Visualisation as a platform for entry into dialogue with farmers.

Describes how food-path analysis (developed by health-oriented workers to understand household constraints leading to malnutrition) was adapted to explore the millet-production system. Symbols were drawn on cards for each operation in the production cycle and used as entry points for probing questions regarding material and labour constraints, farmers observations and previous solutions attempted.The visualisation was seen to improve the interaction between agricultural scientists and farmers by providing scientists with an overview of the production system in all its complexity, such that discussion among researchers became more focussed on interactions between parts of the system rather than on specific agronomic problems and also it provided farmers with a means to point out important processess, constraints and potentials they saw in their production system.