NE-165 PROJECT PROPOSAL

PROCEDURES

All procedures emphasize the cooperative use of common methodologies by researchers at different universities and agencies to analyze changes in the food marketing system that affect economic performance. Under each objective, the procedures specify particular applications and approaches that will be pursued and how each station will collaborate in the work. The size of the Project allows multiple strains of complementary research to be pursued collaboratively under each procedure. In the next five years, with FMPC leadership and support, NE-165 will sponsor a worldwide web home page, Internet discussion groups, meetings, conferences, books, reports, and invited paper and symposium sessions that support the development of common research approaches, the summation of research results, and their dissemination to business, government, and consumer groups.

NE-165 is a very large regional research project. It involves over 70 researchers from several countries and several government agencies as well as universities. Given its size and the scope of its research, the procedures section first explains how NE-165 works to generate and support collaborative work between its members. Each procedure then 1) articulates key questions to be analyzed, 2) discusses anticipated results, and 3) gives a projected timetable to document when activity will occur within the proposed 5-year life of the Project.

How NE-165 Does Collaborative Work

NE-165 has developed a distinctive and highly productive framework for collaborative work. We propose to continue use of this proven approach in the next five years. Because the Project is large with several closely related research procedures, many smaller groups of researchers are working on particular procedures at any one time. Within this framework, the Project facilitates collaboration in two specific ways.

First, Project members working across the procedures meet annually to discuss developments in their work. The discussion identifies cost effective, collaborative efforts and teams of researchers to work on these issues. For example, researchers working on product differentiation in the food industry have teamed up with others analyzing whether different levels of food safety can be effectively marketed in the United States. The overall group plans the topics of conferences, symposia, and other presentations that forward the collaborative research agenda of the Project and its members.

Second, by careful planning, the conferences, workshops, and symposia organized by NE-165 are designed to generate and support collaborative work. Through a combination of calls for papers, invited papers, and research round tables, conference organizing committees bring researchers together to produce collaborative work for presentation on a defined schedule. The conferences are organized to generate joint papers between Project members using similar research techniques and to juxtapose complementary or potentially conflicting methodologies so they may be compared effectively. This structure generates published joint work and, very importantly, facilitates an intellectual collaboration that furthers the research agenda in ways that go far beyond joint publications. Not only do researchers present their results but they also collaborate to critique and compare results, build consensus on the conclusions of research in progress, lay the groundwork for more consistent research approaches, and plan future joint work. This structured approach has allowed the NE-165 conferences to have a significant impact on research productivity and usefulness. The regular publishing of books and proceedings make the research gains of the conferences available to a broad audience.

An example of this process is the NE-165 conference on Valuing Food Safety and Nutrition held in 1993. The conference featured side-by-side comparison of five separate methodologies for measuring how much value society and consumers place on food safety and nutrition. Beyond the jointly-authored work presented, the more than 100 researchers present learned about the strengths and weaknesses of alternative methodologies from the leading practitioners of those approaches. This generated a true intellectual collaboration on how valuation should be done that has been influential in guiding researchers' subsequent work. In addition, Project members wrote several research grants and joint papers based on the effective working atmosphere and relationships established at the conference.

The procedures outlined below reflect the way NE-165 does collaborative work. They first discuss the key questions the research addresses. They then outline in significant detail what individual researchers will contribute to collaborative work in each area. We believe this specific detail is important to showing exactly how we propose to accomplish our scope of research and who will be responsible. Finally, the procedures outline expected outcomes and give a projected timetable for completion of work.

Objective 1

Objective 2

Table of Contents


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