As the benefits of agroecological transition become apparent across the planet, organizations leading the charge are reflecting on progress so far-and gaps still to fill. These topics were in the spotlight at a technical session during this year’s Annual Members’ Forum Meeting of the Transformative Partnership Platform on Agroecology (AE-TPP), 31 March-4 April in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Sandhya Kumar, a social systems scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) and the AE-TPP’s scientific coordinator, outlined the platform’s current domains of work: soil health; nutrition, pests and disease; policies and institutions; viability of agroecology adoption; metrics for assessing agri-food systems in agroecology; water and land management; and diversity and resilience.
Over time, Kumar observed, partners’ approaches to these domains have become more integrated-a move that aligns with the holistic nature of agroecology itself. “In recent years, we have seen a lot of projects that are increasingly cross-cutting, meaning they span more than just a single domain.”
She also cited examples of projects and activities carried out since the platform’s inception in 2021, ranging from farm-level initiatives to agri-food system analyses. Kumar noted an increasing focus on effective, inclusive and scalable knowledge-building. “We’re seeing great interest in looking at how we approach training,education and co-creation,” she saeid.From January 2022 to December 2024,the Agricultural Conversion for Planetary and People’s Health (AETPP) initiative operated in five african countries,as well as India,Laos and Peru. The initiative aimed to support transitions in agricultural food systems by applying contextually relevant agricultural principles, with farmers and communities supported by other food system actors.”We were operating through what we called Agricultural living Landscapes, or ALLs,” said Lisa Fuchs, a social and agroecological systems scientist at the Alliance of bioversity International and CIAT. “That was our transformation vehicle: multistakeholder spaces that we helped to establish and within which we operated. We defined them as territories or landscapes for multistakeholder engagement in which agroecological innovations can be identified, co-designed, tested and adopted.”
[Image of chickens foraging on locally produced feed at an agroecological farm in Vietnam. Photo by Vu The Son / CIFOR-ICRAF]
[Image of native pig breeds feeding on farm-grown forage at an agroecological site in Vietnam. Photo by Vu The Son / CIFOR-ICRAF]
The team found that this kind of in-depth engagement and co-design took time, but ultimately accelerated progress and the generation of results. “There’s broad agreement among the team of more than 100 researchers that doing research differently works,” said Fuchs. Another key lesson was that agroecological transformation requires action at the production, socio-economic and political levels simultaneously, adapting to the specific context.