Call for Examples of Innovations for Agroecology

Dear partners and colleagues,

As you may know, FAO is organizing the 2nd International Symposium on Agroecology (more information here).

Agroecology depends on the co-creation of local capacities and knowledge – often building on traditional knowledge – that works with complex systems under changing environmental, social and economic conditions.

That requires shifting the emphasis from traditional technology transfer approaches to identifying, supporting and strengthening the institutions and processes needed to enable innovative ways of knowledge creation and sharing.

As part of the Symposium, FAO will co-organize and host a ‘Marketplace on innovation for agroecology.’ With the present call, we would like to highlight innovative example actions or processes from a wide range of actors involved in agriculture and food systems in their diversity, including food producers, farmers’ organizations, NGOs, research, advisory services, private sector activities, foundations, and governments.

The selection of best cases will be based on the following criteria:

Eligibility criteria

To be eligible, innovations should:

• Be co-created, co-designed or develop based on local needs, resources, knowledge and capacities
• Benefit smallholder and family farmers
• Respect the precautionary principle
• Respect food producers’ ownership and intellectual property rights

Exemplary criteria

Innovations will be favourably reviewed if they also meet the following criteria:

• Embrace complexity and provide systemic solutions to a problem involving the knowledge and experience of all relevant actors
• Contribute to multiple development objectives: environmental, economic and social (including job creation)
• Meet smallholder and family farmers’ needs, and enhance their quality of life and autonomy
• Respond to a specific need of youth or women
• Illustrate collective action, territorial approaches, partnership and exchange of knowledge

In addition, all innovations will be evaluated according to how they contribute to the most salient features of agroecology, as reflected in FAO’s 10 elements of Agroecology: Diversity, Efficiency, Recycle, Resilience, Synergies, Co-creation and sharing of knowledge, Human and social values, Culture and food traditions, Circular economy and Responsible governance.

If you want to share your experience with us, please fill in the following form:

https://goo.gl/forms/wXWWpWrmelhsRxff1

The deadline to submit proposals is the 23rd of December 2017.

Thank you for your interest and warm regards,

FAO Agroecology Team