 Welcome everyone, this is the AgriFoC 2030 webinar on influencing policy and what happens beyond the policy brief. So the question, the big question of this webinar today is we've written the policy brief as we discussed in the last one, if you were participant in that one, we've written the policy brief, what happens now? Is our job over as researchers and scientists or can we do more and can we do additional and scenery things to improve the impact of our policy messages? So in other words, is the policy brief a means to an end or is it a tool to influence policy among other tools or among other processes that we can apply as researchers? Just a rough program for today. We'll have a short introduction by Eva. Eva will introduce himself in a second. He's also with SCI and very much in charge of the AgriFoC project here at SCI. He'll introduce us to the whole program. And after that, I'll introduce you to the lady sitting next to me, Isabel Bannieron, who is a researcher with CIRA, which is a different organization. And the idea of today was to give you a bit of a feeling for how different organizations try and influence policy as well. So that's why we have our special guest here today. With me also is, and you can't see her in the picture because she's just sitting outside of the frame, is Meta Zinong, who is also with the SCI Asia Center, same as me, and in the policy group. And she might chime in with discussion points, but she'll also be reading your chat messages. So if you have a question or a comment, please put it in a chat. Me will read the chat messages so we can respond to that as needed. So without further ado, I'll hand it over to Eva, who is in Sweden, so thousands of miles away, but hopefully the technology won't fail us. And Eva will give his introduction. All right, thanks. Yeah, thanks, Clemens. And hopefully you will all see the first slide on my slide presentation. And my name is Eva, I work at Stockholm Environment Institute, SCI in Stockholm, and so a bit far off from Bangkok. But as Clemens said, hopefully you will hear and see my presentation. So I'll give you a bit of an overview of what I agree to see for 2030 program is trying to do. We're right there trying to bridge science with policy and practice. And the program is, let's see if I can, as there we are, there. It's targeted in SDG 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals. And hangar achieving food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. That's the main target of the program. And it's based, it's a CDA, it's a Swedish international development agency supported program. And it developed by a number of Swedish universities. And we, SCI, we are part of the communication and engagement component of the program. And the program is based on that. We know that small hundred farmers are accounted for some 70 to 60, 70% of the global agriculture production and are increasingly seen as key actors in reaching the SDG 2 at global level. So they're really important, but many of them are facing severe difficulties in many, many challenges, of course, in meeting new demands that are arising and then trying to sort of cope with new realities and improve their sustainability, their profitability and their productivity. And to a large extent, the transformation agenda is needed to enable all these smaller farmers to respond to the accelerated demands and ensure food security. And we also know that such an agenda and all the interventions needed and all the actions and policies that are to support all this agenda needs to be science-based and knowledge-based. So to that extent, science and scientists do have a crucial role, we think, and I think you agree with me in supporting small hundred farmers in meeting future food demands and development demands in the years to come. So this is the basic premise on what the program is resting on, but the problem is, and you know that as well, we have a number of obstacles for linking science and policy and practices in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia where the program is based. But we also have, we have data which usually are insufficient and inaccessible or basically lacking, meaning that that scientist and science has a great role in trying to compile, synthesize data and knowledge in a form that is useful for policymakers and practitioners. And we often have inadequate models for linking science to policymakers and and practices. Let's see. Okay, yeah. So we have inadequate models for sharing for linking science and policy. And we also have a problem in scientists often lacking the capacity, capacity to communicate their science and their knowledge. I'm back again on my screen here. And research in the Agri-Force 2000 target readings and basically also research in my country, Sweden is often primary academic and generally not designed to address knowledge gaps of specific actions by scientists, by policymakers or practitioners. And scientists are usually not trained to communicate their research outside of academia. So we have a disconnect between science, policymakers and practitioners. And then we have this program Agri-Force which is trying to, together with scientists, link with scientists in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, synthesizing knowledge and science in the area of agricultural development, preparing it for communication in the form of policy briefs and reports and media and products. And trying also then to engage and with stakeholders, be it policymakers or practitioners. Then that's the Agri-Force program in a nutshell. So we're trying to analyze and synthesize relevant scientific data. We're trying to communicate these relevant stakeholders and we're trying to engage with relevant stakeholders and co-creating knowledge. And it's the latter part that we are dealing with in this seminar now, the engagement part, which is usually, I think it's one of the most crucial parts of this science linking to policy and practitioners scheme in a sense that usually we do our research, we do our policy briefs and then we sort of tick it off and then we go back to the lab or to our fields doing our research and we rarely sort of go beyond that point. So that we will dig into deeper today. Just to give you a bit more background on what type of area and focus the program has. We have three cost-cutting areas, sustainable and intensification of agriculture. Agriculture being more productive and more efficient use of human financial and natural resources. We do have an urge to increase women and youth participation in agriculture development and try to empower that through the program. And we do think that access to market and value chains for small-scale farmers are key to improve productivity and profitability of small-scale farming systems. And then we have also a number of four themes of the program and that's social and economic dimensions of small agriculture, multifunctional landscapes and increased productivity of cropping systems and also increased productivity of animal livestock systems for small-scale farmers. So that's basically the program in a nutshell and I hope you've been able to see here and see the slides. And I hand over now to to Clemens and colleagues in Bangkok taking this further, the seminar further. Over to you Clemens. Okay thank you Ibar. Thank you very much. Yeah I think we all have to admit this is the first time we're doing, we're applying this technology in the team software. We do not have, we do not have calm support with us today because that all failed through. So we're struggling with the technology but hopefully the attendees that are online at the moment will still get something out of it. We've also prepared a couple of other slides but I'm not sure actually whether they'll work out maybe make and figure it out as we go along. So thank you very much Ibar for giving us that context. In fact I think you know even though agriculture is a sort of geared towards agriculture some of the things that we'll talk about might not be just specific on agriculture but it happens to be the case that Isabel in both my research area as a culture. So Isabel Banyarou is a researcher at SIRAT but based now in Vieng Chan, Laos PDR, Laos People's Democratic Republic and we're lucky to have her here in Bangkok at the moment because she has been attending a number of meetings just this morning. There was the workshop on the Bioeconomy Initiative and last two days we had the Responsible Business Forum which we both attended and it was quite exciting. But what I want to know Isabel, what do you do in Laos and how does a SIRAT researcher get to Laos and what are the sort of the main issues that you're working on at the moment? Thank you for inviting me to this exciting adventure. It's my first time sitting and participating. So my name is Isabel and I've been working in the Laos PDR for eight years now. Previously I was based in Montpellier where the headquarters of SIRAT are. We're about maybe 900 researchers. In Vieng Chan we are maybe four and basically what we do is research and cooperation. So we cooperate with local institutions in the different countries where we're posted. So I started working at the Faculty of Agriculture and then I work previously in a project at the Ministry of Agriculture and now at the National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute. I'm an economist by training and my main area of interest is sustainability standards but as there are not so many standards operational in Laos I work also on regional value chains which are quite exciting in the area. We're producers in Laos set up our products to get any traders or Thai traders or Chinese traders and value chains that are mostly regional. So it's what I'd like to know because we're talking about obviously policy influence also creating policy briefs and what to do with that afterwards. What's your contact in Laos with policy actors? How do you insert yourself in the policy process in Laos? So that was very new to me and that was really exciting in Laos because in Montpellier maybe we're more remote in relation to policy makers and more focused on doing research but in Laos we are in really close contact with the Ministry of Agriculture and through NAFRI and faculty that are both also really connected to the Ministry we have frequent interaction and that was something that I really learned that we're not only doing research for the sake of research but there is a demand that is not far and we have and it's very rewarding it's not like you're in a bubble and you're doing this research and maybe one day you'll publish in a paper it's a demand and it's not only the government sector can be NGO and it's interested by having hard evidence or data on a typical subject that they will use in their projects so the line between the end user and your research is much shorter which makes it really rewarding in terms of research because it's not abstract. So yeah mainly we work with ministry people or with people who have to give information to the ministry I don't talk directly to the ministers or people from the ministry some of them but mostly with researchers who are in direct contact with the people from the ministry who really are waiting for information from them. So we're talking about researchers from Laos and who where would these researchers be working at because obviously they're not at CIRAB right? So they would be working at the National Agricultural Forestry Research Institute and also at different faculties of the National University of Laos. Right so that National Agricultural Forestry Research Institute that's a public research institute I think that's important to say because that's also a direct vector into policy right those public research institutes that you have basically I think everywhere right in each country. And they are even under the ministry of agriculture so we're even more closely connected as many research topics that they work on are really in response to a demand from the ministry. Right so the demand comes on to these researchers and they pass it on to you because you happen to be the expert in let's say regional value chains so they want to get your expertise on them. Not always the way we work also with the NAFRI is that the research demand is passed on to them and then I help them with the metallurgical issues so I'm kind of in support they do the research themselves and there's interaction between us that's the way we because CIRAB is also about research but research in cooperation and capacity building and doing research. So there's a strong capacity building element involved. Yes so we have lots of dialogue and interactions about how they can best answer the demands that are made to them from the ministry. Right. And implementing the research and then after in writing their reports and sharing the information and that's where we start talking about these policy briefs because. Yeah that was exactly what I wanted to ask you next. So CIRAB very similar to SCI produces policy briefs as one of their communication outputs. Yes. Right. In CIRAB's view or let's say in the corporate procedure of CIRAB what is the purpose of the policy brief? Oh they're okay so CIRAB how can we say we're okay as many researchers we're like a herd of cats so we are quite independent in the way we communicate our research. Yeah. The mainstream channels through articles and then on burning topics we also have possibility to do those policy briefs. Yeah. And why I say we are a herd of cats is that there is a single format in terms of you know colors and outset and everything. Yeah. But then what the content will be is a bit up to whatever people want to. Up to the context in the project. Yeah. Some people are going to focus on methodology saying oh we do simulation games and that's the best tool to advocate what we do. And some people are more on to sharing the results more like a research brief. Yeah. And some are on more burning topics and are just to catch the attention of donors. So there is a single format in terms of presentation and then in terms of content it depends upon you know what people with the message people want to share. So I'm wondering from the perspective of CIRAB headquarters what is the audience of a policy brief? Can you say something about that and then as opposed to that what do you think is the audience of a policy brief? Okay. So we post them on our website. Yeah. But I think that mostly we use them not at central level in Montpellier but maybe in the different countries. In the local context. Yes in the local context. And a lot of it is maybe not so much to share research with researchers because we obviously do scientific papers but mostly maybe to disseminate our research with donors and also with potential partners because there's a big partnership component so this is what we do not alone but together with others. But it would be the same as the donor. Yeah. So other researchers, donors, potential partners, what about policy actors? Well that was actually okay maybe I'm very not representative in this aspect but until I came to Laos I was not very much policy oriented. I was you know doing the research. Just an academic. Yeah academic. And it's really being in contact that's really what I learned from the Laos context and I'm really grateful because that's really interesting that that's what I really learned when working with researchers in Laos and I say let's do this great paper and they don't care what for and what they want. Yeah. It's difficult, takes so much time and they don't even know who's going to read it and it's not useful for them. But at the same time they have very important demands. They're really demand driven towards the ministry, towards donors, towards round table processes in the country and so that's when we started realizing maybe two, three years ago that we really had to change the way we communicate our research to make it more user friendly and make it useful for the people with who we work and for who they work and to be really part of the policy process. So that was a major discovery for me and I think that was really useful. That's great. Yeah. Go back a little bit and ask you, okay, so you come from Montpellier, you're plunked into this ecosystem as you described it in Laos where you're not just in your academic ivory tower but you actually have to interact with policy people, with other researchers, with NGOs, with the donors and I imagine because Laos is a relatively small place, you all know them personally as well and when you go on, when you go for dinners you might see them on the other table and so it's very close, very close isn't it? So obviously as you say writing articles in agricultural economics journals might not have an immediate effect on the political or policy ecosystem there but nevertheless you still produce I assume in policy brief so who are those people who now in the Laos context, who are those people who take them, read them and maybe act upon them? Those would be mainly people working at the ministry level and also donors and NGOs, people in Laos. Yes, maybe in Laos. I would say that okay maybe that resists the question of what do you want to do with what you want to achieve with your policy brief and I think that without being pretentious and thinking that we're about to be able to change the world, I don't know how much we can do that, but the objective is to bring change in the way things are done and to back that with evidence about what's not working currently and how things could change. It's not also maybe not about giving the best solutions but bringing people to think about the solutions that we propose but are among a set of options. So you don't have all the answers but you want to give possible scenarios or expectations, something that might happen. And maybe attract because in Laos there's so many issues that are being discussed and so maybe bring to the fore what we think are priority issues or issues that we think should be taken into account. Well okay so that would be the way we would do as foreign researchers but in Laos also there is this demand driven so most of the time the topics are also given to us. What do you think about developing the t-center or so we have both topics that can be that go this way and then the idea is to share this information we have and bring people around the table because maybe that's what's interesting with the policy brief. The objective is not only to show how good and how clever and how interesting our research is but to bring people together to discuss the policy brief and I think that's the next step that we really want to achieve. Yeah okay let me just interrupt you here. May if there are any questions in the chat room then let us know okay you can interrupt us anytime. Thanks and what I wanted to get onto is something that you said before which is you're learning how to communicate research differently. So obviously not the traditional academic route and there is research that's actually demanded from you within your context. How can we let's say you're doing your research on regional value chains? How can you insert your knowledge into ongoing policy processes? I mean what I'm getting at is is it enough to write a research brief or a summary of your research or a policy brief and then send it by email to the Deputy Director General of Planning or is there an additional sort of effort needed to really get those messages across? There is. Oh yeah there is. I think the whole idea of trying to foster policy dialogues or try to have places I don't know how you call it where you can really exchange about the policy brief, the policy brief being a starting point where you can engage people. What do you think about this? First for fact checking is this also important to you and is what we're talking about or writing our diagnosis? Is it a good one? So basically you're validating your own research aren't you? Yes that's revalidating just making sure and then once we're all on board with the same or maybe different views but then we agree on the landscape of that problem. Try to discuss with people the solutions or the options, their pros and cons and how to move from there and I think that's maybe that's the most important part of the policy brief. It's not only about advertising what we're doing but also to launch some kind of discussion with people so that's when it's important to really know well the landscape that you don't get only one type of person like okay maybe policy makers but also maybe NGOs, farmers if it's possible, if they're important in the issue, maybe private sector people so that you have a balanced view of the issue that you're talking about which makes it richer because you don't represent only the interest or the viewpoint of research or across e-makers or government or NGO because that's what you want to achieve. So basically the policy brief is the start of a dialogue. What I'd be interested in is okay we're starting a dialogue now and we've written a policy brief to start a dialogue. How does this dialogue take place? How can we imagine a policy dialogue to take place? Is this like a big formal event where we give tons of PowerPoint presentations and everybody's bored to death or falls asleep or plays with their phone or is this something on a much smaller scale where we try to interact with various policy actors and try and have discussions with them and influence them thereby. In your case what are the various sort of venues of a policy dialogue? I guess there could be to be imaginative and creative. You could have maybe a big forum. Maybe you could keep the big forum for the final part when you substitute the interactions you can have. If you could imagine stakeholder meetings with different kinds of stakeholders to validate for the different perspectives. I was just thinking earlier about maybe we have had instances where we organize games and we have through the policy brief identified scenarios to cope with different problems and these scenarios can be played in participatory games and then we could feed the results in these games and have something different formats are possible I guess. Okay and I'm also wondering whether the dialogue also takes place in the form of like informal like using your network and having informal conversations with policy actors to sort of plant plant seeds of ideas in their minds something like that. Yeah that can happen also. Yeah the thing is that as many avenues as possible it's really what is interesting with the policy brief is that it's something that you could just carry around and share with many different kinds of people because it's supposed to be very simple addressed to a broad audience and it's something that you can carry on and it could be the basis of discussion for many different types of stakeholders. We're talking about simple messages. I mean I guess in your research you know there's a wealth of data that comes up and it's all complex and there's so much interesting information that you come up with. How do you select those those key messages you know often in the policy brief you have like three or four these are the key messages you should change that or whatever. How do you select those messages you know is it according to the government demand whatever they want or yeah how do you prioritize? Yeah I guess that's that's when it gets a bit complicated because everyone okay I'm thinking about one type of research that we've been doing with with Oxfam and then we think about this research and the results could be useful for and how it can be used for the final objective that would be for example access of all to organic farming and then you can think about okay who can use it who would be the end users and how they could use it yeah but I think it's a it's a complicated issue for researchers to stay simple and be simple. In Sierra we participate each year to this big agri fair in France and so each year we have a booth of lots of display and people who go there are ordinary French citizens and they go to this huge fair where they can see big animals and factors and they they stop at the Sierra so hang on they see big animals and tractors and then they see the Sierra group and they ask you where you're selling and what's where you're doing and so we say you know in French we say research for the south and they go south of France what are you doing so I think it's it's a every day yeah are you working in Mies or Marseille okay and I think it's um I think this is a very good exercise that we had because first we had to help you know make the booth with all the posters and and we have a tendency to use jargon and we had people talk to us and say oh what are you talking about and what really are you doing I think for us it was a fantastic exercise to um to take this um yeah take the habits of explaining simply and that's always like so students and young researchers the way I work just pretend I'm your grandma and explain what you're doing and it's not because you're explaining it simply that it's stupid but I think this this is um a duty that researchers have to be able to express in a simple way for many people to catch on what they're doing and it's not necessarily dumbing it down but it's using the right language exactly so that people understand that you're not working in Mies but and you're attacking problems that many times are not aware of because you know ordinary citizens don't care about nutrition sense it's a value change for example they don't even know what it is exactly and so and and you just wonder why you're doing all this stuff so and another thing that we discussed yesterday actually may brought it up is and that might be culturally very specific but the tone of the policy group so not just what the message is but how do you convey the message and and you know how do you strike the balance between oh I'm this serious scientist that invested a year of my time in coming up with this genius solution and also on the on the other hand you you have to present your work as an offering rather than rather than sort of a paternalistic type of yes you know you got to do this now because because I sacrifice my time and I guess you know a the tone might be different in Laos Thailand in France or wherever yeah we it's funny because I put a lot of emphasis on the titles trying to have you know catchy and appealing titles and subtitles in my policy briefs and then when we you know try to translate them into Laos people are horrifying because that's not the way titles don't work no it doesn't convey the message the same way and so one of the problems we've had is translating the policy brief that we initially I initially or collectively we initially wrote in English and translating it and having in the end something that's appealing and where there is a message and where people see the importance of your message in Laos with the extra difficulty that I don't read now so I'm not so it's kind of like Google translated translated to Laos and then back into the first time who was translating was a person doing research in Laos okay okay so they're researching but it's still difficult because when when we did this this workshop about policy briefs with the people from the research institute and the ministry and we looked at these different policy briefs and there was our policy brief that we shared in Laos and at the ministry people looked at it and said doesn't make sense and I was a bit crushed because I thought it made a lot of sense in English and so I and so I think there's it's not only about translating it's about conveying the messages the right way so that people yeah people and that people want to read it and trust the message if it's too you know type of messages that go through in English might not be the same type of messages that go through in Laos and also maybe the degree of detail people said oh we're not detailed enough in the recommendations but we didn't feel that we were legitimate to make these you know very detailed level of message of recommendations and that should be further discussed so yeah what exactly are people waiting from the policy brief and and how receptive are they to the way you write the messages yeah okay cool and over to Mei who has a question so we have a question from Elizabeth who is from Kenya and she going back to your earlier point about speaking to farmers and an audience that's easier to not policy makers she says she she wants to know if farmers are engaged through the policy brief at all if any and how farmers issues might be presented to policy makers okay like the perspective of the farmer to the presented to policy to the policy makers okay okay thanks Elizabeth for the question um where's one in that policy the latest policy brief we were talking about the consumers okay they were they were not directly engaged it was really maybe because it was about consumption so it was more the downstream part but there was something on farmers but they were not directly in the process I think that's okay so now we're in for example we're in a project where we're really working closely with the farmers and I don't think the policy brief would be uh the tool that I would use we would yeah we would probably take the results from what we're doing and then we're trying what we're doing is we're going to do some games with them yeah with them but also with traders because it's it's a multi stakeholder yeah along the village exactly and we're what issues we think are the important issues for you know this is about diversifying out of maize so we're the issues that we spot as the relevant issues we try to make them pop out of the game but so that you know farmers and other stakeholders discuss directly I don't think there's a need for a policy brief in this case I guess yeah different different types of different tools are going to be able available for different audiences it's a big question the question of audience I think that's a really good point because there's this thing that we call policy brief now do we produce this for policy actors specifically or are we trying to cast a much wider net as you said before to encompass donors other NGOs research partners the academy uh the academia and perhaps farmers or uh or or do we segment the market so to speak and say we're producing policy briefs so that policy actors can take up some of the messages that we're trying to convey to them and perhaps to communicate with farmers we need farmer briefs or we need games or we need short video clips or whatever the case may be I don't know what the farmers in Kenya like to what kind of media they consume or maybe like little Facebook videos or whatever um in Myanmar for example may you know that um there is a farmer TV channel where research tries to convey messages through that TV channel I don't think it works 24 hours but but there are certain times of the day where sort of news from farmers come up and a lot of messages for them and I think probably the messages to the farmers are different messages than what we're sending to policy actors obviously the messages to farmers might be more behavioral behavioristic I don't know what the word is exactly so how to change their practice when to use fertilizer one to apply what's the right time to apply irrigation so on whereas policy actors might not need to know all this stuff but might might have to know if they change if if a thousand farmers change their their agronomic practice what kind of a large scale effect would that have on the landscape or on the water quality or whatever so maybe thinking of Kenya but also Asia another type of way to engage with farmers is having on-site cross visits things that might be more speak than just handing out leaflets or sharing information that you so instead of saying oh this is how you should do this this is how it's done elsewhere just try to have farmers when we discuss with farmers in different locations and and about you know recent um project activities they're always very happy because they went to this farmer's place and they learned this and they exchanged on this problem and they were able to relate that oh maybe these farmers in Vietnam they're very far away but they have the same problems as they do so yeah and it's actually sometimes good even to take policy people along to these kind of businesses so they see what's happening on the ground may you have another question or com yeah we have a question about monitoring and evaluation if you'd like to talk about that now basically monitoring the impact of the policy brief on the policy maker so how do you ensure that there's feedback into your process of policy engagement which could be the policy brief but which could also involve other things yeah it's a great question like how do we actually measure the impact of a given policy brief personally I don't have an answer to that you know obviously if it's online you can measure them a number of clicks and so on but that's not really impact right that's just how many people happen to click on your policy brief and probably if you pay google enough money you'll get more clicks so that doesn't result in behavior change and like you said before in the end what we want is to affect change yes so personally I'm not sure I don't know do you have an answer to that well I mean the policy change would be one but it takes time and often you don't stay enough time to see those policy changes exactly but maybe going to various meetings in Laos when we say that some of the words that you've been using and trying to promote are increasingly used it's not because they're being used that they're going to translate into change in practices but you know some ideas that you're trying to make up take are actually taken up by the stakeholders is something interesting also maybe one engaging with the private sector or NGOs having activities the thing is that the policy process is so long it's difficult to see right when if you have different bits and pieces of projects or short term activities stemming from what you've been able to showcase but it's true that it's that being able to see that's a sharp one yeah and being able to see the results of these policy views really rewarding and but it's something that doesn't really yeah I mean I think I can give an example also from our work in Laos where we were we were supporting the ministry of agriculture on developing a sustainable agriculture policy and while we were doing that the government was developing its national green growth strategy so there was a request from the prime minister's office to the ministry of agriculture asking them to comment on the one of the initial drafts of the national green growth strategy document the because we happened to be there at the time the ministry said well you guys from SCI why don't you comment on it first obviously they're offloading some of the extra burden of work that they have but they happen to be working with us as experts it gave us the document to read which was which was I think not exactly due process because these were confidential documents at the time we weren't allowed to get electronic copies I'm not even sure if I'm supposed to say this now so we only had paper copies on gave our they gave our comments they received our comments did whatever they needed to do with them and then submitted the comments back on back to the prime minister's office and I think while it is not while we're not able to prove that we have actually had an influence I think notionally we did have an influence because some of our comments were taken on and now can be found in the national green growth strategy maybe I have another example I was remotely involved in that but just to show how ideal the setting is in Laos there was this big problem with bad banana investors in northern Laos people who were leasing land in Laos and growing bananas in a very unsustainable way and so that copy the year of the minister who asked the NAFRI to do a research on those bananas and what they unveiled was astonishing and so they didn't do a policy brief at that time but there was this round anyway the result was that there was this policy dialogue and they really shared and they really created a buzz which was what they wanted to do and that was followed by a ban a ban of these banana investors temporary ban but you know the message went through there's a problem we have to stop it now and while we're stopping it we have to think about how to foster responsible agricultural investment in Laos and then their work or their works carry down not only with bananas but perennial crops in general to see what are the rules of the game that we want to be set in Laos for investors to come to grow rubber or bananas or whatever so I think that's maybe that's a fairytale of a you know everything going very smoothly the demand coming to the research research providing some answers recommendations and all those solutions options that are discussed with the with the policy makers and then then something happening in yeah yeah I think I think we have to work with these kind of impact stories yes very often we won't be able to to you know to show the proof in black and white but uh but uh I think sometimes we do have influence yes may there's another question yep um this question is on accountability given the political reality of working there how would policy recommendations ensure at least broad responsibility of consumers producers local authorities farmers yeah I think it's something that you already mentioned a little bit and sometimes the information that we came we come up with can be a bit sensitive as well yes right and we what we don't want to do is damage the relationship yes between all those actors that you just mentioned may the producers and the industry perhaps on you know antagonizing the the farmers and the other way around and so on you don't want to bring mess bring the head on yeah what you want to bring is dialogue and then each of these actors also being accountable for their actions and perhaps the the effects that they that they produce on other stakeholders whenever they change their course of action I think the objective is not it's okay when we're working on these issues of investments not blaming and shaming but trying to bring evidence to change in a positive way yeah yeah yeah one more question about the policies of relying on the policy itself that you are trying to influence so that we have so far from Cambodia who believes that if the policy itself doesn't sustain change of farmers practice farmers or practitioners yeah action so can you talk a little bit more about maybe the method of relying on the policy process so yeah I think so far has a very a very a very good point which is that policy often doesn't even impact the behavior here the behavior of the individual farm right but I think nevertheless we shouldn't discard policies and say always just talk all these people and just talking and actually doesn't relate to to the reality of the farmer because I do think that policy can provide a certain environment for farmers to to to to work in or to to produce in what do you think about that over the past two days in these different conferences we've been we've been talking a lot about multi stakeholder dialogues and I think this is something important not to rely only on policies but also on the different voices of the different stakeholders could be private sector it could be it is mostly also the farmers and geo civil society and okay so it's more less easy to do in different areas but for example when we're going when we're doing these simulation games that we're going to organize it's typically with you know by making people play for example their own situation that you have traders and farmers engage and and identifying problems together so it's the private sector and our staff of the government at the local level because of course we have this other problems that the policies are divided to find at the central level and then goes down to the province goes down to the province to the district to the village and by that time either the message is diluted or they don't have the means of implementing or and so it's it's it's not only a top-down thing and and I think it's very important to see how these policies and and the way they are implemented on the ground makes sense also and and there was this other policy brief that we did with the T and we had this interaction with the different levels district province or province district and I think this is very important to take into account the fact that there might be discrepancies between the you know central level and you know decentralized areas where the policies are actually used so it's a as a researcher basically you don't have to just focus on the subject matter of your research but also how to get this policy dialogue going and how to influence this process of policy dialogue with positive messages about your by your research and and I think in order to wrap this up here now the policy brief is not you know it doesn't stop at the policy brief right the policy brief is one tool of many tools that help us to communicate with the people that we want to communicate within a multi-stakeholder dialogue and policy actors are very much a part of that multi-stakeholder dialogue but certainly not the only ones that we need to talk to and even governments are not the only ones that we need to talk to but but but I think nonetheless we can use policy briefs as a vehicle to communicate certain messages to summarize research and to sort of validate some of the some of the things that we say in these various meetings we have this training ourselves on policy briefs because we also needed to be trained and the trainer said something I remember is that if you just write a policy brief and then you stop then you you can just save your time and don't like the policy if you're just writing it and and and doing nothing with it just go play golf or cook do whatever you want but don't do that because that's just a waste of time if you do the policy brief you have to take it all the way and then take advantage of all the wonderful thing it labels to do with the dialogue that you can engage with. Okay well I think that wraps this up thank you very very much Isabelle it was great to have you here at our first webinar for all of us as a special guest thank you thank you mate for being an excellent producer that was really really great thank you Eva for your excellent introduction to Agri Fossey he's waving through the computer and hopefully everything's still okay with your farm and you're going to change behavior on yours and thank you to the audience for listening to us and watching us and I hope that asking questions that was that was very good and I hope you found this a little bit useful but from us from Bangkok now thank you very much and see you next time