Markus Frank, Mariano M. Amoroso, Martina Propedo & Brigitte Kaufmann
Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, DOI: 10.1080/21683565.2021.2020948 - Published online: 11 Jan 2022.
The transformative claim of agroecology research draws on transdisciplinarity and participatory action research to operationalize horizontal learning and experimentation for knowledge co-creation and change in action. Drawbacks to recent research strategies in this field are lack of action orientation, and limited roles and low level of control attributed to farmers, particularly in defining scope and methods for collaboration and joint experimentation.
In response, in this article the authors conceptualize a co-inquiry approach for agroecology research adopted from participatory action research and explore its operationalization and outcomes with a group of organic horticultural farmers in Argentina.
The authors assess how co-inquiry considers farmers’ experience in the knowledge co-creation process to achieve contextualized research questions and actionable results, and reflect on potentials and constraints of extended roles attributed to farmers and their increased control over inquiry process and contents.
The authors found that co-inquiry facilitates extended roles of farmers as co-researchers and thereby encourages horizontal learning based on systems thinking, through a joint explorative assessment of the systems operators’ purposes, context, and experience, and through joint choice of methodology, experimentation and reflection.
Related:
Farmers’ experiments and scientific methodology
Sven Ove Hansson
European Journal for Philosophy of Science (2019) 9:32
Abstract
Farmers all over the world perform experiments, and have done so since long before modern experimental science and its recognized forerunners. There is a rich anthropological literature on these experiments, but the philosophical issues that they give rise to have not received much attention. Based on the anthropological literature, this study investigates methodological and philosophical issues pertaining to farmers’ experiments, including the choice of interventions (work methods etc.) to be tested, the planning of experiments, and the use of control fields and other means to deal with confounding factors. Farmers’ experiments have some advantages over the field trials of agricultural scientists (more replications, studies performed under the relevant local conditions), but also some comparative disadvantages (less stringent controls, less precise evaluations). The two experimental traditions are complementary, and neither of them can replace the other. Several aspects of farmers’ experiments are shown to have a direct bearing on central topics in the philosophy of science
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