Transforming agric shows, trade fairs and competitions into genuine knowledge management platforms
WHO really benefits from expos such as agricultural shows, trade fairs, food festivals, cooking competitions and several other bandwagons?
How do those who benefit do so? Without clear methods for evaluating these events, it is difficult to get correct answers to such questions.
There is a strong feeling among many people that these events have just become marketing platforms for equipment manufacturers, companies that sell inputs and other corporates at the expense of smallholder farmers and ordinary consumers.
By exhibiting the same things year in and year out, most agricultural shows are losing their relevance. New content will bring uniqueness to agricultural shows so that what makes the national agricultural show worth attending becomes very clear to many people.
In addition to mobilising diversity, agricultural shows should enable building of synergies between actors from different agroecological regions.
Hosting competition after competition often leaves out a lot of knowledge that should be shared at such big platforms.
In most cases, farmers who go to agricultural shows are not organised as knowledge gatherers. They are just brought to show-case their crops for winning prizes from seed companies based on how the farmers will have performed in producing seed varieties promoted by those seed companies. That confirms that the show is not platform for gathering and sharing genuine knowledge but an opportunity for input companies to sell their products.
Ideally, agricultural shows should have a knowledge gathering and sharing face because building a holistic community self-drive is more important than getting farmers to compete.
That is why community shows should enable knowledge exchange between farmers from different production zones so that they can appreciate food diversity in other communities and learn how to introduce the same in their communities.
There is also a tendency to promote competitions through field days whose major weakness is focusing on showing the best farmer without showing important lessons from the worst performing farmers which could be more revealing. Instead of presenting one farmer as a super hero, it is key to show what makes one farmer outstanding in the context of 90% of farmers failing. Such an analysis is more important rather than continue stagemanaging success.
Can indigenous food be promoted through expos and cooking
Among other elements, competitions have remained a permanent feature of agriculture and food-related expos and events. One of the increasing trends is using cooking competitions to promote indigenous African food. This fashion ranges from competitions among hotel chefs to community cooking competitions where women compete to prepare indigenous food. While this is a good idea, more value can be generated if the promotion of indigenous food takes a supply chain route from production to consumption, with systems for retaining knowledge which can inform viable indigenous food business cases. Cooking competitions are at the far end of the value chain. Where are champions in indigenous food production, seed breeding, soil health, soil chemistry, value addition and marketing? A product that is finally cooked at competitions comes from seed systems.
People cannot prepare meals from something whose production they do not know. Emphasis should not be just on events like cooking competitions but fluid knowledge sharing processes and platforms. Assuming competitions are necessary, they should just be considered one small component of strategies for reviving indigenous food systems and promotion pathways. These can be built within rural communities where farmers and local supply chains have been doing their things without systems of converting raw commodities to products through intentional product development.
What is more important is being able to use the market to follow trends as part of building a market base that supports indigenous food systems. That means there should be systems that specially focus on building supply chains by following trends in terms of what is happening to indigenous food systems and why? If trends are showing increased consumption by age, area and gender, that can be revealed by the market perspective where indigenous food systems compete for sustainability.
Building community resilience by supporting and strengthening the knowledge base
Notions around competitions imply that a strong knowledge base already exists. If that is correct, for maximum benefit, the competitions should be framed to ride on existing food knowledge so that the winners become community champions who can lead in sharing knowledge on entire value chains from production of indigenous foods to marketing and consumption.