Playing games might seem a strange, perhaps even trivial, activity for a high-level international dialogue. But on 17 July 2025, experts from across the agricultural sector gathered virtually to do just that. By ‘gamifying agroecology’, they found fresh insights and new pathways for enabling a participatory agroecological transition.  

The innovative session, organized by the German Development Cooperation GIZ and the Transformative Partnership Platform for Agroecology (AE-TPP), brought together over 180 participants to experience how policy negotiations might unfold in a fictional—yet plausible—national context. 

Their task? To help shape the future of agroecology in the fictional country of Zamonia. “It’s a collaborative experiment,” said Jasmin Hundorf, head of the sector project Resilient Rural Areas at GIZ, which developed the game-based tools and training modules to build knowledge and mainstream agroecological thinking.