In agroecology, farmers continuously build situation-specific knowledge that allows them to develop under unpredictable and changing circumstances. There are no  fixed prescriptions in agroecology about how to produce, process, market or store food, feed, medicine and fibre. Rather, different practices work in different ways depending on each specific context and ecosystem. This is why agroecology is knowledge-intensive and why the combination of different types of knowledge is so essential in agroecology.

Knowledge co-creation is especially relevant and urgent in the context of climate change. Developing climate resilient agriculture is all about building knowledge related to locally rooted adaptation strategies. Farmers’ knowledge of seeds, land, water and other local resources is absolutely central in this process.

Solutions to problems or ways of improving production emerge through experimentation, practice and learning with others, especially because different types of actors generate different types of knowledge. Bringing people with various perspectives, experiences and questions together can facilitate creativity and innovation. Co-creation of knowledge happens when such new knowledge emerges from sharing, learning and working together with other people.

The various contributions in this issue take a look at the following questions: what kind of knowledge are we creating in agroecology? How can learning and sharing turn into co-creation of knowledge? How can farmers become equal players in co-creation of knowledge with scientists, policy makers and others? How is co-creation relevant for the agroecological movement?

What knowledge and whose knowledge?

In agroecology, knowledge about the way the farming system works as a whole is important. Often, innovation requires knowledge about the relationships among elements of the agroecosystem, for example insects, pests and companion plants (see this article). Or -in the social world- between farmers’ preferences and diverse varieties of crops (see this article).

Questions and uncertainties are also a highly relevant form of knowledge; knowing what we do not know can shape further inquiry and courses of action. Both in the experiences from Mexico and from India people came together and organised around a quest for knowledge. This is also evident from this article which points at our lack of knowledge about effective policies that work for agro-biodiversity.

And in order to act, we need knowledge about how (through what methods and procedures and skills) a desirable outcome such as higher yields, healthier soils or better nutrition may be achieved. Last but not least, co-creation may involve knowledge about people involved in the process. This is relevant because innovation often requires alignment between people who depend on each other to get something done.

While scientific knowledge aims to be largely explicit, a lot of relevant knowledge and skill in agriculture is tacit, implicit or hidden in (women) farmers’ practices and in their heads. Bringing it to the table may require deliberate exploration, elicitation and discovery. Experiences in Rwanda and the Netherlands indicate that in these processes, it is necessary to first establish trust among different actors.

Furthermore, as this article points out, questions about whose knowledge ‘counts’, and why this matters are fundamental ones – but rarely addressed, As a result, practical knowledge held by food producers is often grossly unrecognised. This may especially be the case for women’s knowledge, even though they make up 70% of the farmer population worldwide.

Beyond individual learning

“The diverse knowledge and ways of knowing of our peoples are fundamental to agroecology. We develop our ways of knowing through dialogue among them”
– Declaration of the Nyéléni Forum on Agroecology, 2015

What distinguishes co-creation of knowledge from individual learning is the collective generation of new knowledge. Agroecology blends different types of knowledge: traditional, indigenous knowledge, farmers’ knowledge, and scientific knowledge, to name a few. Each of these types of knowledge holds different treasures. Indigenous practices often hold clues about innovative ways of doing things, based on years and years of experience, such as how to manage pests using local, available resources. Farmers’ knowledge can contribute context-specific insights about a particular type of seed, planting dates, or soil resource. Scientific knowledge can inform us about processes and phenomena that are more difficult to see and comprehend with the naked eye. Bringing together these types of knowledge has led to ground-breaking insights in the eld of agriculture. The partnership experience of farmer Jim Cochran and academic Steve Gliessman is a good example of this.

As described eloquently by Elizabeth Mpofu, co-creation of knowledge occurs regularly in day-to-day life as people ask and discuss questions in an attempt to resolve problems, and as they jointly put solutions into practice. From such a process, and this often happens in agroecology, innovations can emerge that are not only technical but that are also social or political in nature. Innovation often emerges over time and requires repeated meetings and sharing. As an experience in Honduras indicates, a long lasting commitment between the actors is therefore fundamental for these processes.

Co-creation between practice and science

A very specific and important, but delicate type of knowledge co-creation happens between farmers and scientists, as many of the articles in this issue demonstrate. This has a long history. When co-creation of agricultural knowledge is mentioned today, the first kind of co-creation that most people think of is that between scientists and farmers. Already in the 1940s, British soil scientist Sir Albert Howard wrote his famous book ‘An Agricultural Testament’, in which he beautifully describes different systems of compost-making as practiced by Indian farmers. A plethora of participatory methods have been developed since then and nearly 50 years of agricultural research ensued that involved farmers in one way or another.

While many of these processes remained top-down, and farmers were only nominally consulted or involved as ‘beneficiaries’, more radical thinking and practice emerged in which farmers were seen as researchers in their own right. These notions were at the roots of the birth of ILEIA and its magazine in 1984. This kind of thinking manifested itself in, for example, the Farmer to Farmer methodology which originated in Central America, and many other initiatives which together formed the basis for the agroecology movement. At the heart of many such approaches is Paulo Freire’s adagio that poor and exploited people can and should be enabled to analyse and change their own reality.

And this work continues to evolve. This issue of Farming Matters moves away from the lab-to-land mentality in knowledge sharing and looks at existing practices and processes in which farmers truly engage in processes of co-creation. The stories presented on these pages indicate that farmers can be central players in co-creation of knowledge. Although it is still not the norm, there are cases where farmers have a role in setting the research agenda, carrying out the research and analysing the results.

As top-down processes are increasingly met with bottom-up resistance, perhaps one of the most remarkable changes that can be noted over the last decade of participatory research is the co-creation of a new attitude towards the role of farmers in co-creation processes, from both the farmers and the scientists, as Victor M. Toledo points out in this interview.

Creating knowledge in the movement

Agroecological movements are growing stronger around the world. Much of this movement building evolves around knowledge sharing about identity, history, territory, culture and strategy, leading to collective advocacy and organisation as well as other types of political use of knowledge in interactions with others. The Nyéléni processes that bring together various actors around food sovereignty and agroecology are testimony to the strength that can be generated by knowledge co-creation processes.

Another example can be seen in India, where communities are building resilience to climate change through an innovative assessment of the impacts of and responses to climate change in their region. This has given them strength to stand up against the externally imposed REDD (the UN programme for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). Three authors from Coventry University argue that fundamentally rethinking and reshaping the co-creation of knowledge can advance the struggles of social movements who are striving for agroecology and food sovereignty.

This issue of Farming Matters offers a rich palette of practices of knowledge co-creation in agroecology. Around the world, people are generating insight into some of the key factors that can strengthen co-creation processes. As agroecology is gaining momentum as a practice, a science and a movement, further exploration of these factors is necessary. The crucial next step will be to embed these insights firmly in fundamentally new types of practice, policy and research for healthy food systems based on farmer-led agroecology.

Jessica Milgroom and Janneke Bruil work at ILEIA, the Centre for Learning on Sustainable Agriculture and the publisher of Farming Matters

Cees Leeuwis (cees.leeuwis@wur.nl) is a Professor of Knowledge, Technology and Innovation at Wageningen University in The Netherlands.

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Despite growing appreciation for the importance of locally-led change processes, the development “outsider” – be it the technical expert or the externally funded intervention, private industry, or simply “the system” – continues to lay at the centre of policies. Institutions have become self-referential and entrenched in certain problematic ways of thinking and doing.

Fortunately, as shown in recent critical reviews, such as the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), rural development is undergoing increasing scrutiny and change. Where is it going?

Agricultural modernisation

Since the 1950s, the evolution of planned interventions on behalf of the poor and disparaged has followed two general pathways. With the support of private foundations like Rockefeller and Ford, pioneers, such as the plant breeder Norman Borlaug, convinced governments to invest in industrial-era technologies (biotechnology, fertilizers and pesticides), bringing forth an external input, technology-centred model emphasising “technology-transfer” (or Development 1.0).

About the same time, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) spearheaded post-World War II relief and re-construction efforts; while churches and religious groups became involved in “capacity-building” tied to the independence movements in Africa and Asia and agrarian reform in Latin America. Over time, NGOs established a school of thought emphasising people- and process-centred approaches, all of which can be described as “participatory development” (or Development 2.0).

Such development discourses are the product of influential socio-technical regimes, in their collective efforts to set agendas and policy. For example, social networks organised around competing interests are generating the on-going debates over the nature of hunger and poverty as a “lack” of production or efficiencies, thereby justifying a call for better technology, such as genetically modified crops or “market chain” innovation.

Development 1.0 led to the creation of the national agricultural research and extension centres, as well as of the international agricultural research system.

Development 2.0 grew with the rise of rural development NGOs. These two traditions did not emerge in a social vacuum and, in fact, they continually influence one another. Despite disparate origins, over time they arguably have become part of a common ideology of “agricultural modernisation”: market-based production, the intermediation of relationships through money and financial systems, and reliance on exogenous knowledge and technology. While each owns its own ideals of environment and public good, in practice, both Development 1.0 and 2.0 emphasize universal notions of “best practice”, rationality, and profit.

While it is difficult to generalise about their short- and intermediate-term effects, people largely agree that Development 1.0 and 2.0 have fundamentally altered the course of global agriculture and food, leading to new forms of land tenure and planting schemes, management of soils, water and seeds, exchange, social relationships and aspirations of rural people and their families.

Meanwhile, there is little doubt that agricultural modernisation also has contributed to unwanted outcomes. People across the planet are dealing with associated problems – deforestation, degradation of soils and water systems, erosion of on-farm biodiversity, proliferation of pests, exclusion from markets and rising climate variability – that fundamentally undermine their food systems and well-being.

Development 3.0: Self-organisation

Though the future may seem bleak, we find reason for hope. Despite the tremendous institutional influence of Development 1.0 and 2.0, we do not find pure forms of agricultural modernisation in farmers’ fields, homes or communities. Short of romanticising local practice, we see that people, their families and social networks largely work outside the formalised institutional environment of development. As such, peoples’ practices continue to be richly nuanced and diverse, where one can find both highly worrisome trends as well as promising opportunities.

In the coming editions of Farming Matters we will share experiences from a highly prominent, though commonly neglected third pathway in development: family- and community-level innovation embedded in peoples’ daily interactions and practices (Development 3.0). We will present our studies on how people, operating in families and social networks, have managed to creatively forge relatively sustainable and healthy food practices in the face of the seeming hegemony of agricultural modernisation.

The crux of Development 3.0 is to approach rural development as something that ultimately emerges from locally distributed and resolved social processes, however tricky and messy, rather than as something that can be fixed. Then, one subsequent institutional challenge becomes the re-thinking of science, policy and professionalised development vis-à-vis the undeniable self-organisation of continuities and change.

While we, as researchers and development practitioners, still struggle to step outside of our own institutional biases and constraints, faced with the pressing challenges of modern social and environmental decline, we agree with others that a fresh perspective on development is urgently called for.

Like its predecessors, Development 3.0 is filled with contradictions and challenges, but there is strong evidence that development practice is already undergoing change in the hands of emerging networks of development actors, in particular families and food counter-movements.

Drawing on on-going work in Latin America, our colleagues and we will contribute a series of articles on the richness of peoples’ daily practices and show why this social heterogeneity is so central to the past, present and future of agriculture, food and environmental management. Through grounded experiences in families, communities and other collectives, we will explore how, through sheer grit, creativity and flair, people go about their daily living and being.

In particular, we will shed light on “positive deviance”: those cases where families have generated promising alternatives to the norms of practice in soil and water management, agrobiodiversity, family nutrition, the circulation and sale of products as well as in the shaping of public opinion and policy. The focus on positive deviance is meant to provide a central reference point for understanding how change evolves and spreads through peoples’ day-to-day practices and self-organisation.

Stephen Sherwood, Cees Leeuwis and Todd Crane

Stephen Sherwood (stephen.sherwood@wur.nl), Cees Leeuwis and Todd Crane work at the department of Knowledge, Technology and Innovation (KTI)/Centre for Integrative Development, Wageningen University, the Netherlands.

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The study found that farms with high or medium resource endowment need around 20% of their total land to achieve household food self-sufficiency. Farms with poor resource endowment need 80% of their total farm size to produce sufficient food for household consumption.

Households with high resource endowment are more resilient; they have more household food reserves and find it much less difficult to feed their families throughout the year.

Also, the high and medium resource endowed farm households have more access to labour as they often hire the labour of less endowed households for agricultural activities. The land and labour constraints faced by low resource endowed households make it very difficult for them to invest in jatropha production.

High resource endowed households that grew jatropha became discouraged and stopped actively managing their jatropha fields. This was not because of land or labour constraints, but because they found the benefits of managing jatropha were less than for other crops.

As long as there are no organised markets or value chains for jatropha, it is unlikely that even this group of farmers will allocate resources to a single- purpose, non-food crop such as jatropha; the more so since they have little knowledge or experience with it and it only gives profitable yields after three to four years.

The way in which the Mozambican government promoted jatropha production in Nhambita led to disappointing results that negatively affected farmers’ trust in the biofuel crop.

Biofuel strategies for smallholders must take account of the specific context in which farming takes place, the complexity of different farming strategies and their synergies at community level.

Furthermore, it is essential to create an enabling environment for experimentation and to provide institutional support for capacity building, sharing knowledge and experiences and market development. The study also revealed several opportunities: jatropha oil is suitable for manufacturing soap and for lighting – which are among the main expenditures for Nhambita households – and the jatropha press-cake and fruit coats can be used as an organic fertilizer.

Ex-ante assessment tools should be used to strategically assess the potential and impact of agricultural policies and interventions before promoting them among smallholder farmers. This would prevent such interventions – whether for biofuel production or other green economy initiatives – from being a threat rather than an opportunity for smallholders.

Text: Marc Schut, Annemarie van Paassen, Cees Leeuwis, Sandra Bos, Wilson Leonardo and Anna Lerner

Marc Schut (marc.schut@wur.nl) works as a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Communication and Innovation Studies of Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR), the Netherlands.

Annemarie van Paassen and Cees Leeuwis work at the Department of Communication and Innovation Studies, WUR.

Sandra Bos works for the FACT Foundation, Wageningen,

Wilson Leonardo is doing PhD research with the Plant Production Systems Group at WUR and

Anna Lerner is Energy and Climate Change Specialist, World Bank, Washington D.C., U.S.A.

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