Abstract
There is increasing interest in agroecology as a way to move toward more sustainable agriculture and food systems. However, the evidence of agroecology's contribution to sustainability remains fragmented because of heterogeneous methods and data, differing scales and timeframes, and knowledge gaps. Facing these challenges, 70 representatives of agroecology-related organizations worldwide participated in the development of the Tool for Agroecology Performance Evaluation (TAPE), to produce and consolidate evidence on the multidimensional performances of agroecological systems. TAPE is composed of: Step 0, the preliminary step that includes a description of the main socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the agricultural and food systems and an analysis of the enabling environment in terms of relevant policy, market, technology, socio-cultural and/or historical drivers; Step 1, the Characterization of Agroecological Transitions (CAET), based on the 10 Elements of Agroecology adopted by FAO and its member countries, using descriptive scales to establish scores and assessing the degree of transition, with information from the farm/household and community/territory scale; Step 2, the Core Criteria of Performance listing the key dimensions considered relevant to address the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Environment & climate change; Health & nutrition; Society & culture; Economy and Governance. Finally Step 3, a participatory validation of the results obtained from the previous steps with the producers and relevant stakeholders. TAPE can be used (i) to assess the extent of agroecological transition among agricultural producers in a community or a territory, (ii) to monitor and evaluate projects by characterizing the initial and subsequent steps in an agroecological transition, and/or (iii) to evaluate widely diverse agricultural systems against agroecological elements and how they contribute to the achievement of the SDGs. Its application can support the transition of all forms of agricultural systems toward more sustainable practices and the formulation of adequate policies to enable this transformation. Preliminary results from pilot applications show that TAPE can perform in a variety of geographic regions and agroecosystems and that it allows assessment of performances of various criteria that move beyond classic indicators to begin to build a global evidence base for agroecology and support transformation to sustainable agricultural production and food systems.
Highlights
The global food system is facing environmental, social, and health challenges
We take some of these ongoing efforts in the field to illustrate two possible applications of Tool for Agroecological Performance Evaluation (TAPE): (1) assessing the degree of agroecological transition in a given territory and (2) evaluating the multi-dimensional performance of agroecological farms
These results showed the role of local cultural heritage and traditional management practices for agroecological transitions, especially in the absence of specific support for agroecology
Summary
The global food system is facing environmental, social, and health challenges. While nature and ecological principles were applied by family farmers for millenia, agriculture became increasingly dependent on external inputs, including synthetic fertilizers, in the last century, in large scale production systems. Agroecology is an alternative and systemic approach that builds on local and ecological knowledge, enhances social capital and confronts the proliferation of agrochemical inputs (HLPE, 2019). This approach is at the same time a scientific field, a set of agricultural practices and a social movement (Wezel et al, 2009). With an initial scope of studying the production system, agroecology extended to cover the larger agroecosystem and, more recently, to the level of a food system, including agri-food supply chains and consumption patterns (Gliessman, 2015) Due to this long history, tripartite origin, systemic scope and transformational aspiration, agroecology presents a promising approach for shifting toward more sustainable food systems
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