AgriShift Agrigovernance Faculty Fellowship

Mobilizing universities to strengthen farmer enterprise ecosystems

The Creative Inquiry Faculty Fellowship in Agri-Governance is an action-learning program of the Asian School of Governance Office of Creative Inquiry, working alongside the Agri-Governance Fellowship Program and its partners.

The Fellowship enables university faculty to turn real agricultural governance challenges into platforms for teaching, research, student inquiry, extension, and innovation.

The Idea

Agricultural challenges are not only farming problems. They involve markets, finance, infrastructure, institutions, technology, climate, data, public policy, and local governance.

Faculty Fellows work with an individual LGU or cluster of LGUs and their farmer enterprise ecosystems to investigate questions such as:

• Why are farmers unable to reach larger markets?

• What prevents farmer clusters from becoming viable enterprises?

• Where are financing and infrastructure bottlenecks?

• How can LGUs collaborate across agricultural value chains?

• How can data and AI improve agricultural governance?

• What institutional changes could make the ecosystem work better?

Rather than studying these questions from a distance, faculty and students investigate them alongside LGUs, farmers, cooperatives, businesses, and communities.

Creative Inquiry + PDIA

The Fellowship combines Creative Inquiry with Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA).

Ask → Investigate → Deconstruct → Experiment → Learn → Adapt → Create

Faculty Fellows do not begin with predetermined solutions. They help students and partners ask better questions, generate evidence, test ideas, and learn from what happens.

The agricultural ecosystem becomes a living classroom and Social Lab.

Faculty as Ecosystem Builders

Faculty Fellows become more than researchers or instructors. They serve as:

Mentors. Conveners. Researchers. Designers. Facilitators. Knowledge brokers. Innovation catalysts.

They connect university capabilities with the practical needs of LGUs and farmer enterprises while creating opportunities for students to undertake meaningful real-world inquiry.

Mobilizing Student Creative Inquiry

Each Faculty Fellow can mobilize student teams from multiple disciplines, including:

Agriculture • Public Administration • Business • Economics • Engineering • IT • Data Science • Environmental Science • Social Sciences • Design

Student projects may address farmer enterprise development, agricultural finance, logistics, market access, climate resilience, renewable energy, cooperative governance, digital platforms, policy innovation, or institutional design.

Successive student cohorts can build upon previous work, creating a growing body of knowledge rather than disconnected semester projects.

AI-Enabled Inquiry

In collaboration with the ASG AI for Governance Lab (AI4Gov Lab), Faculty Fellows can explore how data and AI can strengthen agricultural governance.

Projects may include:

• Farmer and cooperative information systems

• Agricultural knowledge bases

• AI-assisted ecosystem mapping

• Market and production intelligence

• AI copilots for agricultural extension

• Inter-LGU data systems

• Decision-support tools for local governments

AI becomes a partner in inquiry, helping faculty and students analyze information, explore possibilities, and accelerate learning while retaining human judgment and accountability.

Fellowship Journey

The Fellowship can run for 10 to 12 months, with regular online learning and coaching sessions while faculty undertake action research in their local ecosystems.

Explore
Understand the local farmer enterprise ecosystem.

Frame
Identify important questions and deconstruct problems using PDIA.

Mobilize
Engage students, faculty colleagues, LGUs, farmers, and ecosystem partners.

Experiment
Launch Creative Inquiry projects and test possible innovations.

Learn
Document evidence, failures, adaptations, and emerging insights.

Institutionalize
Integrate successful approaches into teaching, research, extension, university programs, or LGU systems.

What Faculty Fellows Produce

Each Fellow develops:

1. Agri-Governance Creative Inquiry Agenda

2. Faculty-LGU Action Research Partnership

3. Portfolio of Student Creative Inquiry Projects

4. Tested Governance or Ecosystem Innovation

5. Case Study or Knowledge Product

6. Plan for continuing the work through succeeding student cohorts

Toward University-Based Agri-Governance Labs

The longer-term goal is for participating universities to become Agri-Governance Learning Hubs supporting nearby LGUs and farmer enterprise ecosystems.

Universities can provide continuity beyond political terms and individual development projects.

Over successive years:

Faculty inquiry → Student projects → Field experiments → Governance innovations → Institutional learning → Stronger farmer enterprise ecosystems

Through ASPAP and partner networks, these university-based hubs can form a distributed national platform for Creative Inquiry in Agri-Governance.

The Opportunity

The Fellowship reframes the relationship between universities and agricultural communities.

Universities do not simply study local problems.

They become long-term learning and innovation partners in solving them.

And faculty do not simply teach students about complex societal challenges.

They create environments where students help address them.

ASG Creative Inquiry