 I would like to welcome again all the participants of this webinar on re-balancing power in global food chains, lessons for Kenya. This is the third webinar we are organizing at the project Empowering Producers in Commercial Agriculture, EPIC. And today we will be discussing insights from an experience with empowering farmers and workers in Kenya's green bean industry. The experience was facilitated by the Kenya Human Rights Commission, KHRC, which is a national NGO and by Tradecraft Exchange, an NGO based in the UK, in collaboration with value chain actors including Matt Spencer, MNS in the UK. The initiative provided farmers and workers with capacity development, access to information and organizational support and facilitated dialogue among value chain actors in order to address some of the challenges farmers and workers faced. So we have a fantastic panel today, we have Mary Campbell, who is a labor rights advisor at KHRC, and she will provide another view of the initiative. And we have three other panelists who will provide comments on the experience from their own perspectives, contributing insights on the outcomes and lessons from the approach. The three panelists are Kashara Ketonga, who was previously producing fine beans for the UK export market. He is currently the coordinator of the Merulewa Multicultural Producers and Exporters Cooperative Society. Hazel Cully, he is a senior food sustainable product and root material manager at MNS, which is one of the UK's leading retailers. And Tom Wills, who is a policy advisor at Threadcraft Exchange, a UK NGO that works towards global trade that creates lasting solutions to poverty for workers and farmers. So I will now hand over to Mary for her presentation, and then we'll go on with the panel discussion. Over to you, Mary. Hello, theory, and hi, everyone. Thank you very much for having me today. My name is Mary, as theory has rightly introduced me. I work with Kenya Human Rights Commission as a program advisor in charge of labor rights. I will be speaking to you about a project that we implemented in Kenya from 2013 to 2016, and sharing the learning therefrom. Now this project broadly sought to achieve one fair trading practices. We also sought to rebalance power in a green bean supply chain that starts in one part of the country, Kenya, and ends in the UK. And we also sought to basically just promote fairer sharing of risks and benefits along this chain. Now we modeled this project on soft approaches. So it was primarily a dialogue and partnership approach. And the partners that were included in this project include the Kenya Human Rights Commission, Threadcraft, Flamingo Horticulture, Max and Spencer as the retailer, Flamingo was the exporter. And of course we had small farmers in Meru County in Kenya in Parkhouse workers. Overall we had a direct reach of 300 small holder farmers and 3,000 workers engaged in Flamingo Horticulture. The project is basically was hinged on five objectives. The first one was the need to increase the capacity, governance and performance of workers' representatives and farmers' groups. We also sought to enhance predictability and security of incomes for the farmers. Also we sought to achieve an improved livelihood for the small scale farmers and of course the workers. Also we were looking at improving their terms and conditions of work. And broadly we also sought to just improve the engagement between all the supply chain actors so that there would be fairer sharing of risks and benefits and also have a deeper sense and respect for human rights broadly. So some of the project activities that we engaged in to achieve the objectives included capacity strengthening for farmers and workers. So we basically trained our farmers' representatives and workers as well to enable them to negotiate more effectively with the exporter on better terms of trade. We also engaged in experiential learning in which case we would set up demonstration plots with the farmer. We would support them in keeping records and adherence to good agricultural practices just to be able to establish the actual cost of production of green bean to negotiate more effectively with the retailer. We also promoted exchange visits which were geared towards fostering learning and experience sharing for the farmers and workers. So these we did both locally and in the UK. Locally our farmers visited a cooperative society in a county in Kenya and learned quite a bit about organizing collective bargaining as well as how to market their produce. And there was also two visits that were scheduled to the UK where farmers and workers engaged with supply chain actors on the other end of the chain and learned quite a bit as well as sharing their own experiences. We engaged also in reviewing and strengthening of policies, most specifically within the flamingo culture. We engaged with the HR managers to review the driven handling mechanisms. At the regulatory level we engaged the regulator, statutory regulator with the horticulture crops direct rate and we strengthened the code of conduct to reflect the realities that farmers specifically were facing. And we also influenced the publishing of the code of conduct on the regulator's website because before the advent of the project these code of conduct was inaccessible to farmers. We also influenced regulation at the county level where we engaged or partnered with a commission that is mandated to draft bills and policies and laws in Kenya. It's called the Kenya Law Reform Commission in which case a bill was drafted to promote the rights of farmers, especially where they have bought counterfeit products and they have not received a compensation for the same as these were complaints we had received in the project. So the bill is currently at the county level but has not been enacted into law yet. Lastly on the activities, we had a tool that we called the Ways of Working Meeting. Now this was an unprecedented platform that brought together all the supply chain actors starting from the small scale farmers to the parkhouse workers, to the exporters on both sides Kenya and UK and of course the retailer. And in these meetings they would discuss and there was a metric that was agreed on that had action points comprising of the challenges that were faced in the sector. There would be commitments made in this meeting, follow-ups would be made and where there were deadlocks it would also be agreed that some of the actions would not be possible to be addressed. Now of course there were a number of challenges and lessons that we learned in this project. The first one is the fact that these ways of working documents that was the law from the Ways of Working Meeting was not a legally binding document. So it was not possible to really put people to task when commitments were not met because really it depended on the goodwill from all the supply chain actors. Right now as we speak we still have some action points that remain and resolve. Now the second challenge relates to the cost of convening the physical Ways of Working Meeting, especially where we had farmers participating and workers participating on the UK end of the train in supply chain meetings. It was extremely expensive to have this kind of a structure. And even where the retailer and the court have had to come down for the meetings in Kenya the cost cannot be overemphasized. Now the risk of the race to the bottom by competing exporters was also a challenge that remained alive in the project. So some of the instances where the exporter would be willing to make changes or amends for instance in reviewing the wages of workers but because of the stiff competition that was brought about by other exporters selling to similar markets it could sometimes be difficult for the exporter to be able to just strengthen some of these things that were raised in the project. Also the fact that soft approaches to advocacy are not always adequate by themselves like dialogue and partnership. Sometimes they are limited and we realize that a smart mix of strategies was required in terms of achieving more. Now lastly on the challenges, we also learned that the fresh produce export business is intricate and is revealed with so many challenges and complexity. So we realized that addressing some of the challenges in Kenya did not automatically translate into a resolution across the entire chain. Now the question of replication is important, is the project applicable? Some of these are probably applicable elsewhere. Yes, the answer is yes, that they are applicable not just in green beans chains, also in other food chains. And there has been already interest and conversations by the retailer who has been keen on engaging this kind of lessons in their other food chains. And also I can mention that for instance last year a food chain supply meeting or a ways of working meeting was convened in Kenya. That is like already two years after close of the project, so that shows the willingness to continue scaling out the lesson. We have also been approached by other funding partners who have expressed interest in trying replication in other food chains and these are conversations that are currently ongoing. Now on sustainability, we learned that especially the ways of working meeting, they are completely dependent on goodwill from all supply chain actors. That is the only way they can be sustained. Also availability of resources cannot be overemphasized. I also need to mention that farmers and workers must have a strong voice to be able to engage adequately in this kind of a platform where farmers and workers lack a strong voice. The ways of working meetings can be reduced into mere talk shops. Now, lastly, this kind of a tool is really dependent on dismantling power and leveling the playing field so that all actors are coming to the table from a common platform and no power is wielded more powerfully by one actor against the other. Thank you very much for listening to me. Okay, so what I'm suggesting is we now move to the panel discussion with the panelists, as it were, and maybe we can move to Hazel. So if you could give us your five minutes comments, perspective on the presentation from Mary Hazel, if you can hear us. Thank you, Mary, and it's nice to hear your voice again. I think that was a really fair, very fair representation from Mary of the project. My name is Hazel, I work at Marks and Spencer in our food sustainability team, and I helped sort of manage this program internally. I think we learned absolutely a bucket load from it being involved in this project. And I think IED are going to send you the report that I recommend you all read afterwards, which has got real detail. We've been very transparent about what went well and what could have gone better. I think my main recommendation really is just that whole piece around communicating, listening to everybody's ideas, trying to... I think the thing that I learned most at the big supply chain meetings was not making the buyer lead. We had an external facilitator who ran those meetings, so it wasn't usually as a retailer, you're used to sort of organizing everything and running all the meetings, actually shifting the agenda focus so that everyone in that meeting had a voice and everyone in that meeting was prioritized, was really, really interesting for me. And I don't think retailers are necessarily running the meetings out of what's the word. I think it's just a historic thing and it's just an organization thing, but actually shifting the agenda and shifting the focus really worked. I think this has had some really great benefits for us as a business, so it's helped reduce food waste, it's helped increase food life. So actually doing some things that were really good for further down the supply chain. So for example, improving order patterns actually has had business benefits, but I also think it's important that this isn't just about business benefits, it is because it is the right thing to do, treating everyone in the chain with respect. I think it's very easy when you're a retail buyer, buying lots of different products with hundreds of different suppliers that you sometimes forget about the human at the end of the supply chain or the humans involved up and down the supply chain. And again, I don't think that is out of negligence, it's just surely that buyers can be very busy and have large portfolios of products. And I think that would be, I think the challenge with this project is it did take a lot of work and a lot of focus. And I think that's absolutely fine to put this much effort in when it's a really strategic product. But when you are buying from hundreds of different suppliers and maybe small amounts, how do you put this much effort in? So perhaps a recommendation, even if you can start this process with a very strategic supplier or strategic supply chain and then think about how do you take the best bits more widely, for example, order patterns and other things like that. I think that's something I would recommend. I think one of the things that's been more challenging is we've had quite a lot of churn in our business. We're going through a big transformation which has meant that people have moved around a lot. And again, I don't think we've got a solution to, you know, keep this going all the time. So, you know, we've just got a new buyer. So I've got to go and take them all through the program again and that when they go out to Kenya in the autumn, they will run a supply chain meeting with the full or not run, but they will be involved in a meeting. So it does take quite a lot of effort. The other thing I would say is that we have got a very stable supplier in the middle of this who has been able to sort of act as an intermediary, make sure that the pledge keeps going, et cetera, et cetera. So it has been a brilliant experience and it's absolutely the right thing to do, but it's not the way supply chains are set up. It's not always practical to do it to the depth that this program went to. Thank you, Hazel, and thank you for sticking to the five-minute time. Maybe we can move to Tom for his comments on the presentations. Fantastic. Thank you very much for having me, Sue. Just to explain Tradecraft Exchange's role in this and then have a few comments and reflections on what Mary and Hazel have said. Tradecraft Exchange took on a kind of facilitation and convening role in this project. We're based in the UK, but we also have staff in Kenya and so we were able to work with Kenyan Human Rights Commission and whereas KHRC focused on the training of the groups of smallholder farmers, the support to the smallholder farmers, and also provided legal expertise about the Kenyan context, Tradecraft's role was more to run the meetings, to track the progress that was made between meetings, to bear witness to the relationships that were being formed in the supply chain and to kind of act broadly as a critical friend. And my kind of overarching comment about this program is that it was all about strengthening communication within a supply chain and that is very difficult when you have a supply chain like Green Beans, which even though it's relatively simple by the standards of international supply chains, it still links consumers in the UK with farmers in Kenya via a variety of businesses that operate in different ways that are based in different places and for that supply chain to work for all requires all of those relationships to be, to not just be transactions and to have a closer interaction and so to be able to have this project that tried to establish that was I think really, really valuable and a really interesting process. That is in particular true because the decisions made by one party in something like a Green Bean supply chain, so a farmer decides how to plant and when to plant and a retailer decides how to market it and what specifications, the importer decides how much to pay and obviously those decisions are also made elsewhere. Each of those decisions has a profound impact on the other parts of the supply chain and when the different bit parts of the supply chain are dispersed around the globe, you don't always see what that impact is and I think that's always been understood that your decision will make a difference to your business partner or to your supplier but when the communication isn't there, it's not front and centre of your mind and so the ways of working meetings really played a critical role in that and just with the time left to me, I'll just make a few comments on the advantages and disadvantages of that approach. The conditions for this project to work were trust from all, investment of time and goodwill from all and it was, I wasn't directly involved in the ways of working meetings but the feedback that I had was that all parties were very nervous. It was quite an uncomfortable situation for everyone to be in because either they were worried about hearing bad news or concerned about looking bad in front of their business partners and then links to that is the sense that this kind of thing only really works when you've got a longer term commitment for buying and if M&S had gone to those meetings and heard some feedback about the situation of the small holds that they were working with and decided actually it would be easier to cut their ties and source from a different country, this whole approach would not have worked at all and in fact it would have been extremely negative for the purposes that we were trying to engage with it so the longer term commitment for more parties was really crucial and then to add to that the flexibility again for more parties to find solutions and so the things we're talking about in the report that Hazel recommended to you all are all that includes the product specification, the buying practices having a pledge for small holders that a certain amount will be bought at the end of a harvest having flexibility over lead times and when an order arrives at the farm level and so these are the obvious successes and they all can be tracked back to flexibility on the parts of the different bits of the supply chain a couple of challenges which in some ways echo what Hazel said turnover of staff, this project obviously involved a large handful of individuals within companies and did have obviously some buy-in from those companies themselves but when staff change and the staff churn as there are in all of these organizations it really exposes where these new ways of working haven't been embedded into organizational culture and so I think that's the next challenge for all of us is to ensure that this kind of thing doesn't just get forgotten as an interesting pilot project that ultimately didn't go anywhere but instead the ways of working are kind of embedded into how a business operates but otherwise I'm very happy to take any questions from anyone on the call and Tradecraft were very pleased and proud to have been involved in this and just to say as well that this was funded from Tradecraft and KHRC's side by Comic Relief in the UK and also some of the follow-up work in terms of putting together the report was funded by HEVOS in the Netherlands and so we'd also just like to give thanks to them. Thank you. Thank you so much Tom and we were very much hoping to hear from Keshara. Thank you very much. I'm Keshara Kitonga, a small-scale farmer in Kenya and also a coordinator for Hot Keshar Cooperatives. I would like also to share a little bit of my experience in the last project and first and foremost I want to thank all stakeholders who participated or who are involved in this project since we realized as farmers great benefits through the project. Among the benefits is that we as farmers were trained on a number of items one being a good agricultural practices that is use of chemicals, land preparation and so on. The other one is about negotiating which actually some of the speakers because I've just said that ways of working meetings also brought a great change in the project because we were able to meet all supply chain actors and share the experiences in different fields and listen to each other and I want to believe each actor actually tried to adjust in favor of the other player. Again we also were trained on production generally, this is certified season and so on, handling and the produce and so on. The other great training we took is about records keeping. Just to mention our farmers, the level of literacy is a little bit high and majority of them could not tell whether they are making profit or losses in farming but because of the project we were trained actually to keep records which made us realize the profits or losses that we are making and the importance of this is that it enables farmers to make decisions whether to continue in farming or change or what would you adjust to bring up the margins and so on. So the training that farmers received on the level of farmers I would say that was a great benefit of farmers. Again this changed the array of great things and actually extended the benefit to the exporters and retailers. The reason being since our farmers were trained I am confident to say two items that came up. One is to build the royalty of farmers. Number two, issues on residue from the trained farmers became the issue of the past and this tells us that our farmers can produce safe products to our customers and I'm just happy to say that the few farmers that were trained actually had changed the array of green things if you compare to and trained farmers. Alongside these benefits we still had a number of challenges because some were mentioned by Mary and we still have some of the challenges exist. For instance the issue on policies which governs hodkasha is still an issue and we hope in the near future some of these will be addressed through the assemblies and the organs that deal with that in Kenya. The other challenge is that we only had a few farmers in the project. I know many of you know that we dealt with around 300 and to pursue or to bring a bigger impact would actually be if we involved many farmers because we still have farmers in Kenya who are not trained to this level that this project brought the few farmers were in the project and therefore it's a challenge because we still have some farmers who actually don't understand on the way the chain is working and who are the players and how do we go about solving our issues. But many of us have mentioned communication has been another achievement that actually had changed a number of things. I am sure the retailer came to know some of these things from the farmers through this project. We also came to understand their challenges in some of these through this project as farmers and I want to say the meetings were grateful. Also the other challenge is that we only piloted this project with one retailer who also has a competition with other retailers who maybe don't care or haven't known the things that they need to do to improve and therefore those are the few challenges I can mention but my thinking is that if we can have platforms where we expand this knowledge to other retailers, exporters and farmers as well I think this multiplication would bring more impact if it goes to more actors or in the supply chain. And for the few remarks I thank you all because of listening to me. Thank you. Thank you so much Keshava. I just wanted to thank very much. Thank you so much for the speakers and the participants. I thought the discussions and questions were really stimulating and I certainly learned a lot. I'd like to thank especially Keshava who I think has had to travel from far away to attend this meeting and KHRC and Mary especially to make sure that she could accommodate him to make sure he could attend this webinar and make sure we have voices from local farmers. That's great. I mean we've learned a lot. We've discussed the issues in relation to scaling up the program, the advantage and in fact the need to communicate effectively among every actor on the supply chain that everybody needs to listen to everyone else. Also a question about the change of policy which has to be done at the national level in order to be able to replicate these issues elsewhere. Thank you again for taking part. Thank you for those who have shared their experiences and we hope we will see you at the next EPIC webinar.