This HLPE’s presentation on agroecology is remarkable, especially in its ability to place the agro-ecological transition in a more global approach in which it directly contributes and shows clearly its critical contribution to the sustainable food systems.
I would suggest developing further the three ideas:
- The importance of agroecology in the different forms of agriculture, regardless of their level of intensification,
- The need to develop new approaches to system performance evaluation to support agroecology, and
- Analyze and document the triggering factors of the agro-ecological transition at a significant scale
I suggest here some inputs for these 3 ideas :
1) The importance of agroecology in the different forms of agriculture, regardless of their level of intensification:
CIRAD thinks that, given the magnitude and urgency of the challenges posed by the global changes that the majority of Southern production modes, regardless of their degree of intensification, must evolve based on the concepts of agroecology
The following table (see attachement) expresses the potential contribution of agroecology to this different forms of agriculture in the South
2) The need to renew approaches to system performance evaluation to support agroecologial transition
One of the priorities is improving and developing new comprehensible, robust and widely adoptable methodologies and tools for common reference in performance assessment of production and processing systems. The economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability are multiple and can act synergistically or antagonistically. The different development actors have a different vision of the weight given to each sustainability indicator. Evaluation is also largely dependent on the spatial and temporal scales at which this evaluation is performed. These few notes reveal the complexity and the challenge of evaluating the sustainability of production and the need to invest this research field. Evaluating a set of services obviously raises the question of the search for acceptable compromises between them and arbitrations that can be carried out. There are unequal levels of methodological development between the environmental, economic and social assessment of sustainability: while environmental evaluation remains a complex exercise, we already have a set of methods and tools to assess this performance, whereas the methods and tools enabling the evaluation of the economic and mainly social performances of the agro-ecological transition are much less developed.
3) Analyze and document the triggering factors of the agro-ecological transition at a significant scale
The expression "change of scales" echoes a concept that is not well adapted to agroecology. It’s based on the assumption that a solution could be tested locally and then replicated. Indeed, in the case of - transition, contexts of production are different each time, therefore replication is often difficult or impossible without adaptation. Technical change can be experimented at the scale of the farm but the ecological transition takes shape only if there is an organizational change in the territories and at the political level. The long period of time necessary to evaluate the transition should also be emphasized. This long period of time is especially important to develop the capacities of the different actors of the agro-ecological transition.
I also inform you that CIRAD and AFD will publish in december a book of their experiences of agroecological transition in partnership in different contexts in the South : "Supporting the agro-ecological transition in the global south". Côte F.-X., Poirier-Magona E., Perret S., Rapidel B., Roudier P., Thirion M.-C. (eds), 2018, Agricultures et défis du monde, AFD, Cirad, Éditions Quæ, Versailles.
Regards, françois
Dr. Beatrice Ekesa