For the past four years, the Family Farming Barometer has been addressing the issues that affect family farming and to which family farming is responding. It investigates the transition towards sustainable food systems that would ensure food security for all, today and tomorrow.

For this 2021 edition, the Family Farming Barometer focuses on knowledge and research. Building sustainable food systems imply creating, exchanging and disseminating knowledge that is adapted to the challenges of our time, the needs of farmers and the specificities of each territory. This barometer explores whether the production of knowledge and science is neutral. According to the Barometer, agri-food research remains largely at the service of industrial agriculture and the status quo, and it can be instrumentalized, even manipulated to benefit certain particular interests.

In the interviews, the Barometer explores with Fernando Lopez how research can respond to the demands of family farming; Charlotte Pavageau comments on how international research can evolve to support the agroecological transition; and Pierre Stassart shares how, despite numerous initiatives within universities, there is still a long way to go before agroecology is truly taken into account.