Food Sec. (2012) 4:369–380 DOI 10.1007/s12571-012-0183-2
ORIGINAL PAPER
Using interview triads to understand the barriers to effective food security policy in Kenya: a case study application Leigh Brownhill & Gordon M. Hickey
Received: 4 March 2012 / Accepted: 18 March 2012 / Published online: 19 April 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. & International Society for Plant Pathology 2012
Abstract This paper presents the results of an exploratory study on food security policy in Kenya. Key informant interviews are used to provide a ‘multiperspective’ lens through which to garner insights into Kenya’s food security policy processes and emerging resilient farming system practices. Seeking to situate the policy-making process in its ‘real-life’ institutional context, we identified three interlinked institutions (at government, research and farm levels) and interviewed individuals within each who could speak authoritatively on food policy challenges. We concentrated on Wote, a semi-arid agro-pastoral area in Makueni County, Eastern Province. From different starting points, the interviewees came to agree on the biggest challenges to the development of effective food security policy in Kenya: information, research and education. The paper further reflects on the methodology and assesses its potential efficacy in the study of hunger and its solutions, especially in the realm of knowledge integration, the democratization of research and policy-making processes and the opening up of reciprocal communication pathways amongst institutional actors. Keywords Food policy . Methodology . Information . Oral history . Governance
Introduction The consequences of food insecurity are well-documented, manifold and complex (Davis 2001; de Graaff et al. 2011; L. Brownhill (*) : G. M. Hickey McGill Institute for Global Food Security, Department of Natural Resource Sciences, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, McGill University, 21111 Lakeshore Road, Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Quebec H9X 3V9, Canada e-mail:
[email protected]
Devereux 2007, 2009; Rau 1991; Woodham-Smith 1991). Causes, and therefore the remedies, are more contentious. What is not in question is whether current policies succeed in addressing hunger effectively. To date, the answer must be ‘No.’ Consider Kenya, the economic powerhouse of East Africa. Though relatively stable economically and politically, in July 2011, millions of Kenyans were relying on food aid. The United Nations called the Horn of Africa the largest humanitarian concern in the world, where a total of 11 million people required food aid. Almost four million of them lived in Kenya, with hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees swelling the ranks of the hungry (Rice 4 July 2011). The persistence of hunger in Kenya, and the failure of policy to overcome it, suggests a need to reconsider policy priorities. Such a reconsideration requires new approaches to research and to the communications involved in building effective policy measures with which to combat the food insecurity that leads to hunger, malnutrition and starvation. Innovative approaches are needed from farmers, policy-makers, researchers and other concerned parties. Research methodologies that bring together these parties’ perspectives may provide new synergies and windows for practical answers to the questions surrounding food insecurity. In Kenya, the time is now right for new approaches to policy-making in the area of food security. In August 2010, Kenyans passed into law a new constitution. This change to the power structures of the country resulted from a twentyyear-long democratic movement. Not only had this social movement, since 1990, lobbied for and demanded a rewriting of the country’s laws; starting in 1997, citizens also joined parliamentarians in formal committees to draft these new laws. An important reason that many Kenyans had engaged in the struggle over the country’s supreme laws was that the constitution, inherited from the departing colonial regime in 1963, had been amended repeatedly in ways
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that concentrated power and control in the Executive. A key feature of the new constitution is the devolution of power away from the Executive and parliament to local county levels. For researchers considering Kenyan food security initiatives, these ongoing political changes present a timely opportunity to examine the policy-making process and the information pathways that connect key parties in that process. Because our study was begun, and continues, alongside these significant and ongoing legislative changes, our research gains significance in terms of the ‘real-time’ political and policy questions we address (see Kwayera 2011). The study’s results, however, also earn a new sense of contingency, since the relationships among key actors in 2010 are bound to change dramatically as new legislative bodies and decision-making processes are crafted into existence in 2012 and beyond. It is within this changing institutional frame that we discuss the results of an exploratory study on food security policy in Kenya. Our research presents key informant interviews that provide a ‘multiperspective’ lens through which we can examine Kenya’s food security policy barriers. We first present interviewees’ own voices; followed by discussion of the ‘interview triad’ methodology trialled in the study. The concluding section assesses the study’s overall methodological framework and suggests ways to improve the design for new iterations of the research. This self-reflective critique is undertaken in order to strengthen the efficacy of future research in pursuit of new understandings of the food security problem and innovative approaches to its remedy.
Methodology This study was conducted within the framework of grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967). Grounded theory relies on inductive principles where data are often collected in the absence of hypotheses. Babbie (2001) outlined the grounded theory approach as follows: 1) Initial data are used to determine the key variables; 2) Hypotheses or propositions are then derived from the collected data; 3) Continuing data collection provides a sharpened understanding of the issues; and 4) Sharpened understanding leads to a sharpened focus for data collection. We recognize that the process by which interview questions are devised and asked and responses are interpreted involves the imposition of researchers’ assumptions, starting points and interests. Nevertheless, the observations and analysis presented here are derived from the problems and issues identified by the interviewees themselves. We further borrow from the critical theory approach to policy analysis, which is “directed towards exposing connections between policy context, process and content; … [and in so doing] exposes the
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ideologies and values underlying policy issues and their proposed solutions” (Duncan and Reutter 2006: 244). In keeping with the principles of such a ‘critical grounded theory,’ our analytical approach also emerged organically from our preliminary analysis of the data. We interviewed a range of actors concerned with the process and outcomes of food policy-making in Wote, Makueni County, including extension staff and women’s groups in 2010–11. From this larger sample of 27,1 we recognized the relative centrality of three particular informants’ perspectives. We explored the overlaps and divergences in these interviews, as above, and sought a means to analyse their content, further than presenting their words unexpurgated. To do so, we borrowed from health sciences the interview triad approach (Kendall et al. 2010). The interview triad involves analysing the words and perspectives of three individuals who are variously placed to view a given problem from their own distinct experiential standpoint. In reporting on the use of this method, Kendall et al. suggest that “Interview dyads or triads, where two or three participants are interviewed as a set or case study, can explore complex complementary as well as contradictory perspectives”(Kendall et al. 2010:196). They alternately refer to the method as ‘linked,’ ‘multiperspective’ and ‘multidimensional interviews.’ Such an approach is potentially most useful when seeking to (a) understand relationships and dynamics among interviewees; (b) explore similarities and differences in participants’ perceptions; (c) understand participants’ individual needs and (d) integrate participants’ suggestions for improving services. They argue that linked interviews may “contribute to formulating relevant and workable recommendations for improving services” (Kendall et al. 2010:198). Our study sought to include insights and experiences of key informants whose work focused on addressing food insecurity. We knew that we needed to speak to people within a variety of institutional contexts in order to gain a more holistic and multidimensional understanding of the problem and its solutions. In order to find new ways forward, we needed to figure out how to do things a little differently and to test out a new way to examine our data. As a result, the main purpose of this case study paper is to ‘pre-test’ the interview triad approach in the context of food security. It is in that pursuit that we present a single interview triad and discuss the methodological utility and analytical potential for this approach. Interview triad case study Given that we wanted to interview agricultural researchers as well as farmers, we chose Wote, county headquarters of 1 Interviewees included 22 farmers (18 women; four men), two researchers (two men (one at HQ; one at Kambi ya Mawe), and three policy-makers/bureaucrats (one man (National); two women (District)).
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Makueni County, which hosts both a Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) research field station and a vibrant set of women’s, community-based and farmers’ organizations from which to identify representatives. Wote is a semi-arid agro-pastoral area experiencing erratic and unpredictable weather. Incidence of poverty is high (74%) and drought conditions prevail on an increasingly frequent basis (Ngugi and Nyariki 2006; Rocheleau et al. 1995; Kenya Food Security Steering Group n.d.). Though focused on Wote, the issues covered in this case study speak more generally to food security policy challenges across much of Kenya. We sought first to situate the policy-making process in its ‘real-life’ institutional context. We identified interlinked institutions at government, research and farm levels. Given our interest in the information pathways linking institutions most centrally concerned with food policy, we needed to include those from “the top” to “the bottom” (see Timms 2011). It was therefore important to include the Ministry of Agriculture as the top agricultural policy-making body. A public agricultural research institute (KARI) was included because it provides a critical link on the information pathway between policy-makers and farmers. KARI was also a partner in the development of a longer term food security project arising from this exploratory research. Researchers from KARI were included to allow for a self-reflective assessment of the potential for researchers (including the authors and KARI research colleagues) to mobilize and integrate knowledge to contribute to more effective food policies and their implementation. The researcher perspective provided situated knowledge on the agronomic, climatic and socio-economic challenges of farming in semi-arid lands. Farmer organizations were also included, because of our interest in participatory approaches and including the views of policy-making ‘from the bottom’ (Nzomo 1992). Incorporating the female perspective was important because many rural women in Kenya have relied upon, and maintained, indigenous technical knowledge as well as social and organizational skills for survival and social well-being. These skills and knowledge offer a powerful social basis from which many rural women farmers draw strength in the face of adversity and in turn offer researchers and policy-makers often-neglected but highly-relevant information and insights into effective solutions to persistent problems associated with hunger. Because we adopted the ‘interview triad’ frame after carrying out our key informant interviews, we did not have the benefit of knowing in advance that the particular interviewees’ words would come to be so closely linked together in our analysis. As a result, in this instance the interview triad was used more discretely as a post-hoc analytical tool (rather than a data collection tool). Taking a retrospective approach to our data analysis, we knit together a
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multidimensional picture of key aspects of the food insecurity problem in Kenya. Going beyond our case study application, the interview triad approach could facilitate the analysis proceeding “concurrently with data generation, allowing emerging themes and concepts to be reflected on with subsequent participants” (Kendall et al. 2010:197). This iterative aspect of the interview triad approach is consistent with the grounded theory paradigm and suggests that the methodology could provide fruitful avenues for data collection and analysis in further studies of food policy phenomena in Kenya. Respondent profiles We selected three key informants with detailed knowledge on food security policy challenges in Wote representing three spatially and temporally distinct decision-making spheres: strategic, tactical and operational (see Table 1) (Anthony 1965; Aurum et al. 2006; van der Brugge and van Raak 2007). Lucas et al. (2007) observed that these different levels of decision-making have often been considered separately in research; however the close interaction between actors at each level is being increasingly recognized as significant to understanding decision-making and outcomes. Synergistic communication and interactions between each of these three spheres are central to well-functioning governance structures, including delivering outcomes such as sustainable food security. These interviewees were also selected for our case study application of the interview triad because (a) they represented the three interacting institutions most central to domestic food policy-making, (b) the interviewees were leaders within these institutions and (c) the exclusion of any one of these three would have implied leaving out a key link in the food security chain. For a strategic decision-making perspective, we interviewed a former Minister of Agriculture who held the office for more than a year. During this time he was accountable to the public for all agriculture sector strategies, legislation and policy initiatives in Kenya. As Minister, he was also responsible for the functions of the Ministry of Agriculture, which seeks to increase Kenya’s food production, agricultural employment and agricultural exports, while promoting resource conservation and poverty alleviation (Ministry of Agriculture 2011). For a tactical decision-making perspective, we interviewed a government research scientist, located in Kambi ya Mawe, outside Wote in Eastern Province. He oversees field trials of fruits and vegetables bred for drought tolerance in this semi-arid county. His applied research also involves working with local farmers through on-farm trials, demonstration plots and seed duplication initiatives. The results of such trials are key inputs into recommendations to both farmers and policy-makers.
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Table 1 Distinguishing characteristics of each decision-making sphere [adapted from van der Brugge and van Raak (2007), based on the work of Loorbach (2007) and Loorbach and van Raak (2006)] Sphere
Focus
Problem scope
Time scale
Distinctive capabilities of actors
Strategic Tactical
Culture Structures
Abstract/societal system Institutions/regime
Long-term (30 years) Mid-term (5–15 years)
Operational
Practices
Concrete/project
Short-term (0–5 years)
Systems thinking, creativity, and integrative skills Co-production, negotiation, consensus building, and networking skills. Project management and entrepreneurial skills.
For an operational decision-making perspective we interviewed a small-scale farmer who has farmed for almost 40 years in Mwaani village outside Wote town in the semi-arid county of Makueni. She focuses on a diverse mix of livestock and crops, local and indigenous fruits and vegetables, wild honey, herbs and indigenous trees. Her family eats almost exclusively from their farm. As a longtime community worker in Wote, this farmer is a local opinion-leader and has mobilized farmers for several food security initiatives in the past. Formally, the lines of responsibility among these three institutional actors are relatively clear (farmers provide data to KARI researchers, KARI researchers provide reports to Ministry policy-makers, Ministry officials provide budget to KARI activities which often involve farmers). But these lines are sometimes blurred by the realities of the people who occupy positions in each institution. For example, the former Minister we interviewed is also a farmer and grew up on a farm. He could also be considered a researcher, as at the time of the interview he was working on a post-graduate degree that involved ecological research. The KARI researcher spends his working days with farm-work and is also a hands-on implementer of specific policies. Indeed, the woman farmer from Wote has also engaged in on-farm research both in conjunction with KARI and on her own initiative. In addition, as past Treasurer of the county council, she has had experience with public policy processes. In carrying out our interviews, we assumed that the interviewees spoke from their respective formal positions as Minister, KARI researcher and woman farmer. We recognize that they wear, or have worn, different ‘hats’ and that those experiences informed their statements. This overlap in personal and professional experience was unavoidable. Trustworthiness and reliability Our methodological approach has been informed by principles of oral history research (Thompson 2000) and in particular its intersection with development research (Cross 1993). We reference oral historiography for two reasons. First, one of the authors has, since 1994, engaged in collecting, interpreting and analyzing oral history interviews in the context of political economy analyses of changes within
Kenyan agricultural communities (see Brownhill 2009). Second, oral history methodologies have been deeply interrogated by historians, sociologists and others in an effort to strengthen the scholarly value of the data they generate. Much of this interrogation speaks to the question of the trustworthiness of the individual voice as a form of evidence (Thompson 2000; Lummis 1981). Lummis (1981) addressed the trustworthiness of oral evidence in a manner that is pertinent to our use of individual interviews. He divides the issue into two main areas: “the degree to which any individual interview yields reliable information on the historical experience, and the degree to which that individual experience is typical of its time and place” (Lummis 1981: 109). As to the first concern, because our interviewees were speaking of current and ongoing experiences, rather than historical ones, the reliability of memory and accuracy of recall is less of an issue. What is pertinent for our ‘interview triad’ approach is the question of accuracy of details. Lummis posits that “the validity of an interview can be assessed for its general accuracy by the degree to which it corresponds to checkable details… . In other words, the normal process of maximum triangulation with other sources can go a long way toward establishing the general reliability of the interview” (Lummis 1981: 110). The second concern also provides insight into the use of interviews as evidence in scientific studies. How representative of their wider social groups are the views and opinions expressed by our interviewees? With oral histories, the researcher can compare key features of interviewees’ life histories with such published data as census results to estimate the degree to which interviews are typical of wider groups’ experiences. In addition to this ‘fact-checking’ task, we add a further qualification to the ‘generalizability’ of our particular interview triad. As leaders, our interviewees’ opinions ‘matter’ insofar as they are capable of directing the actions and opinions of others, and sometimes the funds and decision-making directions of whole organizations, which in turn can have wide-ranging impacts beyond the individuals. In this regard we have found it most helpful to bring in the views of some of the other interviewees we spoke to in 2010. For this purpose, not only were taped interviews
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useful, but author field notes supplied details of other farmers’, researchers’ and policy-makers’ views and perspectives that helped validate our key informants’ interviews. For example, in an interview with the District Agricultural Office (DAO), the Minister’s views on the need for better information flows were corroborated by this local-level policy implementer. She stated, on the question of who in Wote is working on questions of food security, that “the government is encouraging the integration of our [Ministry of Agriculture] services with the NGOs and businesses in the area. We are forming a stakeholders’ forum to meet quarterly” (Brownhill 2010). Interviews with farming women’s group members’ contextualized and validated the views of our woman farmer. For instance, women reported the same general problems and similar solutions, including use of organic manures, compost and pesticides; focus on household food self-sufficiency and the need for better information flows amongst farmers. And an interview with a senior researcher at KARI corroborated the perspectives of the Wote KARI field researcher. These local voices elaborate the settings in which the three interviewees operate and help distinguish why we chose the particular three key informants from the larger sample. Further examination of this concern about the trustworthiness of oral evidence in the form of individual interviews is merited. Bertaux and Kohli, for instance, suggest that one important dimension of the methodological challenge of oral history “is the sheer number of life stories: Some research projects are based on several hundred, others rely on a single one, and the majority fall somewhere in between. The number depends on whether empirically grounded generalization is being sought or whether one is using a case study approach, where only generalizations based on theoretical plausibility, not statistical induction, are possible” (1984: 218, emphasis added). Another critical issue concerns whether the researcher seeks an analysis of the subjective circumstances and experiences of the interviewee, or sets the interview the task of illuminating larger social relations and processes. “While the sociological community usually associates life story research with an orientation toward subjectivity, many contemporary sociologists use this approach to investigate some set of social relationships … sociologists with a more subjectivist orientation have to acknowledge the existence of social frames … and those with a more objectivist orientation have to take into account the fact that social structures are the result of sociohistorical processes in which action, and therefore subjectivity, is playing its part. Consequently, advocates of both positions must not only coexist but communicate” (Bertaux and Kohli 1984: 218–219). In our case study application of the interview triad, the emphasis was on social relations, especially regarding the dynamics of communication and action among the three
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institutions (farm, research institute and ministry). These are not ‘life story’ interviews; yet they do allow for some insight into a subjective analysis. Because of the singular nature of each interviewee’s narration, the data are reflective of them as ‘subjects’ within their institutions. The views expressed are ‘partial,’ or subjective; but they also reflect a certain overlap between the individual and institutional experience, or between the interviewees’ subjectivity and the institutional and wider social relations within which they are embedded. Furthermore, what Bertaux and Kohli emphasize as the need for ‘coexistence and communication’ between researchers adopting different approaches to their work, is a principle that is much more widely applicable and indeed constitutes a recurrent theme in this research. When applied to the area of food security policy, for instance, ‘coexistence’ lends itself to the growing prevalence of crossdisciplinary research design in the academy and research institutes; and, at the state level, inter-ministerial cooperation. Our case study embraces this notion of coexistence and communication, and seeks to better understand ‘inter-institutional’ divides that exist between farmer, researcher and policy-maker so that these divides might be bridged.
Results Food policy from the perspective of Minister, researcher and farmer As this article is focused more on the efficacy of the interview triad methodology, we thought that the inclusion of material which illustrates the overlaps and divergence of views among the respondents would offer some insight into its analytical strengths and weaknesses. To allow the interviewees’ words to take centre stage, in this section we offer minimal commentary. Our three interviewees showed remarkable concurrence on the question of making food security policy more effective. The excerpts below express this overlap in perspectives, especially concerning the means of overcoming key challenges. However, the three did not agree on all topics. To illustrate: each of the respondents spoke to the question of subsistence agriculture versus commercial agriculture. The Minister saw subsistence as the problem driving food insecurity, not as part of the answer. "My very strong position is if we have to deal with the problem of food in the country it is not going to happen with small holder farming. It is a vicious circle which makes people poorer. The solution is in two areas: commercializing farming, and we had started
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the process but some people were unhappy. And we should get every irrigable piece of land under irrigation." "…One acre? You cannot do anything. You have to do it with your hands and with your family. It is a vicious circle that ends in death. I am telling you the truth. It is a terrible thing. We can continue talking, but I am speaking as somebody who… I am a farmer myself. …But I tell you, speaking from that background, and having been Minister for Agriculture, subsistence farming is not tenable. It is the problem not the solution." The government researcher, based at a field station near Wote, focused on practical solutions such as local production of farm inputs. He further connected global issues such as climate change to changes in local farm systems. In his discussion of farmers’ use of locally sourced, organic inputs, he addresses the efficacy of subsistence methods both to deal with farmers’ inability to pay for commercial inputs and to cope with emerging changes in the climate. "Most of the farmers have livestock. We advise them to use manure. If he cannot afford to buy the commercial fertilizers, he can use the manure from the boma, the animal shed. If you compare the results, they fare well. …" "KARI has a program for organic farming. Most especially to compost manure. Most of the farmers have a lot of materials in their farms. But instead of composting them or putting them on the soil, they burn them. If you walk around you will see most of the farms are now clear. They have been cleared. But most of the farmers will burn the materials. So there is a program, somebody is training the farmers on how to conserve those materials for future use." "There is somebody at KARI who is now dealing with the issue of climate change.... We are seeing in the next 30 years, the temperatures will rise to a point where most of what we grow now will not be able to grow at that time. Now we are developing some technologies on how to manage when it comes to that point. Composting, use of local materials. Planting trees, when the trees drop the dry leaves, you don’t burn them.… You will find the plant is healthy, very green, very strong. It can withstand [increased] temperatures." The woman farmer in Wote promoted subsistence through the use of indigenous seed varieties and locally-sourced organic pesticides, preservatives and manures. She put an emphasis on household food self-sufficiency, or feeding the family first before selling surplus crops on the market.
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"I know when women don’t have food in the house the family will suffer. When all the food grown in the farm goes to the market it is when the men will also dominate that money. The women will not have enough food. That is a time when we will have very weak, unhealthy people, because when the food goes to the market, going back to the market to buy food will not be easy. Our people are not very much conversant in going to buy food. And again there are so many other constraints [demands on money], like going to schools. … I will also ask, urge my people, instead of growing all food for the market, they also look into letting the market be for the surplus. After we have enough food, then we can sell the surplus. …When there is no food to sell you at least have food in the house." "And having money in the bank whereby you’ll be going to take money to buy food, that will be very complex. Because, for example, when we had that drought, we were buying a bag of maize, a 90 k bag of maize, we were buying it at 3,000. Now we have the food. When we harvest it, we are selling the same maize, the same kilograms at 1,000 shillings. So, if you sell your maize at 1,000 shillings then you buy at 3,000 the same maize, where will you get the surplus money to buy the food? Because when you harvest you receive very low prices, then when you are buying it you are buying it at high prices. So you can see the difference. You’ll not get enough money to buy the food. So you still continue suffering. Continue having bad health. Continue experiencing the same problems like the psychological, social problems we have seen. So it is not good to commercialize more of our foods" Despite these varying perspectives, we also found a high degree of overlap. In addressing the question of the most serious challenges to the development of effective food security policy in Kenya, both the former minister and the farmer pointed to education and information. Interestingly, the researcher excused himself from answering this question; he indicated that questions about policy should be addressed to the centre director. This answer, in itself, is interesting in characterizing hierarchical relationships within the research institute. Is there a gap between field researchers and those in their own institutions who apply research results to policy recommendations? This might be a fruitful line of inquiry in the future, and calls for further selfreflective analysis and assessment such that researchers themselves are brought into ‘the equation.’ The former Minister of Agriculture was categorical: "Information. Information is still quite a challenge, [getting it] to the farmer. … You find that with a lot
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of farmers, the methodology of farming is still crude. It depends on the information they have. The use of certified seeds, the use of fertilizer; the information is still a challenge. We’ve been battling with our extension staff. I think for every one extension staff we had 1,800 farmers, which is really very low. Which goes back to structural adjustment which was prescribed by some fellows sitting in some place…." The local farmer gave an example of information that is needed by farmers but not forthcoming, at least not in a timely fashion, from government agencies: "Well, I may say the policies are really not very effective. The government has very good policies. I understand there are policies about food security, but the implementation of the policies; I don’t think it is adequate. … We have lost some of our seeds. Some older people used to preserve seeds. We are not following the old methods of preserving them. Even when we harvest, sometimes we get very poor pesticides whereby we can store our food then all that food goes to waste. So there is really a challenge." "The government needs to put in measures for food storage. Sometimes there is an issue of aflatoxin which is affecting our people when it rains much. But the measures are not taken. Sometimes when the problem is now big, and it goes into research, now the government starts telling people about aflatoxin. I think it should be a continuous thing. They predict that there might be aflatoxin. And the government can see there will be bumper harvest. They can start educating people right now for them to take measures about their produce, to dry and store it so that they can now take care of the aflatoxin before it affects their crops. …We have the resources here. But people don’t use their land productively. One because of poverty. Two because of lack of information and education. Three because of the policy. That is my own view and information." If research and the production of new information is an issue, so too are the communication pathways through which that information passes (or fails to pass). The Minister noted that the cut-backs in government spending on rural extension seriously undermined information flows to farmers. He also described extension as critical in carrying information, especially from ministries, or research institutes, to farmers: "There was a very strong partnership between the Ministry, the extension staff and community based organizations that were specifically targeted at food security initiatives, either developing or sensitizing the
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people on new varieties, alternative sources of food, use of value addition, other such initiatives for processing. I’ve seen a lot of them teaching farmers how to dry crops for use later, use of every part of the plant. There are a lot of those groups." "We have a program at the Ministry which targets such groups and we give grants. I think every year we were spending something like 50 million shillings [~ USD 555,000 or GBP 345,000] to such groups that had demonstrated initiatives and innovations in food security. Whether they are doing some type of processing or they are doing community service in terms of sensitizing the community to use certain type of manure or even to make the manure [compost]; various aspects of food security initiatives. And we worked with many of those." The government researcher also pinpointed the importance of Ministry of Agriculture extension staff in getting information to farmers. He identified that whilst they are critical to information pathways, they were often too few in number: "Most [farmers] are complaining that the extension staff, who are supposed to train farmers, maybe in a practice like spacing [of crops], the farmers are saying they never see them. Maybe the extension staff can have some demonstration plots distributed within a region where these farmers can learn on these technologies like planting seeds and the agronomic aspects of planting, particularly spacing. Most of them want that. If you say to plant at 90×30 cm, most of them will plant at maybe one metre and above, so you see the planting is low. So if you train a farmer how you can practice the spacing well, you can get higher plant populations than if you practice the one which is not recommended." "We also train them during the trials in the fields. If you want to train farmers, you have to involve the extension staff. It is demand-driven services. If training has to be done, you have to learn from them what they want. You cannot say, “now plant this.” The farmer has to come with the idea of what he wants to be trained on. Now the extension staff, the number is small. Because in Wote region, as it is, they have only three. I don’t think three people can reach all the farmers within that region on time. What they do, they call barazas, meetings, where they can train a good number of them at the same time." The local farmer noted the cutbacks in extension staff and reduction of services. She also indicated the need for more involvement by community members in providing extension: "You know some of our people don’t know that they are supposed to demand for the service. They expect
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the extension workers to come to them. And the extension workers expect the farmers to come to them. So there is that kind of disconnect. I think if the government, instead of implementing the policy of ‘demand-driven’ services, can first do sensitization of what it is and the importance of that policy, then people can change attitudes and think, ‘If I meet an agriculture person, if I fail to plant well, if I fail to get good harvest, there is somewhere I can go and consult.’ But just to say it is now services ‘on demand,’ the farmer there doesn’t know. And maybe the extension workers there do not know that the farmers do not know. So I think it is a collective issue for the farmers and the extension workers to come together and do some forums to educate people on that issue of demand driven services." "So: more extension workers. And even if the government cannot afford to pay the extension workers, they can get community members to do that; people who will not be paid a salary, but who can be given something like an allowance. Maybe they can train those local leaders from the respective areas. They train them on agriculture, where they find people who can go down to the real people. These are leaders who live with the people in certain areas. So the same people can be mobilizing farmers in their respective areas. Because these people go together to the church; they go together to funerals. All social gatherings, they go together." …And then this person will be like a bridge between the extension workers and the community. So the community will be involved, and these leaders can give feedback to the extension workers, and the extension workers will be getting information from the community. So there will not be such a disconnect. There will be not such a gap. And maybe this information and any change of policy will be flowing to the community. If there is insufficient communication, ways of improving the situation include some of the observations made by our trio. The former minister focused on educating agricultural researchers: "For us to attain a food secure nation, we must produce the personnel who have the skills, the knowledge, the expertise to turn around our situation. And this Ministry, together with the men and women we produce, have a bearing on how we solve the food security problems. Our capacity for research is enormous, but the problem is the funding. …we spend about half a billion Kenya shillings [USD 5.55 million] every year on research. For a start, we should
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move that to five billion [USD 55.5 million], for it to make sense, every year, from government to our research institutions: mainly universities, KARI, through the National Council of Science and Technology and those kinds of institutions." "Research is the fuel that drives development. Unless you have new ideas, unless you are creating synergies in terms of production, so that you have new ideas on varieties, on productivity, on resistance to drought, resistance to disease—research in general—you are unable to cope with the ever increasing population and the requirements of that population in terms of food." The government researcher emphasized teamwork: "On the issue of food security, we have to work as a team. You cannot say you want to work on the issue of food security, and then you work alone. You cannot. You can’t make it. You have to involve the farmers themselves, and other stakeholders. Definitely you’ll go through. Here we have to work together. Maybe we reach farmers, we incorporate other people… The universities. The NGOs, we have got several of them. We have to work as a team. That way we incorporate the farmers, we pass them the information they need and want. I think at the end we will get somewhere." The farmer echoed both education and teamwork; she also gives an example of one policy priority for semi-arid areas: irrigation: "I think with that teamwork you are talking about, the best thing is education, even if you ask KARI if they can host a forum and you invite stakeholders to come. They come and you can give the information about what we are intending to do in that field. Then from there you have a plan of action whereby you now become a team. But not like when you are called for a forum and you sit down to talk, talk, talk, and then you go. There is nothing like a follow-up or a plan of action." "Well, it is a government initiative to have water nearly everywhere. But I would say the planning and the leaders are the problem. … If there was good planning, if people could be mobilized, and we could look at avenues where you can get these shallow dams, shallow wells, and sand dams, then in every village we can have two or three sand dams. The water would not go to waste. Because … it rains at least two or three days of rain, heavy rain. But all that water, it goes to the river and goes to the Indian Ocean. So if there can be measures for the government policy and the community; the government can come with
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mechanism of mobilizing and educating these communities to show the best way to harvest water; we can harvest and plant with water, because the terrain of our land is not bad. You can go a kilometre and see there is a small valley. So that if this is one person comes to stop that water from running to the river, they will go another kilometre, you will find other people have stopped that water. You know that water will stop. It cannot just run away, so the environment will be changed. I think it is lack of some coordination, lack of commitment, and lack of good policy." From different starting points, the three interviewees came to agree on the biggest challenges to the development of effective food security policy in Kenya: information, research and education. All concurred about the importance of agricultural extension staff in the communication of that information; and the issue of two-way communication pathways, or teamwork more generally, was addressed by all. In terms of ways of improving the situation, each echoed earlier statements about the centrality of socially-relevant research, and the importance of teamwork among policymakers, researchers, extension staff and farmers.
Discussion Many researchers examining agricultural sustainability in Kenya have noted the centrality of community, research and policy institutions to the study of food policy (Kristjanson et al. 2009; Magunda et al. 2010; Qureish et al. 2009). This work highlights the importance of “spanning boundaries between communities, scientists and policy-makers, all the while colearning and cocreating a hybrid of traditional/local and scientific/universal knowledge” (Kristjanson et al. 2009:5049). In their examination of land issues in pastoral communities in Kenya, Kristjanson et al. concluded that by blurring the boundaries between researchers, policy makers and communities, they brought into focus “the probability that the information generated would not only be useful, but used” in policy-making and its implementation (2009:5049). For ‘information’ to result in improved policies requires pathways along which different parties’ knowledge can be mobilized. The process of mobilizing this knowledge results in new syntheses of information, new forms of knowledge. It is to this synthesis that we look for promising direction for more effective food security policy. If policy is derived from processes that integrate farmers’ (and other concerned constituents’) expressed concerns and active participation, that policy is likely to more closely ‘fit’ the farmers’ needs and its implementation more readily undertaken. This process of knowledge integration and its use in policy processes echoes Mutshewa’s conception of ‘informational
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power,’ which he describes as the result of a pattern of information use, including “extracting, collating, summarising, translating, collecting or gathering information, verifying information and disseminating information” (Mutshewa 2010:220). Mutshewa focuses on environmental planners using this power “to counter the power bases of other stakeholders” (ibid), and thus to drive and influence the planning process. However, informational power could become part of a cooperative rather than competitive process of knowledge integration in pursuit of a common goal that key stakeholders share despite their differences, in this case, effectively addressing food insecurity. In our view, there is power in the sharing of information, and the intentional syntheses which arise from this sharing (Raymond et al. 2010; Sanginga et al. 2007). Much innovation has arisen socially, economically and environmentally through the cocreation of knowledge. It is widely recognized that knowledge mobilization contributes to the making of effective policy (Mutshewa 2010). We also learned from those we interviewed that the central question of putting such knowledge to practical use is likewise a central concern among on-the-ground farmers, agricultural researchers and policy-makers in Kenya. Because our interest was to examine links between institutional actors, rather than to generalize about the experiences of any one set of actors, our approach diverged from that of a large sample or survey of policy-makers, researchers and farmers. Instead we selected prominent leading individuals within three linked institutions and addressed questions of the efficacy of their own food security initiatives and any constraints they faced in advancing their own objectives, especially with regard to information flows between and among institutions. This produced an analytical ‘snapshot’ meant to be illustrative of the diversity and the overlaps in the perspectives of key informants in three institutions concerned with food policy. The questions asked, and the views expressed, concerned very particular events and processes, and not the biographical situation of the interviewees. Nonetheless, oral history’s methodological “approach to research evidence” did help to shed light on the interview triad approach we have adopted and raises interesting questions for the development of a more rigorous methodological and analytical framework for future studies. Interview triads in future food policy studies Feldstein’s 2004 exploration of the differences between journalism and oral history methodologies lends some insight into the strengthening of the interview triad design. Though our study is neither journalism (but borrows a heavy reliance on interview sources), nor oral history (but grapples with some of the same methodological concerns as outlined
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above), we find this discussion pertinent for its focus on the trustworthiness that separates research from journalism. Feldstein argues that “journalism would do well to emulate oral history’s exhaustive and nuanced approach to research evidence, especially its preservation of interview transcripts that allow public inspection and verification. Conversely, the oral historian should sometimes emulate the journalist’s more seasoned approach to interviewing increasing the quantity of interviews and expanding the range of approaches, including use of adversarial encounters” (Feldstein 2004:1). In other words, in future work in which the interview triad methodology is employed, we are well advised to include a greater number of key triads to bolster the uses of the data for theoretical and policy-related purposes. In choosing to widen the scope of future studies of this nature, we hope to address interviews with key informants in several institutions who were left out of the current study. These include donors, lenders, private sector actors and county level legislators. This last set will gain certain policy relevance over the coming years as the newly-devolved form of government comes into existence (with the first officials expected to be elected in the 2012 polls). We address this omission by first acknowledging the longstanding centrality of some of these actors in shaping policy regimes globally; and undertaking to include these actors in future iterations of this study. It should further be noted that in the medical studies adopting the triad approach, the multidimensional interviews are Fig. 1 Conceptualization of future interview triad research design with interviewed key informants highlighted. The selection of future key informants is not exhaustive. This approach would be replicated through time and space
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recognized to offer even deeper insights when used in the context of longitudinal studies. Kendall et al. (2010) refer to this as a ‘longitudinal serial triad approach’. Now that we have explored the use of this methodological and analytical tool through a case study, we are encouraged to likewise repeat our interview triads, with more purposeful juxtaposition of our lines of inquiry and the possibility of reflecting on the “emerging themes and concepts” as interviews proceed. Finally, reflection on the interview triad methodology and its analytical results in this exploratory study suggests the need to replicate the triad in other sites in order to provide data with which to build a more thorough understanding of policy change and impacts, informed by the views and experiences of differently-placed key actors. In future work it will be important to increase the numbers of triads for the purposes of better allowing for generalization. Methodologically, we are engaged in an iterative process, by which the current research results inform the design and direction of future research. Considering the many other ‘key informants’ situated in institutions which are also critical to the development of effective food policy in Kenya— especially agricultural extension workers—our ‘interview triad’ could become an ‘interview circle’ in its next iteration (Fig. 1), using carefully designed questions to maximize contrast. This approach could also complement some of the tools more commonly used in Stakeholder Analysis (Blair and Fottler 1990; Brugha and Varvasovszky 2000) and Social Network Analysis (Newman et al. 2006; Klenk et al. 2009) to provide ‘thicker’ descriptions that can provide
Understanding barriers to food security through interview triads
insights into the complexity of the social system under study, something that is particularly important to public policy research (Dodge et al. 2005). We consider the present analysis a modest first iteration of what we hope will be a constructive conversation on the development of more effective food policy in Kenya.
379 Acknowledgments This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada (861-20091104). In addition, this work was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada, and with the financial support of the Government of Canada provided through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). We would like to thank the research participants who donated their valuable time and knowledge to our case study.
Conclusion This paper has presented the results of a case study application of the interview triad approach to better understand the institutional barriers to sustainable food security within an exploratory grounded theory research paradigm. The results indicate a high degree of similarity in the issues raised by our different institutionally placed participants, with important nuances evident in the food security policy realities described by each. This study’s findings suggest valuable future directions for further interrogation and exploration. In particular, questions surrounding knowledge mobilization, research and education were revealed as central to sustainable food security policy by each of our interviewees: a female farmer, an agricultural researcher and a top level policy-maker. Interviewees differed over whether support for marketled or subsistence-focused farming systems leads to more effective food security policy. Policy-makers clearly prioritize market solutions. But farmers and researchers show keen awareness of the importance of subsistence farming knowledge and practice to household food security strategies under conditions of cash-poverty and environmental stress. Follow-up interview triads could ascertain, in relation to the degree to which both environmental and global economic conditions worsen over the coming seasons, whether actors in the key food institutions strengthen or modify their views, based on experience and the integration of new knowledge into their decision-making processes. The political context engendered by devolution and the new Kenyan constitution provides the incentive to examine the results through the lens of democratic relations. Importantly, to the extent that policy-makers and researchers approach food security questions from a “top-down” position of power and authority, they will be out of step with the spirit and letter of the new constitution, potentially missing out on the innovative knowledge cocreation opportunities available through more “bottom-up”, cooperative and participatory power relations. This point gains prominence when recognizing that public participation can lead to greater public ‘ownership’ of policies. Based on our case study, we believe that careful replication of the interview triad approach through time has the potential to provide a deeper, richer and more integrated understanding of the existing institutional and communication factors affecting food security policy outcomes in a range of contexts.
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Leigh Brownhill is a Research Associate at the Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University, Montreal. Her articles have been published in Canadian Journal of Development Studies, the Journal of Asian and African Studies, Feminist Economics, Capitalism Nat u re S o c i a l i s m a n d o t h e r academic journals, as well as in news outlets including Canadian Dimension, the Kitchener Record, The Standard (Nairobi), and Pambazuka News, east and southern Africa’s leading internet news service. She is the author of Land, Food, Freedom: Struggles for the Gendered Commons in Kenya, 1870-2007 (African World Press, 2009). She teaches and writes on social movements, aboriginal education, climate change, food regimes and farming systems.
Dr. Gordon M. Hickey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences at McGill University, Canada, and Co-Director of the McGillUnited Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Collaborating Centre on Environmental Assessment. In partnership with colleagues at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), he is presently leading a threeyear, $4.3 M project titled: Enhancing Ecologically Resilient Food Security in the Semiarid Midlands of Kenya, funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). His international research applies mixed-method techniques to explore the institutional processes affecting natural resource-related policy-making and implementation, with a particular focus on integrating scientific knowledge for innovation. His work has appeared in journals such as Social Studies of Science, Forest Policy and Economics, International Journal of Forecasting, Journal of Environmental Management and Ecological Indicators.
