Comment by transdisciplinary team of scientists working in food and agriculture systems Dear CFS/HLPE Secretariat, Please find below a review of the V0 draft of the report: “Agroecological approaches and other innovations for sustainable agriculture and food systems that enhance food security and Nutrition.” This submission is the result of a collaboration among several academics and researchers who work in agroecology, sustainable agriculture, and food systems policy. We connected with each other after independently reviewing the V0 and realizing that several of our reflections and suggestions were complementary. It thus made sense to collaborate on a single submission, given the complexity and length of the report. We subsequently circulated the review among a small network of colleagues who made comments and suggestions for improving the review. The names of all contributors are included below. Our review proceeds as follows. First, we provide a brief summary of our main recommendations (also in the email below). Next, we respond to the FAO 10 Guiding Questions. We then provide feedback on Tables, Figures, and Boxes used in the report. Finally, we offer a section-by-section review with more in- depth commentary on many chapter subsections, including references and suggestions for improvement. Thank you for your time and consideration. We hope that our comments are constructive and we look forward to remaining in touch as the HLPE process continues. Kind regards, Maywa Montenegro, Alastair Iles, Annie Shattuck Writing on behalf of all undersigned Authored by: Alastair Iles, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California at Berkeley, US. Maywa Montenegro, Ph.D., UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Human Ecology, University of California at Davis, US. 1
Transcript
Comment by transdisciplinary team of scientists working in food and agriculture systems
Dear CFS/HLPE Secretariat,
Please find below a review of the V0 draft of the report: “Agroecological approaches and other innovations for sustainable agriculture and food systems that enhance food security andNutrition.”
This submission is the result of a collaboration among several academics and researchers who work in agroecology, sustainable agriculture, and food systems policy. We connected with each other after independently reviewing the V0 and realizing that several of our reflections and suggestions were complementary. It thus made sense to collaborate on a single submission, given the complexity and length of the report.
We subsequently circulated the review among a small network of colleagues who made comments and suggestions for improving the review. The names of all contributors are included below.
Our review proceeds as follows. First, we provide a brief summary of our main recommendations (also in the email below). Next, we respond to the FAO 10 Guiding Questions. We then provide feedback on Tables, Figures, and Boxes used in the report. Finally, we offer a section-by-section review with more in-depth commentary on many chapter subsections, including references and suggestions for improvement.
Thank you for your time and consideration. We hope that our comments are constructive and we look forward to remaining in touch as the HLPE process continues.
Alastair Iles, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California at Berkeley, US.
Maywa Montenegro, Ph.D., UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Human Ecology, University of California at Davis, US.
Annie Shattuck, Visiting Scholar, Department of Geography, University of Colorado Boulder, US.
Hannah Wittman, Ph.D., Professor of Land and Food Systems and Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, Academic Director, Centre for Sustainable Food Systems, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
JoAnn Jaffe, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Sociology and Social Studies, University of Regina, Regina, Canada
Molly D. Anderson, Ph.D., William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Food Studies, Academic Director, Food Studies Program, Middlebury College, US.
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M. Jahi Chappell, Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, Coventry University, Coventry, UK.
Mariaelena Huambachano, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Indigenous Studies and Sustainability, California State University, Northridge, California, US.
Rebecca Tarlau, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Education and Labor Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, US.
Reviewed and Endorsed by:
Raj Patel, Ph.D., Research Professor, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, US.
Christopher M. Bacon, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Santa Clara University, US.
Joshua Sbicca, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Colorado State University, US.
Garrett Graddy-Lovelace, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, School of International Service, American University, US.
Timothy Bowles, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Agroecology and Sustainable Agricultural Systems, University of California Berkeley, US.
Johanna Jacobi, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Switzerland.
Liz Carlisle, Ph.D., Lecturer, School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences, Stanford University, Palo Alto, US.
Noa Lincoln, Ph.D. Assistant Researcher of Indigenous Crops and Cropping Systems, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, US.
Responses to 10 Guiding Questions (FAO text is indented):
1. The V0 draft is wide-ranging in analyzing the contribution of agroecological and other
innovative approaches to ensuring food security and nutrition (FSN). Is the draft useful in
clarifying the main concepts? Do you think that the draft appropriately covers agroecology as
one of the possible innovative approaches? Does the draft strike the right balance between
agroecology and other innovative approaches?
The V0 draft has an ambitious scope, one that we commend the authors for developing. However, the
relationship between sustainable food systems (SFS), food security & nutrition (FSN) and agroecology is
not clearly delineated. Multiple frameworks and sets of overlapping principles are introduced, bringing
more confusion than analytical clarity. The draft describes agroecology and other innovative approaches
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in detail, but does not actually draw on empirical evidence to assess their contribution to, or impact on,
the progressive transition towards SFS. Instead, the draft presupposes that all the innovations included
are “innovations in SFS.” We strongly suggest a significant re-framing to simplify frameworks and to
provide a robust and credible assessment of precisely how and in what ways agroecology and other
innovations contribute to SFS and FSN. We further suggest that the relationship between SFS and FSN
be clarified. Food security & nutrition is but one, albeit critically important, dimension of sustainable food
systems. A holistic framework for SFS that includes FSN within a larger “ecosystem” of metrics would
also include ecosystem/ecological health, knowledge and cultural diversity, equity, and democratic governance, as described further below. We further urge an expanded understanding of FSN as part of
human health more broadly. A rigorous evaluation of food security and nutrition is strengthened by the
recognition of wider human health concerns in which FSN is embedded.
We suggest consolidating the list of 16 Agroecology Principles, specifically, using the 10 FAO Elements of
Agroecology as a shorter, institutionally recognized list of agroecology principles. Finally, it is essential to
ground the entire analysis in a rights-based framework, consistent with the mandate of the CFS. We
therefore suggest that instead of treating rights as a separate “innovation,” rights-based approaches
become part of governance within the SFS “ecosystem” indicated above. We give detailed feedback on
how this reframing might be done in our comments below (see page 17 of this document).
2. Have an appropriate range of innovative approaches been identified and documented in the
draft? If there are key gaps in coverage of approaches, what are these and how would they
be appropriately incorporated in the draft? Does the draft illustrate correctly the contributions
of these approaches to FSN and sustainable development? The HLPE acknowledges that
these approaches could be better articulated in the draft, and their main points of
convergence or divergence among these approaches could be better illustrated. Could the
following set of “salient dimensions” help to characterize and compare these different
approaches: human-rights base, farm size, local or global markets and food systems (short or
long supply chain), labor or capital intensity (including mechanization), specialization or
diversification, dependence to external (chemical) inputs or circular economy, ownership and
use of modern knowledge and technology or use of local and traditional knowledge and
practices?
The draft presents a wide range of “prominent approaches” (p. 15, V0) but how and why these approaches were selected for inclusion in a report focused on SFS is nowhere made explicit. As it stands, the draft does not sufficiently, rigorously, or systematically assess the contributions of these various approaches to SFS (more robustly defined as including not only FSN, but also equity, environmental health and resilience; knowledge diversity; and
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democratic governance). An evidence-based assessment of the degree to which these “innovative approaches” contribute to SFS should be undertaken and presented at the outset of Chapter 2.
Currently, the “salient dimensions” (described in "Key Aspects involved in addressing FSN" in Box 7 and providing the basis for the matrix of Table 3) are unhelpful and only add to a confusion of overlapping criteria. Again, we propose simplifying, using the FAO 10 Elements to characterize agroecology (in Chapter 1). Then, using an SFS “ecosystem” framework that includes FSN, agroecology and the other innovations can be compared and evaluated for their evidence-based contributions to sustainability and food security & nutrition (in Chapter 2). Those approaches that clearly and substantially contribute to SFS would then merit a closer examination of “main points of convergence or divergence” as well as “complementarity or antagonism” with agroecology and each other.
In terms of “convergence or divergence,” we emphasize that many of the other innovations/approaches to
FSN named in the report borrow heavily from practices fundamental to agroecology. For example, a tenet
of Nutrition Sensitive Agriculture at the farm/field scale is diversification – a key element of agroecology
(as elaborated by the FAO’s 10 Elements). Diversification also features prominently in Agroforestry,
Permaculture, and many forms of Organic farming. Some, although certainly not all, “Climate-Smart
Agriculture” strategies include soil health enhancement, diversification, and other practices that can
confer resilience – another key element of agroecology. But not everything that is promoted and practiced
under the umbrella of these ‘innovations’ contributes positively to SFS or complements agroecology. In
fact, substantial evidence indicates that some of the named innovations – particularly those embedded
within a “business as usual” approach to industrial agriculture – are antagonistic to SFS (as well as to
agroecology, as defined by the 10 FAO elements of AE). They also clearly cannot satisfy a rights-based
framework. Making these complementarities and antagonisms explicit would help illuminate which
aspects of these innovations are likely to advance the transition to SFS, and which are an offshoot of
unsustainable industrial systems and thus likely to delay or impede the transition.
There are also empirical problems with the treatment of scale and farm size in the report. While
agroecology is highly effective in supporting small-scale, vulnerable farmers, agroecology is not scale
dependent or limited to small scale farms. Evidence to this effect should be included. See suggestions on
this issue under comments for chapter 1 (p. 23).
3. The V0 draft outlines 17 key agroecological principles and organizes them in four overarching
and interlinked operational principles for more sustainable food systems (SFS): resource
efficiency, resilience, social equity / responsibility and, ecological footprint. Are there any key
aspects of agroecology that are not reflected in this set of 17 principles? Could the set of
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principles be more concise, and if so, which principles could be combined or reformulated to
achieve this?
Currently, the 16 (not 17) principles presented in Box 4 only add to the complexity of the report, especially
as they follow lists of SFS principles (page 13, V0) and FSN principles (page 14, V0), with no explicit
narrative to follow. That they overlap significantly with the 18 “Key Aspects” of FSN (see above, Box 7)
only entangles lists of principles and tables that policy-makers will find difficult to interpret. We strongly
suggest:
1) Consolidating the list of 16 Principles, namely, using the 10 FAO Elements of Agroecology as a
shorter, institutionally recognized list of agroecology principles;
2) Underlining the origins of agroecology in the practices of Indigenous, peasant, and family farmers
over the centuries, the scholarly work of Efraim Hernandez, Altieri, Perfecto, Vandermeer, Gliessman,
Pimbert, Rabhi and numerous others. Also, the ongoing elaboration by peasant social movements such
La Via Campesina (Desmarais, 2007; Martínez-Torres & Rosset, 2010; McMichael, 2006) and the
Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) (Branford & Rocha, 2002; Fernandes & Stédile,
through horizontal partnerships and collaboration across these spheres.1
The FAO 10 Elements are an imperfect reflection of this complex social history. But they were developed
through a series of FAO regional seminars on agroecology and build upon long-recognized agroecology
texts and tenets. They therefore serve as a useful set of principles to characterize agroecology and
describe its salient aspects in both descriptive and normative terms. This is important in Chapter 1
towards establishing how agroecology is understood by many communities and groups worldwide.
However, a common assessment framework is needed in Chapter 2 to evaluate agroecology,
alongside the other ‘innovations’, for their contribution to equitable and sustainable food systems (SFS)
and food security and nutrition (FSN). (See framework details further below, p. 17).
1 Branford, S., & Rocha, J. (2002). Cutting the Wire: The Story of the Landless Movement in Brazil. London: Latin America Bureau. Desmarais, A. A. (2007). La Via Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants. London: Pluto Press. Fernandes, B. M., & Stédile, J. P. (2002). Brava Gente: El MST y la lucha por la tierra en el Brasil. Barcelona: VIRUS Editorial. Martínez-Torres, M., & Rosset, P. (2010). La Vía Campesina: The Birth and Evolution of a Transnational Social Movement. Journal of Peasant Studies, 37(1), 149–175. McMichael, P. (2006). Reframing Development: Global Peasant Movements and the New Agrarian Question. Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 27(4), 471–476. Wright, A., & Wolford, W. (2003). To Inherit the Earth: The Landless Movement and the Struggle for a New Brazil. Oakland, CA: Food First Books.
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We also caution against a rigid “ideal type” or singular version of agroecology. It would be helpful to show
a spectrum of practices and orientations that can lead to an agroecological transition. We give
comments to this effect in section 2.1.
4. The V0 draft is structured around a conceptual framework that links innovative approaches to
FSN outcomes via their contribution to the four above mentioned overarching operational
principles of SFS and, thus, to the different dimensions of FSN. Along with the four agreed
dimensions of FSN (availability, access, stability, utilization), the V0 draft also discusses a
fifth dimension: agency. Do you think that this framework addresses the key issues? Is it
applied appropriately and consistently across the different chapters of the draft to structure its
overall narrative and main findings?
The definitions of sustainable food systems and FSN have a circular logic. The report assumes all
innovations already meet the HLPE 2014 definition of Sustainable Food Systems, and that definition of
SFS includes FSN. Thus, a tautological argument is introduced: if all the innovations are assumed a priori
to be part of SFS, and if SFS by definition include FSN, then there would be no reason to assess the
innovations for their contribution to FSN. Of course, the important work here is to subject agroecology and
the other innovations to an evidence-based assessment of the key elements of SFS. While the HLPE
definition of SFS offers a good starting place, we strongly encourage the use of a definition that includes
not only FSN, but also additional key elements of ecosystem/ecological health, knowledge & cultural diversity, equity, and democratic governance. (As explained in #1 above and elaborated in our
comments on the “Introduction” (p. 17 below), doing so would be consistent with the CFS mandate
regarding rights-based approaches and the now-global recognition that equity and governance are
integral to sustainability). As far as assessing a given innovation’s contribution to FSN specifically, we
support the report’s current guidelines of availability, access, stability, utilization, and agency. (An
alternative that we would prefer is the food security framework of Cecilia Rocha’s 5A’s: availability,
access, adequacy, appropriateness, and agency). In either case, the guidelines are a start but must be
met with evidence.
5. The V0 draft provides an opportunity to identify knowledge gaps, where more evidence is
required to assess the contribution that agroecology and other innovative approaches can
make progressing towards more sustainable food systems for enhanced FSN. Do you think
that the key knowledge gaps are appropriately identified, that their underlying causes are
sufficiently articulated in the draft? Is the draft missing any important knowledge gap? Is this
assessment of the state of knowledge in the draft based on the best up-to-date available
scientific evidence or does the draft miss critical references? How could the draft better
integrate and consider local, traditional and empirical knowledge?
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The evidence for how and in what ways agroecology (and other innovations) contribute to SFS (and
within that, FSN) is not clearly organized nor rigorously documented. There is far too little text devoted to
assessing and reporting on the impact of agroecology on SFS (including FSN). The agroecology-related
case studies are helpful in this regard, but the approach needs to be much more systematic. We provide
detailed comments on how to strengthen the evidence base in Chapter 1. Moreover, the draft does not
present substantive evidence for whether and how the other “innovative approaches” actually contribute
to SFS (including FSN), instead offering a mostly descriptive approach. The “absence” of evidence cannot
be taken to imply that an approach would support FSN. It may be that in some cases, evidence of positive
impact does exist, but the contribution to FSN may be relatively limited; if so, this should be explicitly
noted. In some cases, evidence may indicate that an “innovative approach” may contribute to food
security in the short term (surplus grain delivered through food aid, for example) but that same approach
may undermine equity (food dumping tending to drive food prices down and farmers off the land) or
ecosystem health (eg.,“externalized costs” of input-intensive grain production in industrialized countries).
Providing a strong evidence base either way -- within an assessment framework also capable of
evaluating trade-offs -- will enhance the report’s credibility.
The report appears to have largely passed over major assessments and important investigations of many
of the same issues. We list a few here:
● International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development
(IAASTD, 2008), notably the Synthesis Report; the Global Summary for Decision Makers (SDM),
the Latin America and Caribbean SDM.
● International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food).
○ THEMATIC REPORT 1 (June 2016): 'From Uniformity to Diversity: A paradigm shift from
industrial agriculture to diversified agroecological systems'.
practices, political economy, and power relations to build healthier food systems.
○ THEMATIC REPORT 3 (October 2017): Too big to feed: Exploring the impacts of mega-
mergers, consolidation and concentration of power in the agri-food sector.
○ CASE STUDIES 2 (October 2018): Breaking Away From Industrial Food and Farming
Systems - Seven case studies of agroecological transition.
The report does cite some of these resources (IAASTD and IPES-Food, 2016, “From Uniformity to
Diversity”) but does so only passingly. It does not use the lessons of these texts to analyze issues
associated with the innovative approaches. For example, the barriers and lock-ins that inhibit transitions
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to agroecology and the powerful impact of corporate consolidation on the prospects for developing
policies to enable these transitions to happen are not addressed.
6. Chapter 2 suggests a typology of innovations. Do you think this typology is useful in
structuring the exploration of what innovations are required to support FSN, identifying key
drivers of, and barriers to, innovation (in Chapter 3) and the enabling conditions required to
foster innovation (in Chapter 4)? Are there significant drivers, barriers or enabling conditions
that are not adequately considered in the draft?
The “innovations” framework described in the V0 is both outdated and ill-fitting for a report on
agroecology. It comes from a fairly old theoretical tradition rooted in Schumpeter, Rogers, and
business/manufacturing innovation studies. The report acknowledges these origins and attempts to add
on a more “social” dimension (e.g. by talking about innovations emerging from the grassroots and citing
farmer-to-farmer networks as a worthy innovation). But this is insufficient for the complex range of
innovative approaches that the report considers.
We propose that “innovations” be reframed as something that is much more complex, multi-dimensional,
and laden with power disparities than it is at present. Innovations should also be defined as involving processes of making transitions (e.g. from some variants of industrial agriculture to conservation
agriculture and gradually toward agroecology). This will enable the Project Team to simplify its approach
further and be better able to evaluate each approach from the very start. If agroecology is an innovation
system, then the Introduction must provide an overview of “innovations” prior to Chapter 1. Right now, this
overview comes at the top of Chapter 2; this placement suggests that agroecology is not an innovation
system, whereas the others are. The Introduction should be where key concepts and criteria are first
defined (they can be elaborated later on). In addition to fundamental weaknesses of innovations theory,
the current matrix (Table 3) and the “Key Aspects involved in addressing FSN” (Box 7) on which that
matrix is based suffer from several important deficiencies. We discuss these in detail in comments on
Chapter 2 (p. 28 below).
The Chapter 3 text on drivers and barriers currently provides almost no meaningful discussion or analysis
of drivers and barriers, offering a skeletal and incomplete list of generalized drivers and barriers to
“innovation in agriculture” per se. Simply stating that “innovations in agriculture are driven by a number of
factors” and then enumerating a handful of generic “factors”, divorced from the historical, political, social,
economic, institutional and cultural context and reality of how these factors support or inhibit a particular innovation reduces the report’s credibility and usefulness. Rather, this section of Chapter 3 should take
as its starting point those innovative approaches (agroecology and others) that have been found, after
critical evidence-based assessment (in Chapter 2), to contribute significantly and positively to the five
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elements of SFS (FSN, ecology, equity, knowledge/cultural diversity, and democratic governance), and
then investigate the drivers and barriers to further innovation and scaling up and out of those approaches.
The report should not engage in the intellectual exercise of enumerating drivers and barriers to
“innovation” per se, for its own sake, or to those approaches found to have minimal contribution to SFS,
or, more problematically, to be antagonistic to agroecology in the proposed Chapter 2 framework
assessment. The focus in chapter 3 should instead be on understanding drivers and identifying barriers to the development and scaling up and out of agroecology and those innovative approaches that the weight of evidence has indicated are strong contributors to SFS. This would
provide the useful and necessary evidence base for Chapter 4’s subsequent discussion of enabling
conditions and policy recommendations to overcome the structural barriers identified in Chapter 3, that
are preventing transition towards SFS, utilizing the most promising approaches identified in Chapter 2. A
more detailed discussion of how to strengthen Chapter 3’s drivers & barriers is provided below (p. 34).
Chapter 4 lists a small number of “enabling conditions” which contain valuable insights from social
science research -- yet these conditions do not address the missing structural barriers that shape whether or not transitions to SFS can happen. They simply point to broad categories in which policies
(government, international, business-based, or community-based) can positively aid the growth of “SFS
for FSN”. One exception is “Recognizing the role of policy over access to natural resources”, which
begins to integrate intellectual property (for seeds) and customary rights for small-scale producers (for
land). But this subsection does not target the reduction of prevailing barriers and lock-ins, which
multiple IPES-Food reports (2016-2018) have urged.
7. A series of divergent narratives are documented in Chapter 3 to help tease out key barriers
and constraints to innovation for FSN. Is this presentation of these divergent narratives
comprehensive, appropriate and correctly articulated? How could the presentation of the main
controversies at stake and the related available evidence be improved?
This chapter is unclear in how it is framed, and what the aims are. Perhaps a simpler frame for section 3.1 might be: “What are the drivers and barriers to agroecology scaling up and out?” (see our
notes on drivers and barriers, as well as on scaling above) And in that context, “What are the narratives
that stifle needed innovation?” For section 3.2. we suggest re-framing the “diverging narratives” entirely, to something along the lines of “Common critiques of agroecology.” The Project Team
could use a colleague's excellent question: "Given the varied interests in our current food systems, how
can we best assess the validity of objections to agroecology and other sustainable innovations?” as the
guiding theme. This section would therefore need much more empirical data overall than it currently has,
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specifically related to FSN, and a more honest evaluation of some of the current pragmatic shortcomings
of agroecology.
8. This preliminary version of the report presents tentative priorities for action in Chapter 4, as
well as recommendations to enable innovative approaches to contribute to the radical
transformations of current food systems needed to enhance FSN and sustainability. Do you
think these preliminary findings can form an appropriate basis for further elaboration, in
particular to design innovation policies? Do you think that key recommendations or priorities
for action are missing or inadequately covered in the draft?
We propose that Chapter 4 be reframed around policies for supporting transitions to SFS,
including agroecological systems, and for overcoming the many lock-ins that characterize the dominant
industrial food system as well as some of the “innovative approaches” that originate in it. What is needed
is not “innovation policies”, which imply policies to do with industrial, academic, business, and
international agricultural R&D infrastructures. Chapter 4 lists a small number of “enabling conditions”
which contain valuable insights from social science research -- yet these conditions do not address many fundamental drivers and barriers that shape whether or not transitions to SFS can happen.
Chapter 4 would therefore benefit from shifting to an “enabling environment” concept, in which all major barriers and drivers are included, and where equitable distribution of benefits is central to the enabling.
Moreover, the discussion of knowledge generation is fairly limited: it focuses on private or industry-led
research and development, without acknowledging how this investment has contributed to intensifying
FSN and SFS problems in the past 40 years. A key assumption appears to be that farmers, pastoralists,
fishers, and other producers are relatively passive recipients of scientific knowledge, technologies, and
resources to improve their agricultural performance, rather than astute generators in their own right of
highly sophisticated knowledge. The report does recognize the positive contributions of social movements
and civil society groups to the ‘scaling across’ of agroecology practices, but simply calls for education,
training, and information. It does not address the critical role of these actors in helping change policies
and enabling environments so that the deeper structures inhibiting SFS (e.g. trade regimes, corporate
consolidation, agricultural policies favorable to intensive, large-scale production) can be transformed. The
report also fails to acknowledge the importance of intergenerational and gender-based knowledge of land
and resources. As such, the current findings are insufficient to support the development of a policy package.
Furthermore, many peasant social movements themselves have already developed extensive educational
programs promoting agroecology within their ranks. These educational programs range from peer-to-peer
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learning approaches, such as the case of Campesino-to-Campesino initiatives (Holtz-Giménez, 2006;
Rosset, Machín Sosa, Roque Jaime, & Ávila Lozano, 2011), to movement-administered schools that
support both non-formal educational opportunities and formal degree in agroecology (McCune, Reardon,
& Rosset, 2014; Meek, 2015; Meek et al., 2017; Tarlau, 2015). These movement-led educational
experiences have illustrated that “Educating for Food Sovereignty” (Meek & Tarlau, 2016) is a central
component of building agricultural alternatives within the current global food system.2
9. Throughout the V0 draft there has been an attempt to indicate, sometimes with placeholders,
specific case studies that would illustrate the main narrative with concrete examples and
experience. Are the set of case studies appropriate in terms of subject and regional balance?
Can you suggest further case studies that could help to enrich and strengthen the report?
The cases constitute a particular strength of the report because they serve to provide examples of how
innovations can develop, spread, and help with providing FSN. Some cases provide strong evidence of
how agroecology-based innovations are effectively nourishing populations (e.g. the Belo Horizonte case
and the Indian Zero Budget Agriculture movement. See also notes below on Boxes 5 and 6).
10. Are there any major omissions or gaps in the V0 draft? Are topics under-or over-represented
in relation to their importance? Are any facts or conclusions refuted, questionable or
assertions with no evidence-base? If any of these are an issue, please share supporting
evidence.
Insufficient evidence, and the lack of critical assessment of what evidence is presented, is a problem in a significant number of sections of the report. Many sections simply do not provide
enough empirical data to support assertions. We believe that with efforts to re-frame this report, as
proposed above, the authors will be better able to integrate the missing evidence and critically assess the material in a systematic way. Relevant suggestions to some of the sections are included below in
“Section by Section.”
2 Holtz-Giménez, E. (2006). Campesino a Campesino: Voices from Latin America’s Farmer to Farmer Movement for Sustainable Agriculture. Oakland, CA: Food First Books. McCune, N., Reardon, J., & Rosset, P. (2014). Agroecological Formación in Rural Social Movements. Radical Teachers: A Socialist, Feminist, and Anti-Racist Journal on the Theory and Practice of Teaching, 98, 31–37. Meek, D. (2015). Towards a Political Ecology of Education: The Educational Politics of Scale in Southern Pará, Brazil. Environmental Education Research, 21(3), 447–459. Meek, D., Bradley, K., Ferguson, B., Hoey, L., Morales, H., Rosset, P., & Tarlau, R. (2017). Food sovereignty education across the Americas: multiple origins, converging movements. Agriculture and Human Values. Meek, D., & Tarlau, R. (2016). Critical Food Systems Education (CFSE): Educating for Food Sovereignty. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 40(3), 237–260. Rosset, P., Machín Sosa, B., Roque Jaime, A. M., & Ávila Lozano, D. R. (2011). The Campesino-to-Campesino agroecology movement of ANAP in Cuba: social process methodology in the construction.
Figures, Tables, Boxes. We also wish to comment on some of the supplementary elements in the report.
Please note that several of these remarks overlap with our overall comments. Since figures are often a
“go to” site for policymakers, we wanted to give specific attention to a few. We suggest that revisions to Box 4, Box 7, and Table 3 are particularly central to improving the coherence, utility, and credibility of this report. Their headings are bolded below.
Figure 1. “Approaches seeking to create sustainable food systems that contribute to food security and
nutrition.” Very hard to interpret, and oddly represents FSN as an "impact" of SFS. The cluttering of
frameworks is not helped by this visual rendering. There is also circular logic throughout, with the third
row from the bottom (Overarching principles) containing a list of SFS criteria, which feed into "Pillars of
SFS for FSN" which then feed into Sustainable food Systems. We suggest reworking this graphic entirely,
possibly replacing with an illustration that represent an "ecosystem" approach to SFS that includes: FSN
as one of its fundamentals (ideally within Human/Public Health); Ecological/Environmental Health;
Knowledge & Cultural Diversity; Rights-based & Democratic Governance; and Equity.
Figure 2. “Historical Evolution of Agroecology” - This graph nicely illustrates elements of science, practice,
and movement developed in several of Wezel’s works. Improvements could be made to show that
Indigenous knowledge and practice predate the 1980s (and that agroecology predates the 1930s, where
the timeline begins); that the relationship between science, practice, and movement is less a historical
progression than a co-productive relation; and that part C limits the political, economic, cultural, and
agricultural articulations of agroecology to the sciences, when peasant and farmer articulations of these
valences are both older and more web-like than the graphic suggests.
Box 1. “Proliferation of definitions of agroecology.” - The box treats science, practice, and movement
aspects as a “proliferation” of definitions, implying confusion or lack of coherence, when these are
complementary and non-contradictory aspects of a holistic definition. While it is certainly true that many
definitions of agroecology exist, and that agroecology “is increasingly contested” (Pimbert 2018), the box
does not effectively show these tensions.
Box 3. Rede Ecovida in Southern Brazil - Good case study which could be improved with much more
detail and more treatment of FSN, if those data are available. This suggestion reflects our overall
feedback to strengthen the empirical assessment of FSN for agroecology (and the other innovations). The
Case Studies now in the boxes are some of the better aspects of the report and could be the starting
place for a deeper, more systematic treatment.
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Box 4. “A consolidated set of agroecology principles” - As expressed elsewhere, we strongly suggest
that these 16 principles, taken from different texts, are pared down to a more consistent and already
agreed-upon set. The FAO’s Ten Elements of Agroecology (2018) could serve this purpose. While these
10 are imperfect (“equity” is buried under human values, for example), they have the benefit of being
simple and institutionally recognized.
Table 1. “Scale of application of agroecological principles and contribution to food security and nutrition”. This table uses the 16 principles of current Box 4 and asks about scale of application and contribution to
food security. If our previous suggestion is taken, this Table would similarly need modifying. But we are
not certain it is necessary to have this Table at all. The scale of application column is mostly intuitive, and
at times simply odd. For example, “Increase proximity and confidence between producers and consumers
through promotion of fair and short distribution networks and by re-embedding food systems in to local
economies” is suggested to be a “farm/agroecosystem” scale, and not a “food system” scale attribute.
The metrics of “direct” or “indirect” in the contribution to FSN column add little value to an appraisal of
food security and nutrition, and many of these “I”s could also be argued as “D”’s. More in-depth evaluation
of FSN is needed in the text.
Box 5. “Zero Budget Natural Farming – Scaling out Agroecology in India.” Again, an excellent portrayal of
agroecology in action. The text descriptively includes ZBNF methods and the table mentions that
“Farmers report improved yields, food quality, income and reduced farm expenses and credit yields.” It
would be excellent to explicitly unpack these cases in terms of SFS and FSN criteria -- as these are ways
to understand if and how agroecology (and other innovations) fulfill sustainability and nutrition goals, the
mandate of the report. It would also be useful to draw attention to the potential effects of the
commodification and fast track application of ZBNF to a global community with private capital flows from
financial institutions into local farming and ‘sustainable supply chains’ supported by ZBNF.
Box 6. “Participatory Agroecology Research to address Food Security and Nutrition in Malawi.” One of the
best parts of the V0 report, this box includes specific research on nutritional and food security outcomes
from agroecological interventions. The “key findings” also provides an honest look at complications (eg.
gender inequality) that must be overtly addressed, requirements for participatory engagement, and
timelines (eg. 2 years with follow-up evaluations) before which benefits materialize. We strongly urge
more of such treatments throughout the Report.
Figure 4. “Agroecology and sustainable diets as complementary and intersecting concepts.” This figure
would work better if the components and concepts in the figure (eg. “intersecting relations of power and
inequality”) were actually explored in the text. As is, the diagram is not adding much to the report and
could easily be cut.
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Figure 7. This figure depicts the historical development of agroforestry. It is reasonable but could be
improved: it portrays a false linear progression of agroforestry, it is heavily based on official policy
recognition and institutional practice, and suggests (as in Chapter 1) that agroforestry is fairly recent in its
origins. “Traditional” agroforestry knowledge is represented as only one “input” into the historical
progression.
Figure 11. “Determinants of hunger”. This figure is misleading and should be revised or omitted. It makes
no reference to determinants such as access to land, income/poverty, and assets/wealth. It also fails to
draw on the large agricultural development literature around Amartya Sen’s exchange entitlements and
capabilities framework.
Box 7. “Key aspects involved in addressing FSN.” Box 7 develops several (17) new criteria in
question form and uses them to anchor the typology (matrix) of Table 3. These questions overlap in many
places with the Box 4 principles for agroecology, raising the question of evaluating Agroecology against
itself. More problematically, the key aspects of FSN, in part, “were identified from the theory of innovation
systems” -- a theory, we suggest, that is out-of-date and epistemically incompatible with the intentions of
this report. It seems highly unnecessary to include 2 frameworks in the Introduction, plus 16 AE principles
in Chapter 1, plus 17 criteria based on pieces of the above, but in question form. We suggest simplifying in an SFS/FSN “ecosystem” framework, described below.
Table 3. “Comparison table between the nine approaches to innovations in sustainable food systems.” This table (elsewhere referred to as the “matrix” or the “typology”) is the heart of the V0 report.
It compares agroecology with 8 other “innovations” for their performance on the “Key aspects involved in
addressing FSN” (Box 7). There are multiple, fairly egregious problems with Table 3, including poor
conception of categories, unevaluative questions, and not least, including Rights-based Approaches
alongside other production-based innovations. Please refer to our in-depth discussion of Table 3 below in the Section 2.2 “Innovations Matrix”.
Table 4. This table attempts to summarize the scale(s) at which the various “innovative approaches” can
be found. It needs to be revised because -- for example -- agroecology can be put into practice at many
scales, not simply small scale.
Table 6. This table should be abandoned because it is based on a simplistic and binary model of formal
vs. informal as against science, practice, and movement. How can FAO be a movement? The table
artificially splits local and scientific knowledge, but (a) all scientific knowledge is locally produced and (b)
much local knowledge is scientific (see Jasanoff and Martello Long, Earthly Politics, 2004). Many
“informal” practices are actually founded on farmer design and experimentation, such that farms are
designed (this is a repeated theme in Altieri’s work).
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Box 14. This box on “planetary boundaries” is yet to be filled but should be eliminated. The idea of
planetary boundaries is important to understanding the range of impacts of different forms of agriculture.
Yet it has nothing to do with technology assessment or studying whether innovative approaches are
causing damage to SFS and FSN. It would be better to have a box that examines the practice of
participatory technology assessment. Kristin Shrader-Frechette’s works on environmental justice and
technology assessment can help here, along with a large body of works on the consensus conference
and citizen jury concepts.
Boxes 15 to 17. These boxes are yet to be populated. Why are there three boxes for GMOs alone? This
appears wildly disproportionate compared to the other “diverging narratives” in Chapter 3, most of which
lack boxes. Two boxes are on Bt; this seems duplicative. We suggest replacing the three boxes with one
box that illustrates — using the case study of glyphosate-resistant GMO crops as the most widely
adopted of the GMO seed technologies — the social, political, economic, and institutional factors at play
behind a “diverging narrative” that GMO-based agricultural systems contribute to SFS. Such a box would
also help illustrate aspects of human health, such as pesticide exposure, that are broader than FSN, but
are deeply connected to it.
We recommend inserting a good graphic in Chapter 3 to illustrate the ways in which major drivers and
barriers intersect to shape the agricultural systems into which the innovative approaches are being
introduced.
We recommend inserting good graphics in Chapter 4 to illustrate transitions to SFS. Below, we provide examples, including the “Transitions to Sustainable Systems” graphic from the IAASTD LAC report (Fig
5, p. 9, LAC SDM, 2008), a gradient diagram from Altieri and Toledo (2011) and the text from Gliessman’s
5-Level agroecology transitions framework. We also provide our own mock-up of a graphic that could be
used to illustrate how different innovations contribute to FSN along a spectrum, while also highlighting
We suggest that the Project Team consider stepping back to reconsider how SFS and FSN are brought into the analysis, beginning in the Introduction.
Toward an Ecosystem Framework for Sustainable Food Systems including Food Security & Nutrition. We suggest that the report be reframed and reorganized as an effort to evaluate agroecology & other innovations on an empirical basis for contributions to a holistic (1) Sustainable Food Systems (SFS) which encompasses, but is not limited to, Food Security & Nutrition (FSN). This would allow a proper
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evaluation of all innovations against criteria in a common framework. (Please see below for details on the framework and a sketch illustration)
Currently, the report appears to presuppose that all innovations already meet an HLPE definition of Sustainable Food Systems (defined on page 13, V0). The proposed innovations (in Chapter 2) are assumed to meet the criteria of SFS but evidence is never provided that they actually do so. The report offers these innovations as SFS innovations and moves on to ask about impacts on food security and nutrition (FSN). This prevents the report (see below) from actually evaluating evidence for impacts on ecological health, public/human health, resiliency economic/social justice, and so forth that strongly influence ability to provide FSN. In other words, the V0 really should be evaluating the competency and evidence base for SFS, not assuming that these are already met.
The report’s definition of Sustainable Food Systems appears circular in logic. The definition of “sustainable food systems” (p. 14, V0) already includes food security and nutrition:
The HLPE (2014) has defined sustainable food systems (SFS) as food systems that: “ensure food security and nutrition for all in such a way that the economic, social and environmental bases to generate food security and nutrition of future generations are not compromised.”
Thus, a tautological argument is introduced: if all the innovations are assumed a priori to be part of SFS, and if SFS by definition include FSN, then there would be no reason to assess the innovations for their contribution to FSN. Of course, the important work here is to subject agroecology and the other innovations to an evidence-based assessment of the key elements of SFS.
How to define and evaluate Sustainable Food Systems within the report?We strongly suggest that the Project Team develop criteria to evaluate whether an innovation amounts to SFS. A start has already been made by invoking three principles from a 2014 HLPE report (improve resource efficiency, strengthen resilience, secure social equity/responsibility), and adding a fourth one, ecological footprint, based on analysis of agroecology. These are moving in the right direction, but could be strengthened to reflect contemporary thinking in sustainable food systems theory and practice, especially in terms of justice. A definition of SFS must explicitly include justice and/or equity because a food system that is inequitable is never going to be sustainable. It is possible that the criteria could be simplified in number but explored in greater depth.
Based on HLPE (2014) and IAASTD (2008), a framework for sustainable food systems (SFS) could approach the concept as an “ecosystem” of interrelated and co-constituted dimensions. For example:
● Food Security and Nutrition (providing FSN within a broader sphere of human/public health. Food systems affect human health in many ways including through exposure to chemicals, via water and air quality, through food-borne pathogens and diseases, and by affecting emotional and psychological wellbeing)
● Knowledge & Cultural Diversity (enabling epistemic diversity and supporting learning across peoples of diverse knowledge traditions, cultures, cosmovisions, and values)
● Rights-based & Democratic Governance (governing production and consumption via approaches such as right-to-food, food sovereignty, food democracy)
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● Equity & Justice (redistributing wealth, resources, and power; ensuring fair labor treatment and political representation; active dismantling of race, class, gender, religious, and ethnic inequalities; assuring decent livelihoods).
A sketch illustration of the proposed “ecosystem” framework for evaluating AE and other innovations for contributions to a holistic sustainable food system (SFS):
Rights-basis (Right to Food, Food Sovereignty, Gender Equality)It is important to ground the entire analysis within the rights-based mandates of the CFS. Currently, Right-based innovations are included alongside other production systems, when they do not belong in that analysis. Rights provide a fundamental base that underpin all of SFS and FSN. We suggest that Rights-based arguments become a top-level framing and analytical framework to support evaluations of agroecology and the other innovations that follow. In this way, the report can ask “To what extent do agroecology and other forms of agriculture actually fulfill these rights in practice, according to the available evidence?” This Rights-basis should be stated upfront in the Introduction. The graphic below incorporates rights more explicitly; see also Note beneath graphic.
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Note: the above is an imperfect representation of dialectically related, mutually reinforcing processes and functions. Rights underpin and shape all of the above spheres. Right-to-food and food sovereignty, widely recognized in international law and enacted by civil society movements, support Equity & Justice as well as FSN. Rights of the Mother Earth (Pachamama), enshrined in several national constitutions and essential to Indigenous cosmovisions, can support Ecological Health. Rights of Peasants and Rights of Indigenous Peoples help to secure Knowledge & Cultural Diversity. Thus, rights might be equally envisioned as an all-encompassing web that supports and enables all elements of SFS. We attempt to show that relationship, but much improvement could be made. (We recognize that similar arguments could be made for Ecological Health as all-encompassing, and so forth.)
Food Security & NutritionInitially, many of us perceived that the FSN was too narrow in scope. Ecological health, public health (including physical and psychological), resilience, and economic/social justice surround and impact FSN in the real world; these components, arguably, create a durable foundation for FSN in the long term. But including such concerns within evaluations of SFS (as suggested above) helps solve this scope problem. By providing evidence that SFS criteria are being fully evaluated as part of innovations, the report is more able to focus in on food security and nutrition.
How should FSN be appraised? The definition used in the V0 (p. 14) is fairly good. It includes Availability, Access, Utilization, Stability, then adds Agency from Rocha (2009) and Chappell (2018). We prefer the complete “5 A’s” framework offered by Rocha which includes:
Availability - Sufficient food for all people at all times.Access - Physical and economic access to food for all at all times.Adequacy - Access to food that is nutritious and safe, and produced in environmentally sustainable ways.
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Acceptability - Access to culturally acceptable food, which is produced and obtained in ways that do not compromise people’s dignity, self-respect or human rights.Agency - The policies and processes that enable the achievement of food security.
This framework has the benefit of indirectly addressing SFS insofar as adequacy includes environmental sustainability and food quality. It also underlines cultural appropriateness, an underrecognized aspect of food security.
Still, the definition of FSN in the report is workable. The larger problem, from our perspective, is that the V0 provides very little empirical evidence that agroecology or the other innovations actually meet FSN, let alone SFS, goals. It also does not show how industrial agriculture and ‘New Green Revolution’ paradigms do the opposite -- promoting food insecurity and malnutrition (in addition to being unsustainable).
This sketch illustration expands on the details for defining and evaluating FSN within an SFS framework, using Rocha’s 5As.
Innovations: Below (see Chapter 2), we discuss at some length what the problems are with the innovations framework used in the report. We propose that “innovations” be reframed as something that is much more complex, multi-dimensional, and laden with power disparities than it is at present. Innovations should also be defined as involving processes of making transitions (e.g. from some variants of industrial agriculture to conservation agriculture and gradually toward agroecology). (See: Guerra, J. J. Blesh, A. Schmitt Filho, and H. Wittman. 2017. "Pathways to agroecological management through mediated markets in Santa Catarina, Brazil." Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene.) This will enable the Project Team to simplify its approach further and be better able to evaluate each approach from the very start. If agroecology is an innovation system, then the Introduction must provide an overview of “innovations” prior to Chapter 1. Right now, this overview comes at the top of Chapter 2; by being placed
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here, it suggests that agroecology is not an innovation system whereas the others are. The Introduction should be where key concepts and criteria are first defined (they can be elaborated later on).
Given these proposed changes to the overarching framework, we suggest the Project Team then treat the agroecology principles as simply distilling some key characteristics of agroecology. We strongly suggest:
1) Consolidating the list of 16 Principles, namely, using the 10 FAO Elements of Agroecology as a shorter, institutionally recognized list of agroecology principles;
2) Underlining the origins of agroecology in the practices of Indigenous, peasant, and family farmers over the centuries, the scholarly work of Efraim Hernandez, Altieri, Perfecto, Vandermeer, Gliessman, Pimbert, Rabhi and numerous others. Also, the ongoing elaboration by peasant social movements such La Via Campesina (Desmarais, 2007; Martínez-Torres & Rosset, 2010; McMichael, 2006) and the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) (Branford & Rocha, 2002; Fernandes & Stédile, 2002; Wright & Wolford, 2003) and, importantly, the continually evolving, co-creative processes arising through horizontal partnerships and collaboration across these spheres.
The FAO 10 Elements are an imperfect reflection of this complex social history. But they were developed through a series of FAO regional seminars on agroecology and build upon long-recognized agroecology texts and tenets. They therefore serve as a useful set of principles to characterize agroecology and describe its salient aspects in both descriptive and normative terms. This is important in Chapter 1 towards establishing how agroecology is understood by many communities and groups worldwide.
Chapter 1
Coverage of Agroecology in Chapter 1We suggest dramatically reducing the details on agroecology’s academic development and principles in favor of making the case for agroecology’s capabilities in achieving FSN. However, any overview of what agroecology encompasses must be accurate and reflect its full diversity across the planet.
Chapter 1 makes an attempt to describe agroecology as a science, practice, and social movement. This framing is increasingly acknowledged and appreciated in academic and movement circles. However, there are three intersecting problems:
- The treatment of agroecology suggests a linear move from (Eurocentric) science to practice to social movement (Figure 2 - “Historical Evolution of Agroecology”). This does not give credit to older forms of Indigenous agroecology that long pre-existed formal sciences and to peasant traditions from which agroecology scientists perpetually learn (Pimbert 2018; Gliessman 2013, for example). Co-evolution of science, practice, and movement are difficult to surmise from the linear presentation (See section 1.1 in Isaac et. al 2018, which deals with this issue and may provide helpful language for the Project Team: Isaac, M.E., Isakson, S.R., Dale, B. et al, 2018. Agroecology in Canada: Towards an Integration of Agroecological Practice, Movement, and Science. Sustainability 10, 1–17. doi:10.3390/su10093299)
- The chronology and analysis of agroecology arise through surveys of the scientific literature, thus confusing “appearance in the literature" from the living practice of these elements in agroecology. Peasant knowledge and practice were not recorded in the peer-review literature prior to peer-review.
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- Moreover, Box 1 treats science, practice, and movement aspects as a “proliferation” of definitions, implying confusion or lack of coherence, when these are complementary and non-contradictory aspects of a holistic paradigm (See also notes on Box 1 in review of Boxes/Tables/Figures).
Principles of Agroecology in Chapter 1 (Box 4) are distilled from three main sources: Nicholls et al. 2016, FAO 2018, and CIDSE 2018. This distillation is not intrinsically problematic, as the FAO principles themselves derive from Altieri 1995 and Gliessman 2007, and thus contain a variety of foundational and later-stage agroecology tenets.
But Box 4 comes after a cluster of several other overarching frameworks, including those for SFS and for FSN. By this point in the V0, another set of 16 principles -- which are then abandoned in the next chapter 2 for yet another different, 17-criterion innovations framework -- feels messy.
Scale should not be conceded as a weak point of agroecology. It is important to present evidence that many agroecological practices can be pursued on larger farms as well as across agricultural landscapes. These practices, moreover, can be used in both industrialized and developing countries, provided that they recognize place-specific conditions. Agroecology can work effectively at many scales, and there is good evidence for this plasticity. To be sure, we want to underscore that agroecology is particularly effective for the most vulnerable and food-insecure farmers, but it is also useful for larger operations, using a transitions argument (see below for more on transitions). Examples and evidence should be provided. For example, Miguel Altieri has told us about large-scale agroecological operations in Brazil. Rce neThe real issue, however, is that of “resource neutrality” -- the idea that all farmers have the same resources and capabilities to adopt an innovation, whether agroecology or another (Patnaik 1990; Bernstein 2000). While farmers across scales may be able to adopt an innovation, the risks and vulnerabilities for each are not the same. As evidence from the Green Revolution shows, better capitalized farmers were generally better able to utilize technological innovations, often resulting in benefits accruing to those who were better-off to begin with (for a review, see Patel 2013). We urge the authors to include an assessment of resource neutrality, not simply scale neutrality, in their appraisal of innovations.
Another important point on farm size is that large, relatively contiguous areas can be farmed by multiple smallholders. Large-scale does not necessarily mean land concentration, particularly in commons and cooperative land use arrangements. Some agroecological interventions are most effective at large scale -- see, for example, the intervention using catch crops in cotton in Nicaragua to combat the cotton boll weevil that was only possible through coordination on a regional scale (Swezey and Faber 1988; see also Nicholls et al. 2016). By the same token, small scale does not necessarily imply agroecological or diverse. Yet, there is increasingly good evidence that smaller farms are more diverse. See Ricciardi et al 2018. How much of the world's food do smallholders produce? Global Food Security 17, 64–72. doi:10.1016/j.gfs.2018.05.002. (We disagree with the paper’s framing but the diversity evidence is strong and useful.)
A final note on scale is that the V0 confuses “scale as size” with scale as level and relationship. Specifically, agroecology can be scaled in many ways that are more about networks and connectivity than about farm size. Brescia et al. (2017) describes scaling in three dimensions: 1) through “deepening” agroecological practices, from chemical substitution through whole systems techniques; (2)“horizontally” through farmer-to-farmer learning exchanges and over larger geographic regions that include many farms, watersheds, forested areas, and fisheries. (3) It can be “vertically” scaled through capacity building and support from social movements and civil society groups, as well as policymakers and governing
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institutions. These aspects of scaling move beyond farm-size or market size to consider breadth, depth, and quality of social and ecological relationships.
Moore et al (2015) make a slightly different argument for scale, using “scaling up,” “scaling out,” and “scaling deep” dimensions. Applying Moore, we can identify: 1) Scaling up - in terms of having the institutions, policies and laws to effect change in support of agroecology. 2) Scaling out - in terms of spread or replication in order to increase the numbers of people practicing agroecology. 3) Both are necessary ingredients to achieve the idea of scaling deep – where transformation in cultural norms and values happen.
- Brescia, Steve, ed. 2017. Fertile Ground: Scaling Agroecology from the Ground Up. Oakland, CA: Food First Books, Institute for Food and Development Policy.
- Moore, M. L., Riddell, D., & Vocisano, D. 2015. Scaling out, scaling up, scaling deep: strategies of non-profits in advancing systemic social innovation. The Journal of Corporate Citizenship, (58), 67-85.
Building the evidence base for agroecology. In a report whose stated purpose is innovations in SFS for FSN, there is surprisingly little text given over to presenting evidence that agroecology contributes -- or can contribute, given more support -- to several interrelated aspects of FSN. Case studies in the boxes (eg. Box 6 on Malawi) are a step in the right direction. Numerous case studies showing how agroecology has enabled communities to end reliance on highly hazardous pesticides are also available (see PANAP, 2015) This type of evidence-based material should be developed more throughout the report.
Among the evidence that could be much strengthened in this chapter:
1. The failure of current conventional models to deliver FSN for poor smallholder farmers - the evidence base for this is vast, and should be discussed, perhaps drawing on IAASTD and IPES-Food analyses. Many aspects of ‘other innovations’ listed in the report (CSA, SI) suffer from similar deficiencies. Clearly elaborating in what ways conventional models fail to meet FSN needs will set the report up well for evaluating ‘other innovations’.
2. The evidence base that demonstrates how crop diversity increases dietary quality and diversity is vast. There is substantial data from Bioversity International and the FAO to this effect, as well as in the peer-reviewed literature, starting with Rachel Bezner Kerr’s work in Malawi (Many references are already included in the V0, including, for example: Jones, A.D., Shrinivas, A., Bezner Kerr, R., 2014. “Farm production diversity is associated with greater household dietary diversity in Malawi: Findings from nationally representative data.” Food Policy 46, 1–12. The evidence base of agrobiodiversity also includes data on the relationship between forest landscapes and FSN, for which CIFOR publications should be consulted. This agroforestry-agrobiodiversity literature needs a much more rigorous treatment in the report. The relationship between crop diversity and overall diet quality, income, micronutrient deficiency, anemia, etc, need to be addressed one by one. See, for example: T. Johns and B. Sthapit. 2004. “Biocultural Diversity in the Sustainability of Developing-Country Food Systems.” Food & Nutrition Bulletin 25 (2): 143–55; Also, brand-new volumes like J. Fanzo, D. Hunter, T. Borelli, F. Mattei (editors). 2013. Diversifying Food and Diets: Using Agricultural Biodiversity to Improve Nutrition and Health; and M. Pimbert and S. Lemke. 2018. “Using agroecology to enhance dietary diversity” in UNSCN News 43 special issue on 'Advancing equity, equality and non-discrimination in food systems: Pathways to reform’.
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Figure from Johns and Sthapit (2004)
3. Agroecology improves soil health, increasing soil carbon and microbiota, increasing both soil nutrient content and nutrient availability to crop species, increasing water holding capacity, and reducing nutrient leaching. All of these functions lead to higher productivity, lower overall water use and higher resilience to disturbance while reducing farmers’ costs. This body of evidence deserves elaboration. (See: Carlisle, L. (2016). Factors influencing farmer adoption of soil health practices in the United States: A narrative review. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 40(6), 583-613.)
4. Due to higher soil carbon storage, more efficient nutrient cycling, integration of crops and livestock, incorporation of trees in agroforestry systems, agroecology has very well documented impacts on both climate mitigation and drought resilience. See Lin 2011 in Bioscience for an excellent review of the resilience properties of agroecology. (Lin, B. B. (2011). Resilience in agriculture through crop diversification: adaptive management for environmental change. BioScience, 61(3), 183-193.) See also: J. Reed et al. "Trees for life: The ecosystem service contribution of trees to food production and livelihoods in the tropics." Forest Policy and Economics 84 (2017): 62-71 for a review of how agroforestry can contribute to dietary benefits.
5. Climate adaptation involves increasing the threshold beyond which losses to climate stress occur, increasing the speed of recovery from climate events, and increasing the ability of small scale farmers to access entitlement in times of stress. Again, evidence that agroecology confers adaptive capacity at the farm scale is missing. The social movements that often support agroecology also increase access to
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entitlements - a key factor in adaptation. Rosset et al. 2011. The Campesino-to-Campesino agroecology movement of ANAP in Cuba, Journal of Peasant Studies 38:1. Conversely, CSA defines climate adaptation in terms of income, which the literature on resilience does not support.
6. Climate adaptation also includes addressing potential changes in nutrient contents in grain/fruit/vegetable crops as a response to increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Growing scientific research suggests that climate change could adversely alter nutrient values in crops (eg. Scheelbeek, P.F., Bird, F.A., Tuomisto, H.L., Green, R., Harris, F.B., Joy, E.J., Chalabi, Z., Allen, E., Haines, A. and Dangour, A.D., 2018. Effect of environmental changes on vegetable and legume yields and nutritional quality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, p.201800442; Smith, M. R., & Myers, S. S. (2018). Impact of anthropogenic CO 2 emissions on global human nutrition. Nature Climate Change, 8(9), 834; Kumar, M. (2016). Impact of climate change on crop yield and role of model for achieving food security. Environmental monitoring and assessment, 188(8), 465; Jain, V., Pal, M., Raj, A., & Khetarpal, S. (2007). Photosynthesis and nutrient composition of spinach and fenugreek grown under elevated carbon dioxide concentration. Biologia Plantarum, 51(3), 559.) Such effects on FSN can be readily overlooked -- yet they can potentially impact all organisms along the food chain. Conserving agrobiodiversity and continued use of agroecological practices that puts back carbon into the soil stand out as critically important here.
7. Integrated pest management - There is abundant evidence from the FAO and others that IPM approaches can increase farmers’ income and decrease costs. Push-pull in Kenya, Fall Army Worm approaches and others need better description, not just of the system, but its impacts on FSN, as well as how FSN in turn supports the ability of farmers and rural communities to do agroecology.
The “Contested areas and knowledge gaps” section (1.3) is well written and interesting except for parts on Indigenous knowledge which is insufficient to its task. Two references that may help with this gap are: Barthel, S., Crumley, C., Svedin, U., 2013. Bio-cultural refugia—Safeguarding diversity of practices for food security and biodiversity. Global Environmental Change 23, 1142–1152. Damman, S., Eide, W.B., Kuhnlein, H.V., 2008. Indigenous peoples’ nutrition transition in a right to food perspective. Food Policy 33, 135–155. But this section seems unnecessary in a report whose stated purpose is asking about food security and nutrition. It feels overly academic. We suggest greatly condensing or even excising these debates in favor of expanding the evidence base (as elaborated above).
In terms of “convergence or divergence,” we emphasize that many of the other innovations/approaches to FSN named in the report borrow heavily from practices fundamental to agroecology. For example, a tenet of Nutrition Sensitive Agriculture at the farm/field scale is diversification – a key element of agroecology (as recognized by the FAO’s 10 Elements). Diversification also features prominently in Agroforestry, Permaculture, and many forms of Organic farming. Some, although not all, Climate-Smart agriculture strategies include soil health enhancement, diversification, and other practices that confer resilience – another key element of agroecology. But not everything that is promoted and practiced under the umbrella of these ‘innovations’ contributes positively to SFS or complements agroecology. In fact, substantial evidence indicates that some of the named innovations – particularly those embedded within a “business as usual” approach to agriculture – are antagonistic to SFS (as well as to agroecology, as defined by the 10 FAO elements of AE). They also clearly cannot satisfy a rights-based framework. Making these complementarities and antagonisms explicit would help illuminate which aspects of these innovations are likely to advance the transition to SFS, versus which are an offshoot of industrial systems and likely to delay or impede the necessary transition.
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Below are a few elaborations of the aspects of ‘other innovations’ that are consonant with or already included in agroecology, drawing inspiration from the comments of Dr. Timothy Wise. We suggest that the report authors consider highlighting in Chapter 1 (or Chapter 2) that agroecology includes many of the following characteristics and practices:
1. Organic farming is broadly consistent with agroecology, though industrial scale operations that simply substitute synthetic inputs for organic ones are not consistent with most of the elements of agroecology and meet limited sustainability criteria. Many agroecological farmers are organic, and others go beyond codified organic standards in terms of environmental performance.
2. Agroforestry is entirely consistent with, and has long been included in definitions of, agroecological systems. Some of the most classic studies of agroecological principles have been in agroforestry systems (See eg. Vandermeer, J., & Perfecto, I. (2015). Coffee agroecology: a new approach to understanding agricultural biodiversity, ecosystem services and sustainable development. Routledge. Jha, S., Bacon, C. M., Philpott, S. M., Mendez, V.E., Läderach, P., & Rice, R. A. (2014). Shade coffee: update on a disappearing refuge for biodiversity. BioScience, 64(5), 416-428. Méndez, V. E., Bacon, C. M., Olson, M., Morris, K. S., & Shattuck, A. (2010). Agrobiodiversity and shade coffee smallholder livelihoods: a review and synthesis of ten years of research in Central America. The Professional Geographer, 62(3), 357-376.). Some larger scale agroforestry systems that incorporate minimal diversity are less consistent with agroecology.
3. The permaculture section already explicitly acknowledges permaculture is agroecological.
4. Sustainable intensification includes the concept of ecological intensification. Without ecological intensification, SI is essentially indistinguishable from standard conventional agriculture practices. It is possible to intensify production agroecologically. Evidence of this difference in approaches should be elaborated.
5. Climate smart agriculture is poorly defined. Agroecology already has a robust literature showing its ability to improve adaptation, mitigation and resilience. Many descriptions of CSA include practices also clearly under the auspices of agroecology: for example conserving ecosystem services, increasing genetic diversity of crops and livestock, etc. By the same token, CSA also does not exclude practices and technologies that can undermine, or are incompatible with, agroecological approaches. See M. Pimbert. 2015. Agroecology as an Alternative Vision to Conventional Development and Climate-smart Agriculture. Development 58(2–3), 286–298. CSA needs to be clearly defined, and the practices elaborated.
6. The section on nutrition-sensitive agriculture as is largely does not deal with agriculture specifically. Where NSA approaches on the ground specifically treat agricultural practices, increasing crop diversity is the key component - entirely consistent with and a core element of agroecology. As written this section mostly deals with social welfare policy - it is essentially within a rights based approach and a more comprehensive definition of FSN/SFS.
7. We strongly feel that rights-based approaches should not be an ‘innovation’ but an overarching framework for the report.
Finally, we feel that there should also be honest evaluation of the potential challenges that agroecologists face. For example, many smallholder farmers in developing countries choose industrial farming methods, because making a transition to industrial methods from low input peasant ones can generate more cash over the short run, until farm ecosystem services collapse. Without social
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movements or the state to provide aid, building the farmer knowledge required for a transition to agroecology can be expensive and time consuming. The substitution of ecological knowledge and labor with chemicals is often attractive for farmers when they find labor to be scarce because young people have migrated to urban areas. In addition, states sometimes provide fertilizer subsidies to farmers and corporations explicitly encourage farmers to adopt industrial inputs. Once farmers start down this path, adopting agroecological practices becomes more difficult. Rather than undermining the case for agroecology, these discussions of the difficulties lead empirically to the question of 'enabling environments’ that Chapter 4 should discuss.
Chapter 2
Section 2.1 - Innovations Theory:
The “innovations” framework described in the V0 is both outdated and ill-fitting for a report on agroecology. It comes from a fairly old theoretical tradition rooted in Schumpeter, Rogers, and business/manufacturing innovation studies. The report acknowledges these origins and attempts to add on a more “social” dimension (e.g. by talking about innovations emerging from the grassroots and citing farmer-to-farmer networks as a worthy innovation).
1. The innovations framework very much takes a technocratic, industry-based, top-down approach to identifying what innovations should look like and what types of innovation should be examined. The whole typology is essentially based on inspiration from information technologies and business organizations. Throughout the report, examples of ‘sustainable agriculture’ innovations are frequently derived from the information technology or food business sectors. Innovations, indeed, are associated most with technological change. The report says, “The extent to which these drivers have induced or triggered innovations at different scales has often been associated with changes in agricultural paradigms such as the green revolution, sustainability and biotechnology (e.g. Gijsbers, 2009).” (p. 60) No attention is paid to the substantial sustainable agriculture transitions literature (e.g. the Röling and Wagemakers book of 1998, where there is extensive discussion of non-technological and non-ICT experimentation that farmers have engaged in). Work by the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Sussex on transition pathways and innovation is also relevant -- such as on grassroots innovation and innovation democracy (see Andy Stirling’s working paper on this). These literatures underline the much broader sense of innovations that farmers, ranchers, and other producers can generate.
2. The innovations framework developed in the report contains numerous problems that lead us to thinking that it is underdeveloped and not drawing on contemporary scholarship about technological and social knowledge-making. It purports to look at the social process of innovation but then fails to actually examine how, exactly, each of the approaches have been created, by whom, and through what processes. An innovation system cannot be prized apart from what gave birth to it. For example: sustainable intensification must be analyzed in terms of its origins in Green Revolution thinking/practice and in Royal Society and elite scientific reports in the 2000s. The innovation framework largely ignores the complex social, political, and cultural variables that influence how innovations are produced, spread, and used (e.g. works by Sheila Jasanoff, Andy Stirling, Richard Schlove, Edward Woodhouse, David Hess). Moreover, the drivers and barriers for innovation listed at the top of Chapter 3 are all framed in narrow ways that reveal that the innovation framework is mostly focused on business, market, and technological aspects -- and sees “lack of knowledge” amongst farmers as a key barrier. Yet numerous barriers are rooted in industrial structures (e.g. corporate consolidation, financialization) but are not even mentioned
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here. These barriers create vast power differentials between ‘innovators’ and ‘beneficiaries’ that can affect the ways in which innovation takes place (even whether it can happen at all) and how the benefits and costs are shared across a food system.
3. Most importantly, the innovations framework assumes that the approaches set out in the report are “innovations”. The problems with presuming that a given approach is innovative can be seen in the observation that most of what is said to comprise “Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture” in this report is actually social welfare policy, not agricultural practice or food processing. The report does very little to show why and how each approach is actually an innovation. What, exactly, is innovative about each approach? This neglect is especially true for agroecology. Agroecology is widely recognized as combining many types of knowledge and technology, old and new. Yes, both traditional knowledge and Western science can be innovative, but the authors would have to go out of their way to re-invent innovations theory in order to fit Indigenous knowledge, traditional ecological knowledge, experiential knowledge and other “old” and embodied forms of knowledge that are not standard in innovations discourse.
4. It is simply not possible to compare across these approaches in terms of innovations because they vary so much in their “innovation” characteristics. Are they a single innovation? Bundles of innovation? An innovation system? This analytical difficulty suggests that it would be better to assess each innovation approach in terms of evaluative criteria fitting the SFS framework we suggest earlier (including FSN), instead of trying to compare across these approaches.
We acknowledge, however, that the HLPE was tasked with producing a report on 'innovation'. What we propose is that “innovations” be reframed as something that is much more complex, multi-dimensional, and laden with power disparities than it is at present. A much better definition of an “innovation system” also needs to be provided. These changes will allow the many innovations (knowledge, social, practice, scientific…) of agroecology to be properly recognized, as well as affirming agroecology as an innovation system in itself. Innovations should also be defined as potentially leading to processes of making transitions (e.g. from some variants of industrial agriculture to conservation agriculture and gradually toward agroecology).
Section 2.2 - Innovations Matrix (TABLE 3)
First, it is important to note the 8 innovations (not including rights-based approaches) are rooted in different political-economic models, food system paradigms, cosmovisions, and ideologies. The chart from IPES-Food (Box 10, p. 67) does some of this contextualizing work, and should be presented prior to this section. A next step, based on empirical and historical evidence, could be to situate the different innovation systems in this socio-technical context. Such a treatment could be further developed to show how institutional “lock-ins” of knowledge, intellectual property, and technology treadmills make some innovations lock out others (IPES-Food 2016; Patel 2013; Vanloqueren and Baret 2009; McMichael 2009).
- Patel, Raj. 2013. “The Long Green Revolution.” Journal of Peasant Studies 40(1): 1–63. doi:10.1080/03066150.2012.719224.
- McMichael, P., 2009. A food regime genealogy. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 36(1), pp.139-169.
- Vanloqueren, Gaëtan, and Philippe V. Baret. 2009. “How Agricultural Research Systems Shape a Technological Regime That Develops Genetic Engineering but Locks out Agroecological Innovations.” Research Policy 38 (6): 971–83.
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In addition to fundamental weaknesses of innovations theory as outlined here, the current matrix (Table 3) suffers from several important deficiencies.
- Many categories are poorly conceived. Some are vaguely defined and unevaluative and as such, they are unhelpful to appraising between approaches. For example, “labor” simply means “Does the approach have a specific focus on labor?” but this does not indicate the quality or type of labor. Does the approach treat workers equitably and provide employment? Many of the approaches actually seek to reduce labor and tend to exploit workers (as seen in their existing applications). Other categories do have normative directions of evaluation --- but the actual table analysis is mistaken. For example, diversification is central to the report: “does the approach foster diversity in all respects, - ecological, economic, social?” Many of the approaches do not provide this diversity (e.g. SI, CSA) and yet they all receive a checkmark, implying that they do so. We could easily continue on with other examples from the table.
- The last row in the matrix, labelled “coexistence” is impossible to interpret. Does it mean the innovation can coexist with other approaches? Or as indicated in Box 7, “are there issues around coexistence with other approaches?” (i.e. the opposite meaning). The matrix is unclear if coexistence is primarily intended to compare a given column with agroecology or with the other 8 innovations. Moreover, some approaches clearly cannot easily coexist with agroecology -- they actually undercut agroecology -- but are indicated as capable of doing so.
- Most fundamentally, the matrix puts Rights-based approaches into a pool of practice-based approaches. As one of our team-members put it, this is not only mixing apples and oranges, “It is like comparing a tropical/boreal forest with oranges and apples.” We have proposed that Rights-based approaches be pulled out of this table altogether and treated as a framing element of the entire report (see above).
For dealing with the remaining aspects of the matrix (Table 3) we have a possible proposal. Visualizing agroecology and other innovations on a spectrum of transitions to SFS/FSN would allow an easy comparison between the approaches.
It is vitally important that the report avoids a false binary of agroecology / not agroecology, and does not assume a static notion of agroecology. This should be first recognized in Chapter 1, where there is surprisingly, no mention of agroecology writing on levels or transitions (eg. Toledo 1995 and Gliessman 2014). The Gliessman 5-level transition framework (see below) could be used to provide a more granular treatment of doing agroecology that avoids purist and binary notions. The IPES-Food’s Case Studies of Agroecology (2018) includes a review of agroecological transitions. The idea of making transitions could be further developed in Chapter 4.
Using Agroecology to Transition Process to Sustainable Agriculture (Gliessman, 2014)o Level 1: Increase input use efficiency, reducing the use of costly, scarce, or environmentally damaging inputso Level 2: Substitution of conventional inputs and practices with alternativeso Level 3: Redesign the agroecosystems so that it functions on the basis of a new set of ecological processes that provide system resistanceo Level 4: Reconnecting the two most important parts of the system – consumers and producers, through the development of alternative food networks
Direct markets
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Re-localization movementFood hubsUrban and peri-urban agricultureInstitutional procurementRegional food trading networks
o Level 5: On the foundation created by sustainable farm-scale agroecosystems of Level 3 and the sustainable food relationships of Level 4, build a new global food system, based on resilience, participation, localness, fairness, and justice, that is not only sustainable but can also help restore and protect life on Earth.
A large literature on sustainability transitions exists, some of which deals with food systems. (See eg. Hinrichs, C. C. (2014). Transitions to sustainability: a change in thinking about food systems change?. Agriculture and human values, 31(1), 143-155. Marsden, T. (2013). From post-productionism to reflexive governance: Contested transitions in securing more sustainable food futures. Journal of Rural Studies, 29, 123-134. Wilson, G. A. (2007). Multifunctional agriculture: a transition theory perspective. CABI Press. See also the IPES reports, referred to above.) We recommend bringing in some insights from this literature, instead of the innovations theory presented in the report. Importantly, transitions take time, and farmers, agricultural landscapes, and food systems may change in their mix of characteristics as they transition. For example, (a) individual farmers may vary in their practice mixes (a few agroecological, most conventional to begin with) over time, moving toward a higher and higher proportion of agroecological practices; and (b) an entire farming landscape may be a mosaic of farms with differing practices, changing in its proportions of agricultural systems, until it tips toward a primarily agroecological system.
Less frequently brought into juxtaposition with the transitions literature is the literature on Black agrarianism, justice movements, and political organizing. We suggest that the HLPE authors have a unique opportunity to bridge this gap in connecting traditional agri-food transition discussions with political organizing for food systems change. The V0’s existing Rights-based section (2.3.1) contain key texts from food sovereignty and food justice literatures that could be utilized and expanded upon to buttress this discussion. Other supporting materials include references included above (footnote #1) for La Via Campesina and the MST as well as new volumes in food justice. A few suggestions include:
- White, Monica. 2018. Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement, The University of North Carolina Press.
- Sbicca, Joshua. 2018. Food Justice Now! Deepening the Roots of Social Struggle. University of Minnesota Press.
- Reese, Ashanté. 2019. Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C. The University of North Carolina Press.
We suggest the inclusion of a graphic representation of transitions towards SFS. One example, from the IAASTD Latin America & Caribbean (LAC) Report (Fig 5, p. 9, LAC Summary for Decision-Makers) is provided below.
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The following figure on characteristics of peasant agriculture (Toledo, 1995) is not about transitions per se, but about gradients in farm characteristics differing between two “poles” (peasant vs. agroindustrial).
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Specific practices of agroecology can be located on a spectrum of transition to FSN (using the comprehensive and empirical definition suggested above). This would eliminate the potential for false binaries and static or aspirational versions of agroecology and other innovations. Similarly, specific practices in other innovations could be presented in the same fashion, making for easy comparison. This also has the advantage of using the criteria for food security presented in the introduction to evaluate the innovations, instead of creating another set of new confusing and unevaluative categories.
A sample diagram is presented below in which key approaches or innovation systems can be compared visually for their contribution to teach of the Five A’s of food security and ecological health. The Five A’s are qualitative, aspirational categories. No one innovation system is likely to meet every category, or to transition to, for example, fully adequate nutrition. Each innovation system has its strengths and weaknesses in regards to different aspects of FSN. Some innovations may contribute to a transition to sustainable food security and nutrition, while others are more closely aligned with present approaches. Some innovation systems may continue the ‘lock-ins’ in terms of policy and technology that prevent deeper transitions.
In the diagram below, innovation systems are visualized on a spectrum of transition to the various aspects of food security using the Five A’s framework. Innovations in orange can contribute to progress on FSN but are unlikely to lead to transitions in terms of food systems, because they are more likely to lock-in existing policies and productive systems. Innovations in green are likely to lead to systems transformation. This is a hypothetical rendition only. An empirical assessment would enable plotting of the spheres on the spectrum at the appropriate positions. The result would be a visualization of how each innovation system contributes to each of the five A’s of food security.
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A similar exercise could be done to demonstrate contributions to SFS. The following graph represents one band (Ecological Health). Each approach could be plotted according to empirical evidence for contributions to the five dimensions of SFS described above.
Chapter 2, Section 2.3. At this point in the report it would be appropriate to lay out the empirical evidence of impact on FSN for each agroecology ‘innovation.’ There is no systematic treatment of the evidence yet, and we should not start to compare to ‘other innovations’ without being clear on the solid evidence base for agroecology’s impact on food security.
Other innovations and the way they contribute to FSN in the literature should come after the evidence for agroecology is presented, and after it is clear what aspects of say, agroforestry or CSA are compatible with/borrowed from agroecology approaches. The other innovations should be evaluated based on the same empirical criteria as agroecology using a holistic SFS/FSN framework.
Chapter 3
Section 3.1: Drivers and barriersThe Chapter 3 section on drivers and barriers currently provides almost no meaningful discussion or analysis of drivers and barriers, offering a skeletal and incomplete list of generalized drivers and barriers to “innovation in agriculture” per se. Simply stating that “innovations in agriculture are driven by a number of factors” and then enumerating a handful of generic “factors”, divorced from the historical, political, social, economic, institutional and cultural context and reality of how these factors support or inhibit a particular innovation reduces the report’s credibility and usefulness. The focus in chapter 3 should instead be on identifying drivers and barriers to the development and scaling up and out of agroecology and those innovative approaches that the weight of evidence has indicated are strong contributors to SFS.
We find the enumeration of missing drivers and barriers provided by Dr. Timothy Wise in his submission to the HLPE to be particularly useful. We add to this list below:
Important drivers of innovation that advances SFS are missing from the V0 Draft:○ environmental degradation which demand improved practices;○ climate change○ failure of industrial model to improve soil fertility, esp for smallholders;○ farmer learning, in part through farmer-to-farmer exchanges;○ improved farmer interaction with scientists, including ecologists;○ scientific advances, especially in soil sciences;○ public investment, which significantly determines the priorities for research and extension
and which have overwhelmingly favored industrial agriculture;○ public procurement, which can drive innovation in desired directions.
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Important barriers to innovation that advances SFS are missing from the V0 Draft:○ Resource factors: inadequate or insecure access to land, water, seeds, credit,
information.○ Economic factors: generally low and unstable farm prices, creating an uncertain
environment for investment; weak and unequal farmer incomes, leaving aggregate demand weak in poor rural communities, which stifles investment; market failures that result in underpriced industrial commodities which fail to incorporate negative externalities and undervalued ecologically produced crops, which fail to compensate positive externalities such as agrobiodiversity.
○ Knowledge factors - dominance of industrial agriculture firms in knowledge dissemination, e.g. extension services; poor training of government extension workers in full range of innovations at farm level; skewed public investments in industrial agricultural research; Lack of dialogue between science and local knowledge
○ Market factors - value chains dominated by MNCs which tend to exclude smallholders and ecologically produced goods; pricing systems that fail to internalize environmental, social, and health externalities.
○ Institutional factors - fails to include government policies, again too focused on "enterprise" development for innovation. True barriers to innovation: public investment and incentives that favor industrial agriculture, e.g. input subsidies; insecure land rights for smallholders; inadequate investment in infrastructure, especially irrigation/water management;
○ Social and cultural factors - agribusiness lobbying, which skews government policies in favor of industrial agriculture; inadequate engagement with and recognition of women's knowledge and contribution to agriculture and food provisioning.
○ Intellectual property rights over R&D (eg. patents on seeds), which contributes to corporate consolidation of ownership in chemicals, seeds, farm equipment and data. Dematerialization of knowledge and private ownership of data is another key obstacle to agroecology.
○ Financialization (see Clapp 2014), an aspect of economic/market factors, has become a mode of accumulation for large transnational agribusiness players within the current food regime.
○ Dramatic underinvestment in agroecological research. Promising areas of ‘innovation’ include breeding for low input systems, soil health strategies, rhizosphere approaches, crop genetic diversity, non-chemical weed management, integrated pest management, diversification for pest management, landscape and field level ecosystem services to agriculture, etc. See De Longe et al. 2017.
All of these barriers and drivers, we suggest, should be included in Chapter 3 as part of a thorough treatment of the challenges and opportunities for agroecology and other innovation systems.
