The 10 Elements of Agroecology: enabling transitions towards sustainable agriculture and food systems through visual narratives

Abstract

The magnitude and urgency of the challenges facing agriculture and food systems demand profound modifications in different aspects of human activity to achieve real transformative change and sustainability. Recognizing that the inherent complexity of achieving sustainability is commonly seen as a deterrent to decision-making, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has approved the 10 Elements of Agroecology as an analytical framework to support the design of differentiated paths for agriculture and food systems transformation, hence facilitating improved decision-making by policymakers, practitioners and other stakeholders in differing contexts at a range of levels on a number of scales. Biodiversity, consumers, education and governance are identified as promising entry points to build a structured process using visual narratives that rely on the 10 Elements of Agroecology to graphically dissect prospective social-ecological transition trajectories. We illustrate such applications with examples from agroforestry worldwide, public food procurement in Brazil and the United States of America, and agroecology education vis-à-vis secure access to land in Senegal. Nexus approaches are used to highlight and examine salient interactions among different sectors and entry points, and to develop visual narratives describing plausible theories of transformative change towards sustainable agriculture and food systems.

Agroecological principles and elements and their implications for transitioning to sustainable food systems. A review

“…The 10 elements of agroecology, on the other hand, resulted from a multi-stakeholder consultation process intended to build a framework to be optimised and adapted to local contexts (Barrios et al 2020). It was developed between 2015 and 2019 through a process involving three main phases:…”

“…c Aspects, showing the emergence of the three manifestations of agroecology (science, practice and social movement) with key topics and the nature and scope of research (adapted from Silici 2014, based on Soldat 2009). Note that indigenous knowledge and practice predate the 1980s as well as older forms of indigenous agroecology that existed prior to the formal sciences FAO (2018d) first described the 10 elements of agroecology which are diversity, co-creation of knowledge, synergies, efficiency, recycling, resilience, human and social values, culture and food traditions, responsible governance, and circular and solidarity economy (for more details see Barrios et al 2020).…”

“…One of the major challenges to transformative change in agriculture is the difficulty of designing differentiated paths for food and agricultural systems transformation that respond to local and national expectations (Caron et al 2018). In addition to the five levels described above, the FAO agroecology framework recognises all 10 elements as potential entry points for transformative change towards sustainable food and agricultural systems and the facilitative role of visual narratives and nexus analysis (Barrios et al 2020). Four key entry points are identified in Fig.…”

Positive but variable effects of crop diversification on biodiversity and ecosystem services

“…These broad conclusions should, however, not hide the fact that heterogeneity exists and that the results of a single meta-analysis could sometimes diverge from our mean estimates, as indicated by the wide prediction intervals found in our analysis. Agro-ecological transitions must therefore be designed to take into account local contexts and constraints 53…”

Assessing Transitions to Sustainable Agricultural and Food Systems: A Tool for Agroecology Performance Evaluation (TAPE)

“…This evidence needs to be co-constructed with a diversity of actors, operating at different scales, timeframes, and contexts, and dovetailed into their existing work. It also should be able to contribute to evaluating a wide range of agricultural systems against the 10 Elements of Agroecology approved by FAO member nations (FAO, 2018a; Barrios et al, 2020). This need for evidence has been expressed at the intergovernmental level, by the 26th Committee on Agriculture of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (COAG, 2018), and also by the High Level Panel of Experts of the multi-stakeholder Committee on Food Security (HLPE, 2019).…”