Dominique Chauveau, FIA: "You have to learn to imagine the future to innovate in the present"

"Literacy in the future allows us to imagine unforeseen, unforeseen, not projected scenarios, which are translated into interesting long-term visions"

At present it is impossible to conceive agricultural planning without considering future variants that may affect markets or production, or both. The climate, human migrations, geopolitical events, the behavior of the economy are future elements that must always be observed to cross variants and plan on a more secure information base. Although nothing is so certain, because unforeseen events, such as the current pandemic, alter any planning, but you have to learn "to read the future" and anticipate.

Future literacy

Strategic planning is a tool that is gaining more space every day in the world of industrial and export agriculture. To this end, the “future literacy” methodology is promoted. The objective is to anticipate as much as possible to anticipated and unforeseen future scenarios, seeking to teach people and companies to imagine that there are three possible future scenarios:

  • The thought (which is the projection of data from the present to the future)
  • The desired one (which is what your heart or desire dictates)
  • The imagined (which is the one that costs the most, because it implies leaving the known, demolishing myths and advancing in new spaces of exploration).

We discussed the matter exclusively with the expert Dominique Chauveau, head of the Strategy Unit at the Foundation for Agrarian Innovation (FIA), an organization that has been developing this tool for the agricultural industry since 2018. This is part of the interview that we will publish in the next edition of the BlueMagazine.

What is the FIA ​​looking for with this tool?

  • With future literacy what we seek is that people linked to our sector can recognize themselves as subjects of transformation of their own territories and contexts. That is, when one learns to imagine the future, he understands that what he imagined can bring him to the present and, from the here and now, begin to make it a reality. In more practical terms, future literacy is a methodology that allows you to visualize non-obvious scenarios, to use them in contexts where strategic planning is being developed. For FIA, this methodology is key, as it can help us imagine the Chilean agriculture of the future.

Dominique Chauveau tells us about her long experience conducting future literacy workshops. "What we learned most is that, in the present is where we are divided, while when we imagine the future, something happens that we unite in a common image of what we want," he highlights.

What are the most important keys, tools, or factors of future literacy?

  • It seems to me that there are two key elements that we were able to recognize from the experience lived with Riel Miller from Unesco. The first of these has to do with literacy itself. That is, by learning to recognize that the present is only a temporary space and that the future can be imagined from different places (thought, desired or imagined). When you understand this you can use future tense literacy as an action tool. In other words “learn to imagine the future to innovate in the present”. And secondly, we learned that if we only stay in theoretical spaces about what it is to imagine the future, then it doesn't do us much good. I say this because future literacy allows you to imagine unforeseen, unthought-out, unprojected scenarios, which translate into interesting long-term visions, on which to act in the present strategic planning processes. We call this second point “applied futures”.

Should social or political contexts be included in the analysis?

  • Of course. The methodology is holistic (which is how living systems work). So, you cannot imagine the future if you do not recognize yourself as a social subject, who interacts with others and who "is" from that interaction. Politics is part of this interaction, as a construct from the human.

What is the ideal agriculture, according to you?

  • For me, ideal agriculture, from the exercise of imagining the future, has to do with something that FAO has been saying for a long time. I am referring to understanding it as a system, as a combination of interconnected elements (some of them invisibly because they are a living system) that, only at their equilibrium point, will allow us to advance towards sustainable production and consumption dynamics. In other words, it seems to me that if we put at the center of the reflection that what we are talking about is living beings (plants, animals, fungi, plus all the associated microbiota), things would be different. Living beings have biological cycles typical of our species. Then, To use engineering to maximize or minimize production and / or consumption results is not to understand that the resource we are talking about is as alive as you or me.

Source
Martín Carrillo O. - Blueberries Consulting

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