Financed by the French Development Agency (AFD) and the European Commission, with a budget of 12 million euros, and orchestrated by Group for Research and Technology Exchanges (GRET), with scientific coordination by the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Developmen (CIRAD), this far-reaching five-year programme will involve 27 partners in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. Its goal is to exploit the potential of agroecology in order to support the transition of agrifood systems in Southeast Asia.

On Tuesday, November 17, the Seminar "Public Policies and Agroecology in Family Agriculture" was held within the framework of the XXXIII Specialized Meeting on Family Agriculture (REAF) of the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR). The purpose of the seminar was to contribute to strengthening agroecology at the country level while improving opportunities for the development of instruments in the region and to assess the state of public policies for promoting agroecology in the countries of the expanded MERCOSUR.

Poverty, lack of employment, poor access to land and care responsibilities, but at the same time, the relationship with the environment and the sense of collectivity, lead communities and, within them, women and organized youth, to promote agroecological production practices for self-consumption, from a feminist vision and for the subsistence of their families.

The Agroecology Criteria Tool (ACT) enables the assessment of projects through the lens of agroecology: it visualizes the degree to which a project, program or policy is aligned with the various dimensions of agroecology. The methodology is based on the analytical framework by Gliessman on the 5 levels of food system change, it is embedded within the 10 Elements of Agroecology and builds on an extensive meta-study on existing agroecology concepts.

A Special Issue of the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems is currently being prepared on the topic of “Doing Participatory Action Research (PAR) in a time of COVID-19 and beyond” by researchers connected to AgroecologyNow. Scholar-activists or researcher-practitioners from within social networks and scholarship are encouraged to co-author work that raises important questions about how we might think about and approach our work differently.

Organic Farm Knowledge Platform intends to promote productivity and quality in organic farming across Europe by providing access to a wide range of tools and knowledge exchange among farmers, farm advisers and scientists. This facilitates access to practical tools developed within the framework of research projects with farmers playing a central role in building the Organic Farm Knowledge platform from grassroot.