Abstract
Industrial agriculture and its requirement for standardized approaches is driving the world towards a global food system, shrinking the role of farmers and shifting decision-making power. On the contrary, a holistic perspective towards a new food-system design could meet the needs of a larger share of stakeholders. Long-term experiments are crucial in this transition, being the hub of knowledge and the workshop of ‘participation in’ and ‘appropriation of’ the research in agriculture over a long term. We present a methodology applied during the creation of a small network of organic farmers in Italy and detail the steps of the co-innovation process implemented. After a context analysis of the area to define the type of research and degree of participation, three steps were performed: (1) Identification of stakeholders; (2) dialogic identification of common activities; and (3) validation and feedback from participants. In the first participatory step, five organic farms were engaged for the second and third steps. We organized meetings to discuss future plans, facilitating the interaction process between farmers and researchers. These activities led to: (i) the definition of a research protocol based on farmers’ research needs for a new long-term experiment; (ii) committing farmers to take an active role in the research; and (iii) hosting experimental satellite trials in their own farms.
Highlights
FAO [1] reports “Sustainably improving agricultural productivity to meet increasing demand” as the first challenge of agriculture
We present a methodology applied during the creation of a small network of organic farmers in Italy and detail the steps of the co-innovation process implemented
We report the results of a participatory research experience carried out since 2015 between CREA—the Council for Agricultural Research and Agricultural Economics Analysis—and organic farmers interested and active in stone-fruit production operating in Lazio (Figure 1)
Summary
FAO [1] reports “Sustainably improving agricultural productivity to meet increasing demand” as the first challenge of agriculture. The challenge is transformed into a need for urgent reform, moving away from the globally standardized and business-oriented approach of the current agriculture, toward a process of redesigning food systems in order to achieve ecological, economic, and social sustainability [4]. This objective can be faced by rethinking the agricultural stakeholders’ role through their more consistent engagement in this redesign perspective: This would more genuinely engage the movement component of agroecology [5]. Farmer-oriented, integrative, and participatory approaches to research could enable the preservation or increase of food system productivity in terms of yield, ecosystem services, and welfare [7], promoting dynamic innovation processes [8]
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