techniques to express their ideas. There was simultaneous translation in English, French and Spanish to allow all the participants to express themselves freely. The aim of the workshop approach was to allow the participants to come up with their own answers - which they did!

How did we harvest? In three ways:

· exercises to clarify the meaning of the preliminary elements we are proposing for the Framework;

· small group work from the perspective of three main actors in agricultural planning: farmers, district-level planners and implementers and national-level planners;

· plenary sessions to integrate and share the working group findings.

Participatory exercises

Exercise	Buzz groups	Margolis wheel	Problem trees	24-hour clocks
Purpose	Define institutionalization: what it is, what it is not. Link participants' comments to scaling up and creating responsiveness.	Explore participants' constraints and supports to institutionalization of participation and gender in their own work.	Identify key problems and priorities for various stakeholder groups and determine their level of influence versus their level of importance for agricultural development.	Bring out the meaning of the analysis of difference and its relevance to gender-responsive planning.

A third objective was to identify priorities for follow-up activities in each country. Although time was planned during the workshop for country teams to prepare their ideas for follow-up, the participants preferred to continue with their group work on the Framework and to postpone this activity until after the workshop.

Workshop Agenda, 8 to 12 December 1997

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Theme	Introductions and defining the task	Institutionalization	Stakeholder analysis/analysis of difference	Enabling environment	Presentations of working groups' outputs
AM	Registration	Stocktaking	Stocktaking	Stocktaking	Stocktaking
	Opening Introductions Review of objectives, methods and agenda	Constraints and opportunities for institutionalization Exercise: priority trees Group work	Exercise: 24-hour clocks	Card exercise: to clarify meaning of enabling environment Group work	Participants finalize their presentations of planning frameworks
PM	National participants' presentations of key lessons learned	Training materials session Guided tour of FAO library	Group work	Group work	Presentations of working groups' contributions to a Framework. Closing
	Open to observers	Participants only	Participants only	Participants only	Open to observers

What happened?

Day one: Getting to know one another and defining the task

The first day was spent getting to know one another and clarifying the work that the participants would be doing over the week. One of the most important presentations during the morning was the facilitators' explanation of the task being put before the participants. The task that all of them had been working on in the FAO projects was to involve rural people in processes of agricultural planning. Their task during the workshop would be to provide the inputs for building a framework that can help institutionalize those processes.

What was the task?

Overall task	Involve rural men and women in agricultural planning processes.
Workshop task	Build a framework that can provide a guide to planners to facilitate and support this process.

What would be the basis for this framework? The facilitators explained that we already have many positive experiences to build on from the pilot projects. When we went through all the case studies, we found that the projects were stronger at developing best practices related to tools and capacity building. Some had had success in connecting processes among various levels and actors (what we referred to in the case studies as creating linkages) and in getting information to flow from the base up to planners at all levels (i.e. scaling up). By far the biggest challenge raised in the case studies is for institutions involved in the planning processes to respond to farmers' needs as a direct follow-up to community-based planning, such as that supported by the projects (i.e. creating institutional

responsiveness). The ultimate challenge is to integrate use of the approaches fully into existing institutional structures (institutionalization).

What do we mean by scaling up and institutional responsiveness?

Scaling up for institutionalization is about empowerment. Connecting processes of participation to processes of agricultural development planning entails a widening of the sphere of influence of the different actors. The process often begins from the "ground up", using variants of participatory rural appraisal (PRA) for community-level analysis and planning, to determine major rural development problems and priorities. Both women and men - of diverse interest groups within a community - gather information, discuss, analyse and develop plans. But if the process stops there, opportunities for empowerment and institutionalization are severely limited. A participatory effort may be "scaled up" in any number of ways, both horizontally and vertically. For example, similar PRA efforts may be carried out in neighbouring communities or in different regions for expanding the information base. Another possibility is a series of district or regional participatory meetings (or stakeholders' workshops) to discuss PRA results and build consensus on goals, plans and actions. The process may include a national planning session. Alliances may be formed among stakeholders. Sometimes local groups become political entities capable of negotiating effectively with government bodies or with competing stakeholders. The overall objective of scaling up is to ensure that the voice of women and men farmers is part of the broader dialogue for agricultural development planning.

Creating institutional responsiveness is about flexibility. Connecting agricultural planning to the priorities of local women and men farmers entails a strengthening (or creation) of institutional mechanisms for learning and responding to diversity and change. Responsive planning is a process in which both farmers and planners are committed to follow up plans for agricultural development together. This requires dialogue and consensus building. Plans must be needs-based and clear, yet realistic given the available resources. Plans must be based on relevant and timely information. Centralized information systems must incorporate decentralized sources and gender-disaggregated information. Monitoring is central to responsiveness so that plans can be adapted as needed, supporting processes for "rolling", "evolving" or "strategic" planning. The overall objective of creating institutional responsiveness is effective agricultural development-based on rural people's real needs.

Basis for the framework

Where we are strong?	Best practices in terms of entry points, tools, capacity building, linkages.
Where are we weak?	Institutionalization, scaling up and creating institutional responsiveness.
Elements of the framework	Stakeholder analysis, analysis of difference, enabling environment.

The basic elements of the Framework would therefore provide planners with a guide on how to apply the best practices we tested in the field but also address those weaknesses related to scaling up, responsiveness and institutionalization. In terms of building from the best practices we already have and use, the facilitators decided to organize the working group discussions around stakeholder analysis, the analysis of difference and how to create an enabling environment and ask the groups to give particular attention to those problems of scaling up, creating responsiveness and institutionalization that would need to be addressed in the Framework.

On the afternoon of day one, the participants presented "pivotal moments" from the implementation of the pilot projects and highlighted the main lessons they learned. Their presentations are summarized below.

Summary of participants' presentations⁴

· All of the projects used participatory approaches to work with people and civil society. Participatory information collection and planning have been especially effective at overcoming cultural barriers to women's participation. They have brought women into the public sphere where they can express their needs and aspirations.

· Each project faced difficulty in introducing the concept of "gender" which was often interpreted as "working with women". One common difficulty is how to motivate male professionals at the intermediate level to take up gender issues.

· Lack of information and statistics, and planners' lack of understanding of the reality at the local level, translate into little political support from the upper levels. This hampers efforts and makes it difficult to evaluate results.

· Training is a basic process for building awareness and capacity. It is important to carry out training and sensitization at all levels - grassroots, intermediate and policy (not just at the village level) and to provide a continuous process in order to build capacity and awareness.

· Capacity building at the grassroots enriches the process and provides a multiplier effect. Involving local people is key for positive development since they are the major agents of change.

· It is important to offer opportunities for dialogue and negotiation by bringing together actors from all levels.

· Follow-up to local planning efforts is crucial as are evaluation and monitoring of efforts.

The major impact of all these projects is that more people are now aware of the concept of gender and participation and how to use gender analysis and participatory methods in their work.

Days two to four: Exercises and group work

At the beginning of day two, the participants were divided into five working groups representing important sets of planners in the agricultural sector. The overall objective for the working groups was to provide their thoughts on what should be included in the Gender-Responsive Participatory Agricultural Development Planning Framework.

Who are the planners?

· Farmers and their representatives · District/provincial planners and field staff · National-level planners

Two groups worked from the point of view of small-scale farmers, two worked from the point of view of district- or provincial-level planners and one worked from the point of view of state- or national-level planners. One farmer and one district planner group focused on scaling up, one farmer and one district planner group focused on creating responsiveness and the national planner group looked at both.

Each group was given terms of reference for building a planning framework from the point of view of their actor. For much of the week, the groups discussed their best practices, i.e. "what works", based on their experience as implementers of gender and participation in agricultural planning.

Terms of reference: group work

Who? Define your actor. Draft a brief definition of who your working group represents (farmers, district or national planners). Make sure that all following discussions are from the point of view of this actor.

Why? Define your goal. Name at least three objectives for a Framework for Gender-Responsive Participatory Agricultural Development Planning. These objectives should provide an overall rationale for the use of such a Framework. What rationale is most meaningful to your actor?

What? Define your focus. What do institutionalization and scaling up mean from the point of view of your actor? Keep this focus in mind in all following working group discussions.

Stakeholder analysis. From the point of view of your actor, with your goal and focus, who are the relevant stakeholders? Why? What are your best practices related to stakeholder analysis? (entry point, linkages, gender information, tools, etc.) What should be included in the Framework?

Analysis of difference. From the point of view of your actor, with your goal and focus, why is the analysis of difference important? What are your best practices related to the analysis of difference? (tools, gender information, capacity building, linkages, etc.) What should be included in the Framework?

Enabling environment. From the point of view of your actor, with your goal and focus, what are the characteristics of an enabling environment? What are your best practices related to the creation of an enabling environment? (policy environment, capacity building, linkages, institutionalization, etc.). What should be included in the Framework?

Finalize the Framework. Put together all the recommendations for the Framework produced by your group thus far. Identify the gaps. Keeping the perspective of your actor, with your focus and goal,

what is missing? Work to complete your Framework. Remember that the Framework should be practical and flexible. It should focus on providing guidelines on how planners can implement, support or facilitate a participatory process of agricultural development planning that is gender-responsive.

For the sake of consistency, all the working groups were asked to assume that the planning model being followed is that of decentralized planning. In this system, broad policy decisions and general agricultural development goals and targets are made at the national level, while many area-specific planning, programming and budgeting decisions are devolved to the district or provincial level.

Day five: Presentations by the working groups

Each of the five working groups made a plenary presentation of their contributions to the Framework on the last day of the workshop. All FAO Technical Divisions were invited to attend. The groups were told that they could present their findings in any form they wished and, of course, they were creative. The farmers' group dressed up in costumes to represent the many stakeholders

that come under this heading (although it is still a mystery where the props came from) and supported their role-play with transparencies outlining their thinking. The district-level planners' group did a mock interview with a journalist asking questions of two planners, one the head of district planning and the other the head of agricultural extension in the same department. The national planners started by admitting that they were the major stumbling block to gender-sensitive planning processes and therefore everyone in their group had been sent for two months of on-the-job training. They presented transparencies outlining their new approach to national planning.

Highlights from the final presentations

Farmers Involve us at all levels	District planners Between the fire and the sea	National planners Facilitators of the process
As farmers, what we want most is for outsiders to: · recognize the diversity among us and thus our different needs - these are dynamic and change over time; · empower us (especially the women) through capacity building to help us deal better with outsiders who come into our community and with economic, political and institutional structures above us. · build on our existing mechanisms for coordination and decision-making rather than introducing artificial ones from the outside. Best practices are those that promote not only the collection of information (usually from us) but also the sharing of information with us. Communication, the use of traditional media and building on existing mechanisms for communication, planning and change are important.	We are Ministry of Agriculture planning staff. Our overall concern is to carry out gender-sensitive and participatory planning. In order to do this we have to start listening to the grassroots to understand the needs of the farmers. We are between the fire and the sea. We are caught between the directives from management above and the demands from the communities below. We have a role of transmission between the two. It is our goal to see that farmers' needs and concerns get integrated into national-level planning. For this we need to involve all the stakeholders in planning processes and set up mechanisms for dialogue, negotiation, action and evaluation. It is our role to harmonize all the different stakeholders' needs and pull together the pieces of the planning puzzle into one coherent process. Ultimately, it up to us to mobilize the resources needed for follow-up actions.	At the national level, we planners are responsible for policy formulation, providing guidelines to our technical divisions about how to implement the policy, and monitoring and evaluation. In short, our role is to facilitate the whole agricultural development process. In order to reorient our approach to national planning to make it more sensitive to the needs of both men and women farmers, we would need to: · improve agricultural statistics (we need both new information and information disaggregated by gender); · involve people in planning processes - this means bringing men and women farmers and/or their representatives to the main forums so that they can help us to formulate policies that will guarantee equal access for all stakeholders to resources and services; · raise awareness and capacity at all levels about what gender in agricultural development means.

The outputs: A common vision of agricultural planning

From both the plenary exercises and group work, we harvested new concepts and definitions of what gender-sensitive and participatory planning means, best practices that outline tools, methods and strategies, and approaches that worked, as well as model frameworks. Taking all of these together, the participants expressed a vision of a far more dynamic and holistic agricultural planning process than currently exists. This dynamic is well represented in the model framework developed by the French-speaking group representing district planners shown opposite.

The participants' vision of an ideal planning process is based on:

· information flow up, down and across the planning ladder to provide valuable information to all stakeholders;

· dialogue, negotiation and consensus building and creating channels of communication that allow farmers and planners at all levels to take decisions together about appropriate actions;

· building linkages and partnerships among stakeholders at the same level (e.g., among farmers themselves) as well as between levels;

· empowering men and women to express their needs and aspirations in institutional planning processes at all levels;

· follow-up to community-based planning efforts and commitment of resources (both financial and human).

Annex 1 summarizes some of the best practices presented by the participants from each country. Some of the definitions they came up with follow Annex 1.

Participants' definition of the institutionalization of gender

	What it is	What it is not
National participants5	· provision of resources · training and extension for women · a process of attitudinal change · adoption of gender analysis/PRA approach · supportive policies · in-service training · responsibility · creating an enabling environment through policy, strategies and indicators · adoption of daily practices · putting approaches into practice · making formal structures to implement community action plans · testing planning systems · legal and institutional framework · the need to educate people formally and non-formally	· imposed, people need to accept it voluntarily · fixed ideas/fixed practices · lack of policy support · lack of the capacity to translate policy into action · one person or one department taking all the responsibility · policy alone · achieving a target for itself alone · mere declaration of intent · lack of integration of gender issues at all levels · isolated processes that are not followed up · a linear and unilateral process
FAO staff6	· supported by all layers of the institution · a dynamic response to men's and women's needs · part of everyone's work · behaviour, mind sets, attitudes of all staff · training and continuing communication · an on-going and flexible process · shared responsibility · cross-cutting all areas and levels · mainstreaming at all levels of policy and planning · gender awareness for all · more equal numbers of men and women employees	· segregated actions done by one unit · jargon, lip-service · an extra job on top of what is normally done but integrated into normal work · a temporary, one-shot operation · top-down or imposed · a plan of action that is only symbolic · project documents that include women beneficiaries only to appease donors

Participants' definition of an enabling environment

What is it?	· difficult to achieve · harmony · fair · equitable · motivating · encouraging · responsiveness · institutional support and mechanisms	· supportive management and policies · an atmosphere or culture that supports people working together · decentralization of responsibility/authority · having trust and confidence in your colleagues
Who creates it?	· planners · academic institutes · village-level functionaries · economic forces · school teachers · the media · pressure groups		· extension workers · political parties · some donors · the private sector · community-based organizations · voluntary agencies · committed individuals
How is it created?	· sharing and dissemination of tools · sensitizing managers, technicians, farmers · information · establishing and implementing policies · establishing links and partnerships · access to resources, funds, inputs, etc. · a process of negotiation to come closer to consensus among stakeholders · generating concrete experiences in which women prove their ability		· influencing public opinion · legal reforms and recourse · social mobilization · framework for follow-up and evaluation · giving innovators their way and space · linking gender analysis with priorities in the agricultural sector · dialogue, negotiation, consensus building · training of trainers in tools and techniques

What comes next?

The next step is to use the outputs of the workshop to produce a complete and global Gender-Responsive Participatory Agricultural Development Planning Package. The Planning Package will consist of the following components:

· key issues paper: a review of the key issues in the gender-participation-agriculture nexus;

· planning framework: a how-to planning tool for implementation of participatory processes for gender-responsive agriculture, based on the best practices learned from the workshop participants;

· training materials: compilation and analysis of the various training materials developed by the participating projects which aim to build capacities to implement participatory and gender-responsive planning processes;

· country case studies: a review of lessons learned during implementation in each participating country, in terms of entry points, tools, capacity building processes, linkages and institutionalization strategies;

· workshop report: a summary of the workshop process and outputs;

· video: a visual version of the Framework drawing on the visual materials produced in the participating projects.

Parallel to the production of the Planning Package, FAO will work with select countries to identify follow-up project activities that support the institutionalization of participatory approaches for gender-responsive agricultural planning. We will also be working on setting up networking and "twinning" mechanisms, both regionally and inter-regionally, for supporting capacity building and information exchange pertaining to the gender-participation-planning nexus.

Annex 1: Summary of best practices

Country/project	Actor/level	Best practices
Costa Rica: Integrate gender into mixed farming sector policy	Local/regional/ National	Adapted gender analysis for use at the local level in terms of suitable language and approach. Concentrated effort to make an impact on public policy through gender analysis training and awareness workshops at all levels. Strengthened women's groups to demand more appropriate policy and support.
Ethiopia: Reorientation of agricultural extension	District/province	Trained agricultural extension agents in participatory planning, providing follow-up training as part of an "action-reflection-action" learning cycle. Located the project in main technical department of MOA rather than in a women's unit.
Honduras: Support to women farmers	Farmers' groups	Trained women as paratechnical community-based volunteers who trained other women in agricultural production and management, eventual self-management of project activities by women. Focused on empowering women farmers' representatives to participate in the policy debate at higher levels.
Namibia: Gender planning and gender training in agricultural extension	District/national	TOT in the analysis of difference for core group of agricultural extension agents who provided across-the-board training to all staff; complementary training to sensitize upper management in MOA of the approaches being used by agricultural extension staff. Focus on integrating gender issues into on-going policy formulation and planning exercises
Nepal: Gender planning at district level	District Community	Trained district-level MOA and rural development staff in participatory planning and involved them in PRA-community planning teams. Used separate focus groups and conducted PRA planning exercises at convenient times for women to assure their participation.
India: Small livestock development	Community	Multidisciplinary team to carry out PRA; use of detailed seasonal calendars to understand men's and women's involvement in agriculture; participatory monitoring and evaluation to readjust project activities to meet people's true needs.
Pakistan: Natural resource conservation	Community	Used communication for development tools, such as handing over a camera to women user groups to get them to document their own understanding of natural resource problems.
Senegal: Participatory land development and management plans for environmental conservation	Community	Strong focus on communication tools (visual materials, traditional storytelling, rural radio) to create space for dialogue and consciousness-raising and improve possibility for women to express themselves and give their voice more weight. Supported participatory planning using accelerated participatory research methods (APRM). The plans themselves constitute an important base for negotiation for the women in the communities with development organizations and other potential stakeholders/partners.
Tunisia: Assistance to integrate rural women's issues into ninth development plan	Community national	Used APRM to involve women and men in their own information-gathering activities and to develop community-based proposals for action. Shared results of PRAs with district/regional-level planners to get their feedback on the process and start partnership building process. Held awareness days for national-level planners. Overall supported a consultative process of dialogue that brought together grassroots-, intermediate- and national-level actors.
Zambia: Nutrition and food security	Community	Continuous community action planning throughout the project cycle.

Annex 2: List of participants

1 These pilot projects were part of an inter-regional project called Improving Information on Women's Contribution to Agricultural Production for Gender-Sensitive Planning. It was financed by the Government of Norway.

2 The Improving Household Food Security and Nutrition in Luapula Valley project in Zambia sent its National Project Director using its own funds and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) paid for the participation of Ms Stella Williams from Nigeria who had worked on the FAO Programme for Integrated Development of Artisanal Fisheries (IDAF) in West Africa.

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3 Unfortunately, a few participants were denied entry visas into Italy and were thus unable to come. These included three participants from the Animal Health and Production Improvement Module project in Afghanistan (TCP/AFG/4553) as well as one participant from the Inter-Regional Project for Participatory Upland Conservation and Development in Pakistan (GCP/INT/542/ITA).

4 This summary of the presentations was given by two of the participants from Honduras during the stocktaking the next morning.

5 The question for the national participants was: "What is institutionalization of gender in the context of your work?".

6 The question for the FAO staff participating was: "What is institutionalization of gender for FAO?".