Agroecology has evolved and is promoted as an integrated pathway for the development of food and agriculture systems in ways that address the interacting social, economic, and environmental challenges of current dominant systems. Agroecology is usually described and defined by a set of principles that can be adapted and implemented in ways that are relevant to diverse contexts. Transition to wider use of agroecology depends on farmers and others who are not yet convinced deciding that agroecology provides the right pathway for them. We used 2 human behavioral models to highlight the influence of personal motivational factors such as attitudes and values in transitioning to agroecology. Current sets of agroecology principles generally do not refer to the values, beliefs, motivations, or attitudes that go along with, or are precursors to, change in practices. Insights from research on environmental education and pro-environmental behavior show that such values and attitudes, or mindsets, are built and nurtured through connection with nature, sense of place, group and individual identity, and self- and social efficacy. While recognizing the need for more comprehensive mindset principles for agroecology, we propose, based on our focus on achieving pro-environmental action, that a principle of deliberate building of ecological mindsets be added to the sets of agroecological principles. Transformational learning provides some practical ways of implementing that are well aligned with approaches to learning for agroecology that are already being used.
Tag: Agroecology
Agroecological practices are widely used by African farmers
Agroecology is a body of knowledge, practices and political movements that aims to support transformation of food and agricultural systems to long-term social and environmental sustainability. African farmers face multiple challenges, and agroecology has been proposed as contributing to solutions and hence is being supported and promoted on the continent. However, the viability of agroecological practices for African farmers has been questioned.
The project that produced the results in this paper was set up to understand more about the viability of agroecological practices at farm and household level, identifying the lockins and drivers of use of agroecology and paying particular attention to labour and work. A case study approach was used, with 11 cases across eight countries from Tunisia to Madagascar contributing evidence. A common framework was used in all cases but with adaptation of details to local contexts. After two years collecting data, case-study and coordinating teams met in December 2022 to look at results and plan detailed analyses. Although the analysis of the extensive data had only just begun, some important messages were emerging. These have been summarised in this paper and are presented with examples of the evidence supporting them.
One Million Voices Global Review: A review and analysis of existing citizen science initiatives and projects supporting agroecology and agroecological transitions
This report summarizes the results of a global review and analysis of citizen science projects supporting agroecology and agroecological transitions. The purpose of the review is to provide information on existing projects and inspire the development of a citizen science tool that enables inclusive participation in agroecology movements. The report aims to promote sustainable adoption of agroecology, fill knowledge gaps, and avoid duplication. It also contributes to four regional dialogues that were held to support the development of the One Million Voices of Agroecology digital platform.
The review used four data streams, including three citizen science platforms, a literature review, projects proposed by the One Million Voices citizen science initiative, and a Google search. The report includes 57 projects categorized into agricultural production, agroecosystems, and markets, consumption, and diets. Most projects focus on natural farming, with some addressing social justice and circular economy aspects. However, none of the projects fully encompass all aspects of agroecology, and there is a lack of accessible projects in the Global South and those focusing on elements beyond on-farm practices.
The report provides recommendations for the One Million Voices citizen science initiative. These recommendations include understanding participants’ motivations, providing benefits to participants, ensuring accessibility for diverse groups, keeping participation tasks simple, and leveraging existing networks and partnerships.
The politics of adaptiveness in agroecosystems and its role in transformations to sustainable food systems
Food systems are responsible for pushing human resource use past three thresholds of safe planetary operating space, yet the potential of agroecosystems to contribute to sustainability of food systems when managed for multiple benefits is underexplored. This gap has led to a call for food systems transformation. Previous reviews have acknowledged that governance of food systems transformations is not well understood. The aim of this review is to examine the challenges to transformative governance of agroecosystems, and the potential to apply existing paradigms of adaptiveness in agroecosystems for this transformation. Agricultural production landscapes have been found to be a key level of governance for realizing sustainability transformations of food systems and the landscape concept has been a key paradigm for managing multiple social and ecological objectives at a landscape scale. An examination of the landscape concept using five transformative governance characteristics and applying the earth system governance research lenses illustrated two key areas for further investigation and action for transformative governance. The first is landscape design for continuous social and ecological changes and evolving understandings of sustainability, and the second is the allocation of landscape costs, rights and benefits in present and future decision-making and among human and non-human entities. Managing the pluralistic diversities inherent to agroecosystems will be a key dynamic important to governance and policy for food systems transformations.
Estimating nutrient concentrations and uptake in rice grain in sub-Saharan Africa using linear mixed-effects regression
Context or problem: Quantification of nutrient concentrations in rice grain is essential for evaluating nutrient uptake, use efficiency, and balance to develop fertilizer recommendation guidelines. Accurate estimation of nutrient concentrations without relying on plant laboratory analysis is needed in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where farmers do not generally have access to laboratories. Objective or research question: The objectives are to 1) examine if the concentrations of macro- (N, P, K, Ca, Mg, S) and micronutrients (Fe, Mn, B, Cu) in rice grain can be estimated using agro-ecological zones (AEZ), production systems, soil properties, and mineral fertilizer application (N, P, and K) rates as predictor variables, and 2) to identify if nutrient uptakes estimated by best-fitted models with above variables provide improved prediction of actual nutrient uptakes (predicted nutrient concentrations x grain yield) compared to average-based uptakes (average nutrient concentrations in SSA x grain yield). Methods: Cross-sectional data from 998 farmers’ fields across 20 countries across 4 AEZs (arid/semi-arid, humid, sub-humid, and highlands) in SSA and 3 different production systems: irrigated lowland, rainfed lowland, and rainfed upland were used to test hypotheses of nutrient concentration being estimable with a set of predictor variables among above-cited factors using linear mixed-effects regression models. Results: All 10 nutrients were reasonably predicted [Nakagawa’s R2 ranging from 0.27 (Ca) to 0.79 (B), and modeling efficiency ranging from 0.178 (Ca) to 0.584 (B)]. However, only the estimation of K and B concentrations was satisfactory with a modeling efficiency superior to 0.5. The country variable contributed more to the variation of concentrations of these nutrients than AEZ and production systems in our best predictive models. There were greater positive relationships (up to 0.18 of difference in correlation coefficient R) between actual nutrient uptakes and model estimation-based uptakes than those between actual nutrient uptakes and average-based uptakes. Nevertheless, only the estimation of B uptake had significant improvement among all nutrients investigated. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that with the exception of B associated with high model EF and an improved uptake over the average-based uptake, estimates of the macronutrient and micronutrient uptakes in rice grain can be obtained simply by using average concentrations of each nutrient at the regional scale for SSA. Implications: Further investigation of other factors such as the timing of fertilizer applications, rice variety, occurrence of drought periods, and atmospheric CO2 concentration is warranted for improved prediction accuracy of nutrient concentrations.
Measuring agroecology and its performance: An overview and critical discussion of existing tools and approaches
Agricultural and food systems (AFSs) are inherently multifunctional, representing a major driver for global crises but at the same time representing a huge potential for addressing multiple challenges simultaneously and contributing systemically to the achievement of sustainable development goals. Current performance metrics for AFS often fail to take this multifunctionality into account, focusing disproportionately on productivity and profitability, thereby excluding “externalities,” that is, key environmental and social values created by AFS. Agroecology is increasingly being recognized as a promising approach for AFS sustainability, due to its holistic and transformative nature. This growing interest in and commitment to agroecology by diverse actors implies a need for harmonized approaches to determine when a practice, project, investment, or policy can be considered agroecological, as well as approaches that ensure the multiple economic, environmental, and social values created by AFS are appropriately captured, hence creating a level playing field for comparing agroecology to alternatives. In this contribution to the special issue on agroecology, we present an overview of existing tools and frameworks for defining and measuring agroecology and its performance and critically discuss their limitations. We identify several deficiencies, including a shortage of approaches that allow for measuring agroecology and its performance on landscape and food system scale, and the use of standardized indicators for measuring agroecology integration, despite its context-specificity. These insights highlight the need for assessments focused on these overlooked scales and research on how best to reconcile the need for globally comparable approaches with assessing agroecology in a locally relevant manner. Lastly, we outline ongoing initiatives on behalf of the Agroecology Transformative Partnership that aim to overcome these shortcomings and offer a promising avenue for working toward harmonization of approaches. All readers are invited to contribute to these collaborative efforts in line with the agroecology principle of participation and co-creation of knowledge.
Priority science can accelerate agroforestry as a natural climate solution
The expansion of agroforestry could provide substantial climate change mitigation (up to 0.31 Pg C yr−1), comparable to other prominent natural climate solutions such as reforestation. Yet, climate-focused agroforestry efforts grapple with ambiguity about which agroforestry actions provide mitigation, uncertainty about the magnitude of that mitigation and inability to reliably track progress. In this Perspective, we define agroforestry as a natural climate solution, discuss current understanding of the controls on farm-scale mitigation potential and highlight recent innovation on emergent, high-resolution remote sensing methods to enable detection, measurement and monitoring. We also assess the status of agroforestry in the context of global climate ambitions, highlighting regions of underappreciated expansion opportunity and identifying priorities for policy and praxis.
On-farm trees are a safety net for the poorest households rather than a major contributor to food security in Rwanda
The world is challenged to meet the food demand of a growing population, especially in developing countries. Given the ambitious plans to scale up agroforestry in Africa, an improved understanding of the effect of agroforestry practices on the already challenged food security of rural households is crucial. The present study was undertaken to assess how on-farm trees impacted food security in addition to other household income sources in Rwanda. In each of the six agroecologies of Rwanda, a stratified sampling procedure was used where two administrative cells (4th formal administrative level) were selected in which households were randomly selected for interviews. A survey including 399 farmers was conducted and farmers were grouped in three types of agroforestry practice (i) low practitioners (LAP) represented by the first tertile, (ii) medium practitioners (MAP) represented by the second tertile and (iii) high practitioners (HAP) represented by the third tertile of households in terms of tree number. Asset values, household income sources, crop production, farm size, crop yield, and food security (food energy needs) were quantified among the types of agroforestry practice. A larger proportion of HAP households had access to adequate quantity and diversity of food when compared with MAP and LAP households. Food security probability was higher for households with more resources, including land, trees and livestock, coinciding with an increased crop and livestock income. We found no difference in asset endowment among types of agroforestry practices, while farmers in agroecologies with smaller farms (0.42 ha to 0.66 ha) had more on-farm trees (212 to 358 trees per household) than farms in agroecologies with larger farms (0.96 ha to 1.23 ha) which had 49 to 129 trees per household, probably due to differences in biophysical conditions. A positive association between tree density and food security was found in two out of six agroecologies. The proportion of income that came from tree products was high (> 20%) for a small fraction of farmers (12%), with the more food insecure households relying more on income from tree products than households with better food security status. Thus, tree income can be percieved as a “safety net” for the poorest households.
Agroecologically-conducive policies: A review of recent advances and remaining challenges
The debate concerning the need for significant transformations towards more nutrition oriented, environmentally sustainable and inclusive food systems has generated increased attention towards agroecology in recent years. Literature on this subject has already demonstrated that transitions to agroecology will be context specific, as countries and regions have distinctive visions for the future of agriculture and food systems, unique starting points, and will therefore define their own transition pathways. This paper assesses how different policies (consumer oriented; producer oriented; market and food environment oriented; macro and trade oriented; and cross-cutting policies) can affect incentives for agroecology. It provides examples of policies and related actions taken by national, regional and city governments that intend to promote one or more agroecological principles. The assessment reveals that, until now, few countries have embarked on a broad set of reforms with sustained commitments. Many of these policies are new, weakly institutionalized and supported by limited budgets, making it difficult to analyze their actual effects. Because of this, there is very little research on how effective they have been in promoting agroecological transitions or the objectives that agroecology aims to achieve. Consequently, the paper’s main recommendation is for research to fill this gap so that future policy formulation and implementation can be better informed by experiences from different countries.
Grounding a global tool- Principles and practice for agroecological assessments inspired by TAPE
In 2018, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) described agroecology in terms of 10 Elements. Using this framework, FAO then designed the Tool for Agroecology Performance Evaluation (TAPE) for assessment of the agroecological state of farms and landscapes as part of their mission to produce globally comparable data. A network of 11 agroecology research project teams working in Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda investigated the use of TAPE for their own agroecological assessment needs through a series of workshops and practice, including a field workshop with farmers in Uganda. The key lesson learnt was that there are inspirations to draw from TAPE, including the stepwise approach, rapid assessment across all 10 agroecology elements, and the use of simple rating scales. However, the teams also concluded that TAPE could not be used in their contexts as a readymade tool for three main reasons. First, objectives matter—there are multiple reasons for carrying out an agroecological assessment, and the tool used needs tuning to those objectives. Second, the ethical value of codesign means that those engaged need to be served by the assessment and be involved in negotiating its design. Third, localization is necessary—the same precise set of concepts, terminology, indicators, and scales in TAPE are not relevant in all contexts, and this localization can be done using the codesign process. Based on this experience, we proposed a set of 10 principles that could underlie any agroecological assessment. We further outlined, and project teams used, a process for putting the principles into practice and planning such an agroecological assessment. It involves the following steps (1) Identifying the objectives of assessment within the broader project and community goals, (2) Choosing the approach and breadth of the assessment scheme, (3) Designing details of the assessment scheme, (4) Testing and revising, (5) Implementation, and (6) Reflection and sharing learnings. The steps have potential application by researchers, development agents, and farmer organizations to assess the agroecological status of farms and landscapes in different contexts. Together, these take inspiration from TAPE but should lead to tools that are adapted to the specific purpose, context, and capacities where they will be used.