Freely available new publications in the field of agroecology include a review of agroecological transitions, with a particular focus on deterministic and open-ended perspectives, while the ‘26th dossier d’Agropolis’ is devoted to research and partnerships in agroecology with a focus on the partnership between France and the CGIAR. In addition, in early December The Global Alliance for the Future of Food released a new compendium titled ‘The Politics of Knowledge: Understanding the Evidence for Agroecology, Regenerative Approaches, and Indigenous Foodways’.
‘Agroecological transitions, between determinist and open-ended visions’ has been edited by INRAE research directors Claire Lamine and Danièle Magda, alongside Marta Rivera-Ferre from INGENIO (the Spanish National Research Council) and UPV and Terry Marsden, Emeritus Professor at the School of Geography and Planning and the Sustainable Places Research Institute at Cardiff University.
Over the course of more than 300 pages, 51 researchers from eight different countries explore agroecological transitions. The INRAE website reports: “Debates around agroecology most often focus on the depth and radicality of the change and relate to different visions of agroecology, which tends to eclipse the ontological relationships of actors (or researchers) to the very 'change process' itself.
“This book is an endeavour to explain relationships to change in agroecological transitions, referring to two contrasting and ideal-typical ontological relationships to change, the determinist perspective and the open-ended perspective. Many diverse cases of agroecological transitions are discussed, in order to highlight the fact that these perspectives are not always exclusive in transition process but that they can be articulated successively or combined complementarily.”
Agropolis International’s ‘Agroecological transformation for sustainable food systems: Insight on France-CGIAR research’ features contributions from some 500 French and CGIAR agroecology scientists and experts from around 100 national and international universities and research organisations.
In the first section, the focus is on agroecosystems, looking at increasing the efficiency of practices in order to reduce the use of costly, scarce or environmentally damaging inputs, substituting intensive external input use by biodiversity-derived ecosystem functions and redesigning agroecosystems on the basis of a new set of ecological processes from farm and landscape.
Turning to food systems, there is a focus on identifying and overcoming constraints within food systems to achieve agroecological transitions at scale – reconnecting producers and consumers, and building a new global food system based on equity, participation, democracy and justice. The final section examines key processes, methods and tools for agroecology.
The Global Alliance for the Future of Food’s ‘The Politics of Knowledge: Understanding the Evidence for Agroecology, Regenerative Approaches, and Indigenous Foodways’ brings together contributions from 17 teams, including Agroecology Europe.
Agroecology Europe identifies five dominant questions that are unpacked:
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