If you think in terms of systems, or if you live long enough, you come to the view that structural incentives are very very important in shaping outcomes. Other factors — like capacity, supply drivers, and values — matter too, of course. But if these swim against the current of structural incentives, they will eventually be swept out to sea!

So I ask myself how we might create structural incentives to promote Smallholder Farmer Voice. Here is one answer that bears consideration. I call it the Feedback Principle:

Credible public and donor reporting by an organization intending agriculture-related outcomes includes not only the logic and evidence for the outcomes, but also

(1) what smallholder farmers say about what the organization says it have achieved; and

(2) how the organization proposes to respond to farmer feedback.

There are a host of important, absorbing-to-solve questions about howorganizations should prepare for and do high quality constituency-validated reporting in a way that is meaningful and not tokenistic. But the main point on the how to challenges is that given a transparency-based incentive to do it along the lines of the one created by the Feedback Principle, organizations will figure out how to do it, and do it well. Our work at Keystone has taught us that if you are serious about making farmers’ voices heard, then you must ensure that their voices are fundamental to assessment and reporting. And to make farmers’ voices fundamental to assessment and reporting, you have to involve them in defining goals in the first place, and in how we will know success when we see it. While we have found that there are no shortcuts to progress here, there are some simple solutions that are easy to implement and don’t add to the ‘consultation burden’ that farmers already bear. If there is interest, I can say more about these ways and means.