Agroecology

Work Package 2: Evidence-based agroecology assessments

Contacts: Chris Dickens (IWMI), Matthias Geck (CIFOR-ICRAF) 

The Latest

Accomplishments at a glance

• Eight country context assessments were published, covering the current conditions of small-scale farmers’ agroecological systems.
• A holistic assessment framework (HOLPA), including localized options by country, was tested, validated with stakeholders and applied in eight ALLs (guidelines published).
• A framework for the involvement of citizen science in performance assessment of agroecology was produced for possible future development.
• An interactive data management platform for HOLPA has been developed to ease future application of the tool and allow real-time access to initial results for diverse stakeholders.

To manage well, we need to measure
To boost adoption and investment in agroecological approaches that deliver for people and nature, farmers, donors, policymakers and businesses need evidence of the holistic performance of agroecological approaches. Such assessments pose a major challenge for the Agroecology Initiative, because the ALLs in the eight countries where it works are highly diverse, as are the various entry points defined with stakeholders for each country’s agroecology transition.

In response, the Initiative developed a holistic, localized performance assessment (HOLPA) framework for generating evidence on the agronomic, environmental, social and economic performance of farm households as well as agricultural landscapes at various stages of the agroecological transition (Figure 2). The HOLPA framework consists of three components: (1) a context module that describes the socio-ecological context of the farm household or landscape, (2) an agroecology module that considers the level of integration of the 13 agroecology principles and (3) a performance module for assessing holistic outcomes.

Indicators for the performance module are identified through a process that allows global comparison of results, while responding to local stakeholder’ priorities. The module includes a set of global key performance indicators that capture agricultural, economic, environmental and social outcomes in any food system, using metrics that can be compared across sites. These are supplemented by context-specific indicators identified through a local indicator selection process, in which food system actors co-design and prioritize metrics of agroecological performance that are most relevant to stakeholders.

Measure what matters
Following a scoping review of assessment tools and frameworks to identify a long list of potential themes and indicators, global key performance indicators for 18 performance themes across four performance dimensions (agricultural, environmental, economic and social) were selected through a consultative process with researchers and domain experts. They were required to select only indicators that non-experts can readily measure and that are sensitive to agroecology, likely to be useful to stakeholders and partners in decision-making, and comparable across different contexts.

Since agroecology involves a bottom-up process for codesigning local solutions, it makes sense for the assessment framework to include a process for co-creating knowledge
on the performance of these solutions. This requires a participatory approach with stakeholders in the ALLs for selecting indicators that reflect local interests and aspirations. For instance, a cocoa farmer in Peru’s tropical forest may have different benchmarks and metrics for assessing soil health or human well-being than an olive farmer in Tunisia or a rice-fish farmer in Lao PDR . In this process, stakeholders first collectively envision how they want their community, landscape and livelihoods to evolve, and then identify steps they can take to achieve that vision, using agroecology principles. Next, they brainstorm potential indicators of success for each of the four themes of the performance assessment.

Locally identified indicators are then evaluated against agreed criteria (such as importance to the community or likelihood of change) to generate a prioritized list of local indicators for the ALL. Together, the two sets of global and local indicators constitute the holistic localized performance module in HOLPA, providing a tool that can be applied to assess performance across diverse farming contexts, using different agroecological approaches – from the development of organic farming to strengthening of farmer agency in value chains. The evidence generated will enable communities to see the impact of agroecology on things that matter to them, while also giving investors and other decision-makers a clear picture of agroecology’s performance under a wide variety of conditions.

Local performance indicators have been selected in 11 ALLs across eight countries and incorporated into the HOLPA tool in each of those countries. Data has been collected from 1,979 farm households surveyed using HOLPA. Results from HOLPA are being used to assess and validate with stakeholders in workshops how contextspecific agroecological approaches affect the performance of farm households and landscapes across agronomic, environmental, economic and social dimensions. This provides key evidence needed to scale up agroecology transitions around the world.

“HOLPA and the evidence it generates will enable communities to see the impact of agroecology on things that matter to them, while also giving investors and other decisionmakers a clear picture of agroecology’s performance under a wide variety of conditions.” Chris Dickens, Principal Researcher, Sustainable Water
infrastructure & Ecosystems (SWIE), International Water Management Institute (IWMI), and Lead of WP2

Focus on: Insights from initial data assessments
As data from the three HOLPA modules undergo analysis, examples from Peru, Tunisia and Zimbabwe highlight ongoing discussions with ALL communities.

• In Peru, analysis of 200 surveys from cocoa, camucamu and fruit tree farmers reveals integration of agroecological principles like input reduction, animal health and biodiversity. Farmers further along in their agroecology transition also apply principles such as participation, connectivity and fairness. Preliminary results show improved environmental outcomes (higher tree diversity, crop varietal diversity and landscape complexity), reduced agricultural water stress and improved climate resilience on farms with increased adherence to agroecology. While incomes are more stable on these more agroecological farms, crop health is relatively poor, and yield gaps are larger, pointing to a need to manage environmental and agronomic tradeoffs.
• In Tunisia, preliminary results of interest include an alignment between farmer perceptions of soil health and laboratory soil analyses, particularly regarding organic matter. Investigations are ongoing to confirm possible links between agroecological practices and improved environmental performance, as biodiversity depends on both farm management and broader landscape configurations.
• In Zimbabwe, discussions with the Mbire ALL community were supported by local performance indicators in the HOLPA survey, including indicators for human wildlife conflict, which accounts for up to 40% of crop losses. The country team is exploring management strategies drawing on predictive models developed by the Zimbabwe team.

The way forward
In future CGIAR research on multifunctional landscapes, a version of HOLPA will be developed for collecting context, agroecology and performance data through focus groups, remote sensing and key stakeholder interviews to gauge landscape-level performance via a rapid alternative to largescale household surveys. To allow near real-time provision of data to assess and evaluate interventions at finer resolutions, and improve data access to farmers and consumers, work will include testing citizen-science approaches to data collection and analysis together with community-supported monitoring approaches.

Researchers will develop an automated dashboard for realtime monitoring of ecosystem health that allows landscape actors to receive continuous updates. This new research will include trade-off assessment, “what-if” scenarios, and modeling approaches that explore different land use and policy planning scenarios at multiple spatial levels, including assessments of the performance of interventions across scales. This work should help food system actors monitor landscapes, while also better enabling decision-makers to design incentive schemes that advance the transition towards biodiverse, productive and resilient landscapes and aquascapes with low greenhouse gas emissions for healthy people living in fairer societies.

Progress towards the Initiative goal
The HOLPA assessment results have been shared with stakeholders, researchers, policymakers, communities, investors, farmers and others in all eight countries. Further discussion in 2025 and the development of easy-toconsult dashboards will allow use of the knowledge gained to formulate action plans and implement agroecological innovations.