Annex 1: Participant survey results

Nordic Food Alert: Evaluation survey of participants' experiences - Summary

21 respondents took part in the post-workshop survey. The majority of them (14) have never participated in a similar experience before. 11 participants represented governmental institutions, 6 academia or third sector, and 3 business (one person chose the “other” category). 12 participants work on the national level, 3 combine it with international work beyond Nordics, 1 works on their local level, 1 on the Intra-Nordic level, and 4 represent some combination of the above mentioned ranges.

Participants’ key takeaways from the workshop can be grouped into 4 major themes:

COLLABORATION	INSIGHT
Existing need and positive attitude towards collaboration. Recognizing common challenges. Power of collaboration: exchanging knowledge will bring solutions. Considering different perspectives, need for cross-sectoral discussion. Feeling of strengthening and broadening the network already. Need to overcome coordination problems in order not to reinvent the wheel, repeat mistakes etc. Fundamental similarities between Nordics.	Simulations as a way of gaining insight into complexity. Thinking out of the box may bring solutions. Preventing narrow-mindedness and siloes. Awareness of conflicting positions/agendas. Increased awareness and feeling of urgency thanks to plausible scenarios. Identifying salient questions.
PREPAREDNESS & RESILIENCE	INTEGRITY
Vulnerability of food systems. Need for more attention on defining regulatory boundaries better. Preparedness for extreme scenarios easy to overlook when busy with Business as Usual. Collaboration essential for resilience.	Compliance with existing agreements. Courage to set targets/ take pledges. Potential conflict between resilience and sustainability or equity. Including all perspectives in handling extreme situations.

When it comes to participants’ opinions about the workshop, most of them started their response to the question “Did the policy simulation meet your expectations?” with a “Yes”. When it comes to details, their feedback proves to be a little more mixed both about the format and the outcomes of the workshop.

Respondents expressed favourable opinions about the whole process being interesting as well as researched, conceptualised, and prepared well. They appreciated both the networking opportunity and diving deep into complexity and comparing differing agendas. Participants praised the format of two complementary days providing a long break for processing. The value from day 2 has been highlighted by many. The app and the size of groups were satisfactory as well.

The following aspects of the workshop process have received an ambivalent reception:

Day 1 (being too slow or too confusing for some), especially the aspect of role-taking and immersion. On the one hand, scenarios were considered realistic and, together with visuals and app, setting the right mood. On the other hand, some participants needed more time to get into character + more instruction on policy making.
Time constraints as a force driving solution-oriented thinking but also not allowing for a deeper conversation.
Accuracy of topics selection: those which were included were relevant but some important ones were omitted.

Participants’ feedback has been rather negative regarding the lack of clarity about the next steps and impact of the meeting. Some expressed concern that their policy propositions were too underdeveloped to be useful for the Nordic Council of Ministers.

When asked about the mechanisms of the policy simulation which allowed them to co-create real-world recommendations, respondents indicated:

Group work without assigned roles + summary presentations on day 2 (this aspect appeared most frequently in the survey). It was even more useful than day 1 for some and essential to extract value from day 1 for many.
Different parties + the element of having to come to a compromise.
Emails with opinions and lobby messages.
Sparking creativity with time and input limits.
Comfortable two-hour windows for discussions.
The combination of in and out of game discussions.
Imagination: taking participants into the future and into someone else’s mindset.

In general, immersion was appreciated but further development and consolidation during day 2 even more so, leaving participants with an unsatisfied appetite to translate the exercise into further steps in the real world and continue Inter-Nordic collaboration.

Respondents’ expressed conflicting views on the potential of simulation for allowing them to take into account disagreements over facts, interests, and values.

Framing disagreements well, thanks to:

Framing disagreements poorly, due to:

freedom of playing someone else;

highlighting trade-offs in policy making (“no easy solutions”);

setup with preexisting disagreements;

emails in the app showing new perspectives;

sandbox environment, freedom of testing and reshaping “policy”;

highlighting complexity.

time constraints (leading to focus on common ground instantly and/or not being able to get into character);

restrictive roleplay;

not enough time and instruction to achieve realism/ immersion in roleplay;

weak commitment;

natural preference/ tendency to focus on similarities and agreement.

Respondents were encouraged to propose next steps and ways of further collaboration. They came up with a number of both institutional and “soft” actions, either based on something that is already functioning or completely novel.

institutional

soft

novel

Agreement on improvement of food environments.

Strategic collaborations on decreasing dependencies on imported inputs.

Nordic Fund subsidising transition to more plant-based production.

Strategic Inter-Nordic trade agreements, especially for times of crisis.

Seed sharing among farmers.

Forum or thematic joint focus groups for follow-ups, creating synergies, resource mapping, increasing diversity and decreasing redundancy.

based on something already existing

Using the NATO Forum to discuss mitigation of Nordic vulnerabilities.
Following the Karlstad Declaration.
Including calls on research in the field from Norfund.

Keeping up the work on nutritional recommendations and food waste.
Facilitating action based networks.
Filling gaps in cooperation between different actors.
Inter-Nordic desiloeing: networking regularly, learning about the structures and who to contact.

Together with missing perspectives of some groups of stakeholders (consumers, farmers, retailers, industry experts), respondents identified the following important but underrepresented topics:

Social topics, i.e. immigration trends and supporting parts of the world with higher food security risks; equity & justice; practicalities and social aspects of cooperation.
Systemic topics, i.e. resilience vs. mere preparedness/ coping; innovation; economic sustainability within the food system; interdependencies between infrastructure, energy, water resources, and transportation.

One participant noticed that the topic of EU Common Agricultural Policy should have been discussed more and another one would like to see more conversation around pollinators.

When it comes to suggestions for improving the simulation and workshop formula, two appeared especially frequently: giving more time and more/ better instructions.

The latter is straightforward: participants would prefer better instruction on: current state of policy, agreements, positions etc. as well as roleplay, app and what to do with emails. The former is more problematic as some suggestions about the use of more time seem contradictory. Some respondents wanted to see more time allocated to getting into and staying in character, even envisioning a third immersive stage that would build upon the outcomes, develop actionable recommendations, and allow for moving around different groups. Other participants would prefer having more time for discussions as real selves, networking, and unstructured conversations, not carrying simulated scenarios into day 2: less focus on tools, films, and briefings, more on topics and reacting to the working groups’ results.

Perhaps, better communication of the expected value (i.e. simulation as an exercise of selected elements of policy-making and not a whole process). Many participants underlined that real policy making takes real expertise and more in-depth research & discussion.

A number of procedural suggestions appeared: reducing the influence of lobbyists and preset goals for recommendations, making invitations more informative, allowing for changes in texts after they were open for vote, debating policies before voting, providing a list/ presentation of participants, separating short- and long-term actions, and organising sub-thematic workshops.