South West Agroecology Network

Purpose

This is a network that brings together farmers, researchers and those working in the third sector (charities & think tanks) on agroecology. The aim of this network is to co-create collaborative research that has a direct impact for farmers and works to influence the adoption of agroecology in the South West.

We began in 2020 with an open enquiry: 

'what do you understand by agroecology?'

Most frequent words in our agroecology open enquiry in 2020 (top 2% of all words across 18 responses from network)

Condensing these into a sentence, the network understood agroecology as science, practice, movement and knowledge all about healthy agriculture and food systems

That winter, we met online to reach consensus on research gaps in the region:

Collaborative processes


What is the role of collaborative processes in supporting and promoting agroecological systems?


Beliefs & behaviours


What are the deep set beliefs and behaviours of farmers and academics preventing our food system from making an agroecological transition?


Ecological literacy


How does ecological literacy affect the ability of humans to comprehend and interact with current crises?


Access to land


How does access to land affect the uptake of agroecology in the south west? 

What is preventing this access and how could this be overcome?


In summer 2021, we decided research priorities and network groups in person:

Research priorities:

Now

Soon

Later

Network groups:

Funding

Membership

Knowledge exchange

Transdisciplinary Research