Strengthening Agroecological Innovation Networks

This article from LEISA magazine Vol. 22.1 describes the work of AS-PTA, an advisory non-governmental organisation (NGO) working with family farmers' organisations in Brazil that has been trying out different methods to document agro ecological innovations and so enable an increasing exchange of information about farmers' experiments with agro ecology. Because knowledge based in farmers’ real experience is often directly relevant to other farmers, AS-PTA uses videos, pamphlets, bulletins, photo displays, theatre and other methods to exchange the knowledge gained from experimenting with local practices.
The premise of this farmer-to-farmer knowledge exchange is that the introduction of standardised technological packages for agricultural modernisation promoted by conventional rural development programmes has contributed to the weakening of local knowledge traditionally passed between generations through informal exchange networks.

This article describes the use of information sheets for documentation:
"One simple yet effective documentation method that has been tried and used successfully is the Boletim Informativo da Agricultura Familiar, or Family Agriculture Information Sheet. This is a two to four page printed information sheet, where a family, group or individual describes their story or experience related to the agroecological programmes and activities they take part in. The families, or groups of farmers, were assisted in describing and interpreting their reality through informal conversations together with members of ASPTA or other organisations in their network."
This method of information dissemination has the following advantages, according to the article:

• They can include photos and diagrams, thus, giving visibility to the life stories of farm families, or to the development of a local group.
• They are produced with minimal resources, and reproduced many times locally.
• They make it possible to show how innovative local groups and individuals are in dealing with the problems they face in their daily lives
• The experimenting farmers assume ownership of the documentation of their experience by correcting the final product and distributing and presenting the material in local communities, at fairs and in meetings.

Documentation gives women farmer-experimenters visibility and recognition of the value of their work and their experiences of growing crops in back gardens. In preparation for a state-wide regional meeting on home gardens, a group of women farmer-experimenters chose to use a scene built to represent a back garden, as well as to distribute samples of products and information sheets to complement the other communication tools as an enduring reference.
Their innovations included medicinal plant gardens, recycling of waste, rearing of animals, use of live fences, use of home remedies and enriched flour (multimistura), processing of local fruits and improved use of space in the gardens.

In conclusion, the article states that bringing attention to people’s stories and their innovation processes was an important consideration when choosing which documentation method to use. This method has inspired farmers to continue to document experiences in order to readjust the information sheets or create new ones, making the communication and knowledge exchange more dynamic. It has been replicated by the Semi-arid Network of Paraíba, a forum of organisations and individuals who promote improved ways of living in the semi-arid areas.