SEED-Div: an abstract role-playing game for discussing collective management of agrobiodiversity

Abstract type : Short presentation
Submitted by : Geraldine Abrami
Authors and Speakers : Geraldine Abrami

Information about other authors :

Géraldine Abrami¹, Didier Bazile², Harouna Coulibaly³ et François Bousquet⁴

¹ Modélisatrice, Cemagref, UMR G-EAU, Montpellier

² Agroécologue et géographe, CIRAD, UPR GREEN / Instituto de Geografía PUCV – Valparaiso, Chili

³ Agronome IER – Bamako, Mali

⁴ Modélisateur, CIRAD, UPR GREEN, Montpellier

Objective

The paper presents the final output of a participative research project tackling farmers’ individual and collective management of the varietal diversity of subsistence cereals in Mali and Niger (Pearl millet and Sorghum). Besides other packages focusing on description, characterization or improvement of local varieties and functioning and potential of formal nationwide seeds systems, this research was oriented towards farmers’ practices regarding the dynamics of the diversity of varieties within seed selection and exchange.

The application presented in this paper is the last Role Playing Game (RPG) used in the research process and the more abstract one as it focuses on the institutional aspects of varietal diversity management. It aimed at fostering discussions between researchers, NGOs, farmers’ organisations and farmers on possible management options of the seeds system at the local scale. The idea was to have a tool that could allow easily simulating the consequences of individual actions at the collective level and then discussing implicit collective rules, but also implementing explicit collective rules and testing them. In this way it could be used to facilitate and accompany institution’s emergence.

Originality and main contribution

The global idea of the research process was to consider the farmers’ informal seeds system as a complex and dynamic system where individual decisions interact through evolving networks of relations and result in emerging dynamic patterns of varieties at the scale of the communities. How the farmers’ livelihoods are dependent on the varietal diversity and what are the drivers that impact the maintenance of the varietal diversity in the system? 

Then, this specific RPG activity had a double objective of being a media of exchange between farmers coming from different regions and even countries (5 regions of Mali and 4 regions of Niger with specifics dialects) and bring them on questioning institutional aspects of seeds management: are there some underlying collective management institutions that help in maintaining the varietal diversity at the scale of a local community? Would a formal institution be helpful and how should it be crafted? What objective should such an institution pursue in priority between conservation or, supplying farmers? Which financial, land and human resources would it need and shall it use? What rules would it need? At which scale should it function?  

Finally the originality of this RPG is that it is abstract enough to be used as a tool for discussing about diversity management outside the Malian context.

Method

This research was based on a companion modelling process where successive models of the system hold the trace of the perspectives and knowledge gathered, shared and discussed all along the process, iteratively with complementary field studies based on observation and interviews. While conceptual specification of the models were formalized through UML diagrams and implemented in an Agent-Based Model, several Role-Playing Games were designed to share and discuss different aspects of the models. These Role-Playing Games were used in 4 workshops gathering researchers, NGOs, farmers’ organisations and farmers.

SEED-Div was designed to be used in the last workshop of the research project, where Niger and Mali farmers from 9 different regions were to meet and share insights and outputs of the project in their respective communities. The idea was then to wrap up our model in an activity that was as simple and abstract as possible as agro-ecological constraints of the different farmers where very different and half of them did not participate in the preceding companion modelling workshops.

In the RPG SEED-Div each player owns a field on which there are 4 plots. All fields are identical in size and represented as squares within a grid that represents the village fields. Each plot may be on 1 of 2 different types of soils (deep / shallow). All players cultivate the same cereal on their field but 8 varieties of this cereal are available. Each variety is represented by a different colour and has specific typical characteristics (optimal yield, sensitivity to water stress, length and plasticity of the cycle, photoperiodism, size and colour). Each player is initially given seeds from randomly chosen varieties for his 4 plots (seeds for 1 plot is represented by a disc of the colour of the variety). Then at each round (representing a year), the player must plant cereal on its plots by sticking its seeds disc on a card. He can choose among the 8 varieties as long as he is able to get a disc of the proper colour. New seeds can be obtained through harvesting (0, 1 or 2 discs depending on how the variety was appropriate to the climate), through exchange with other players or through external sources such as markets or NGOs.

The game can be played with different levels of institutions. In a first step, players can be grouped in “families” where the elder is designed as the chief of the family. Then it is possible to craft a seeds management institution at the scale of the village and play it in the game.

Results

The SEED-Div’s RPG is actually the result of a long process (3 years) where representative abstractions and key descriptive structural and dynamic elements of local seeds systems were discussed with different groups of farmers during workshops. Despite its very abstract aspects, it actually contains many elements and constraints of the real world and was very easily appropriated and discussed by all the farmers in the workshop. 

After playing individually or within family groups, the farmers were asked to work in groups to craft institutions that could manage the seeds of the game. Three examples of institutions practices were designed with rules by the farmers during one day. The implementation of one of them was experimented during the workshop by all of the participants. They could test and adapt the rules they just crafted and check how it affected the performance of the institution in maintaining the diversity of variety over time and providing seeds for crops. 

A more general output of the project is that 3 institutions created during the time of the project have beneficed of the support of this process and are still functional.

Finally, SEED-Div was used successfully during a training session in France and demonstrated its ability for being used as a generic tool for fostering discussions diversity management institutions.

Keywords :
Mali, Sorghum, agrobiodiversity, seeds system, companion modelling, role-playing game