introduction

THROUGHOUT HISTORY, THE POMEGRANATE (PUNICA GRANATUM) HAS BEEN AN IMPORTANT SYMBOL IN MANY CULTURES. THE ANCIENT BABYLONIANS CONSIDERED THE EVERGREEN POMEGRANATE TREE A SYMBOL OF EVERLASTING LIFE. THE ROMANS, ESPECIALLY IN MEDIEVAL TIMES, CONSIDERED THE POMEGRANATE TREE SYMBOLIC OF PARTNERSHIPS. IN SANSKRIT WRITINGS, THE TREE REPRESENTED THE VEGETABLE WORLD AND SYMBOLIZED SUSTENANCE. THE SANSKRIT ASSOCIATION WITH SUSTENANCE, THE BABYLONIAN SYMBOL FOR EVERLASTING LIFE AND THE ROMAN ASSOCIATION WITH PARTNERSHIP CAN BE MODERNIZED TO EQUATE WITH FOOD SECURITY, SUSTAINABILITY AND WORKING TOGETHER FOR DEVELOPMENT.

With this in mind, the pomegranate was chosen as the symbol for a unique workshop held at the Rome headquarters of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The workshop was called From Farmer to Planner and Back: Harvesting Best Practices, and was funded by the Government of Norway. The workshop brought together field-level participants from 12 FAO field projects throughout the developing world to discuss best practices for incorporating gender issues into development planning.

In still other cultures, the open pomegranate fruit with its hundreds of seeds, represents fertility and abundance. This means more than fertility of soil, plants, livestock and oceans. It also represents fertility of the mind. This workshop was all about harvesting fertility of the mind, i.e. the participants' collective knowledge and experience in participatory planning. It was about using the abundance of that harvest as the basis for a framework that would offer guidance on how to make planning in the agriculture sector more responsive to gender and how to ensure that rural women and men have a voice in these planning processes.

This publication offers a three-tiered look at the harvest of the workshop. It starts with a glimpse of what happened at the workshop itself with a photo essay that conveys the excitement and intensity of the participants as they worked, shared and learned together. This is followed by two substantive documents: The Key Issues paper which synthesizes and analyses case studies from the field projects whose representatives participated in the workshop and The Responsive Planner which offers a refreshing, new framework for participatory, gender-responsive agricultural development planning, based on the issues and the best practices that were highlighted and discussed during the workshop.