Engaging Multiple Audiences: Challenges and Strategies in Complex Food Systems Projects

Abstract

Complex projects must manage many challenges, including how to communicate about them. In this commentary, we present and assess the extension and outreach objectives, activities, challenges and outcomes of a complex, inter-disciplinary food systems research project called Enhancing Food project-defined by USDA as including research, education, and extension-EFSNE focused on the regional food system of 12 Northeast states. EFSNE's Outreach Team met the project's outreach objectives by proactively sharing project findings with multiple audiences including participating low-income communities in a variety of ways. We outline the unique framework and rationale from which multiple outreach activities were conducted during the six years of the project. We also describe challenges we faced along the way, including the tension between research and community engagement, and the translation of complex research to multiple audiences. While complex systems projects often take several years to produce results, we believe that a contextually appropriate, coordinated and meaningful ways throughout the project provides significant benefits to multiple stakeholder audiences as well as to the project itself. We believe this compilation of our outreach strategies may inform similar work in other large, integrated complex regional research projects.

Setting the table for policy intrapreneurship: public administrator perspectives on local food system governance

“…A growing body of literature addresses food councils as a form of food governance (Bassarab et al 2019;Harper et al 2009;Moragues-Faus and Morgan 2015;Scherb et al 2012;Siddiki et al 2015), how local governments are linked to these food system governance structures (Bassarab et al 2019;Forster and Getz Escudero 2014;Hospes and Brons 2016), and multilevel food governance and the need for integration (Forster and Getz Escudero, 2014;Hospes and Brons 2016;Ruhf et al 2017). However, most public administration scholars do not directly employ lines of questioning focused on what role U.S. local government administrators could and should play in local food system governance.…”

“…While single municipal departments may struggle to overcome traditional governmental silos, food networks of the larger holon may be better equipped to overcome the silo challenge and make changes across various geographical and departmental boundaries. Linked to Ruhf et al (2017) discussion of complex food systems projects, the complexity of food systems that transcend the scope of a single municipal department aligns with Grossman and Holzer's idea that larger holons are needed to adequately address the challenges to which lower-level holons are unable to respond effectively (2015).…”

“…However, public entrepreneurship is different from social entrepreneurship in that public entrepreneurs are leaders of partnerships involving governments, while social entrepreneurs are less interested in matters of government (Grossman and Holzer 2015). This notion of partnerships has been discussed by other local food governance scholars using different terminology like translocal governance and collaborative food governance (Moragues-Faus and Sonnino 2019; Siddiki et al 2015) and, at a regional level, multi-stakeholder audience outreach (Ruhf et al 2017). But, using a partnership governance lens to examine the literature on local food systems suggests that many efforts to improve local food systems use holons of insufficient size to effectively address larger systemic issues.…”

Introduction to the EFSNE Project Collection of Papers

“…In the second paper, a commentary, Ruhf et al (2017) present the strategy used to engage and inform stakeholders. Within the EFSNE project, outreach has been viewed as a two-way street between researchers and stakeholders.…”