Theme 3: Documentation for Building and Sharing Agroecological Knowledge [Article and Abstract]

Abstract

For 25 years, the work of ILEIA and its partners has been shaped by the idea that millions of small-scale farmers, together with all those who work with them, experiment and innovate in their daily work, helping increase their technical and economic autonomy and raising productivity and incomes in an ecologically sound way. With the publication of our quarterly, our main objective is to make these innovations visible as examples of an alternative model of development. Sharing knowledge also points at the development of social networks based on shared identities, aiming at unity amidst diversity. This paper looks at the results achieved in terms of information exchange and knowledge building.  A major difficulty we regularly face is the lack of written material. Field visits show that farmers and practitioners regularly innovate, and thus actively contribute to the “body of knowledge” on sustainable agriculture. But these processes are often not written down, limiting the possibilities for dissemination and wider use. To address this we started a documentation programme, with which, by focusing on a detailed description and a thorough analysis, we want to help “unearth” more experiences, contribute to their analysis and wider dissemination, and, in this way, contribute to the field-based generation of knowledge on agroecology. Running this documentation programme also helped us identify the challenges which all documentation processes face.