Co-producing knowledge with family farming organizations: a citizen science observatory in Santarém, Brazilian Amazon

Abstract

This data paper presents a survey conducted in a participatory manner in the territory of Santarém, in the Brazilian Amazon. The aim is to understand how global changes are affecting family farmers. In the study area, family farming has been confronted over the past 20 years with the rapid expansion of large-scale monocultures, especially soybean. As part of the Odyssea socio-environmental observatory, academic researchers and family farming organizations entered into a partnership to co-produce data that could be strategically useful for these organizations. A process of co-construction of the expectations allowed priorities to be established and the data collection strategy to be defined. Three levels of analysis were chosen in order to allow an integrated understanding of the dynamics of change: the Santarem Plateau territory, the rural community level (living place recognized by the farmers) and the farmers’ households. Twenty-one farmers, called community researchers, organized in 3 teams, applied a questionnaire through the KoboCollect smartphone application to 544 families in the municipalities of Santarém, Mojuí dos Campos and Belterra. Meetings were previously held in the rural communities and questionnaires were applied with representatives of 32 communities. Data was collected between April and June 2019. The community researchers and academic researchers then came together for two collective sessions of data analysis and interpretation in July and October 2019. Data was standardized and cleaned using SPSS software, between September and December 2019. The metadata and databases are available on the CIRAD dataverse.

The role of citizen science mobile apps in facilitating a contemporary digital agora

“…Another advantage of using this app comes from community-based empowerment. Citizens become thus agents of change in their own communities (Coudel et al 2022;Tuckett et al 2018).…”

Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary scholarship for a civilisation in distress: questions for and from the Global South

“…More user friendly, 'crowd reviewed' (anyone in the concerned network across the globe can volunteer to review these papers), and shorter formats are emerging (for instance, Academia Letters) to communicate interim findings to a wide range of readers. Publishing data papers 11 (see Coudel et al, 2022) and field notes also plays a relevant role both as dissemination of findings through open access to academics and as socialised sources for multiple uses. • Confusion of roles in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary ventures should be avoided as well.…”

Repercussão do desmantelamento de políticas na produção de invisibilidade: quando os agrotóxicos deixam de ser um problema público

“…As part of the project named Observatory of the Dynamics of Societies and their Environments in the Amazon -Odisseia 3 , we initiated, in 2016, a research process in the region of Santarém, in western Pará state, to collaborate to strengthen family farming in a region faced with rapid change (COUDEL et al, 2022). Socioecological observatories are framed as platforms that engage diverse researchers, decision-makers, and social actors to bring together various types of academic and non-academic knowledge related to socioecological systems and inform public policymaking (BOURGERON et al, 2018).…”

“…Contamination by pesticides emerged as one of the priority research axes. In 2019, the observatory launched a data collection campaign on Family Farming in the region, encompassing, among other questions, questions regarding respondents' perception of the impact of soy advance on their families and the use of pesticides by family farmers (COUDEL et al, 2022). Parallel to conducting interviews through questionnaires, researchers associated with the project investigated environmental and human exposure to pesticides in the Santarem Plateau region.…”