Acroecology and the right to food 2011, para. 39
Paragraph- Paragraph text
- Agroecological practices are best adopted when they are not imposed top-down but shared from farmer to farmer. Extension services play a key role in favouring the scaling up of agroecology. An improved dissemination of knowledge by horizontal means transforms the nature of knowledge itself, which becomes the product of a network. It should encourage farmers, particularly small-scale farmers, living in the most remote areas to identify innovative solutions, by working with experts towards a co-construction of knowledge to ensure that advances will benefit them as a matter of priority, rather than only benefiting the better-off producers. Co-construction is key for the realization of the right to food. First, it enables public authorities to benefit from the experience and insights of the farmers. Rather than treating smallholder farmers as beneficiaries of aid, they should be seen as experts with knowledge that is complementary to formalized expertise. Second, as the Special Rapporteur has previously illustrated in describing participatory plant-breeding, participation can ensure that policies and programmes are truly responsive to the needs of vulnerable groups, who will question projects that fail to improve their situation. Third, participation empowers the poor - a vital step towards poverty alleviation. Lack of power is a source of poverty, as marginal communities often receive less support than the groups that are better connected to government. Poverty exacerbates this lack of power, creating a vicious circle of further disempowerment. Fourth, policies that are co-designed with farmers have a high degree of legitimacy and thus favour better planning of investment and production and better up-take by other farmers. Participation of food-insecure groups in the policies that affect them should become a crucial element of all food security policies, from policy design to the assessment of results to the decision on research priorities. Indeed, improving the situation of millions of food-insecure peasants cannot be done without them.
- Legal status
- Non-negotiated soft law
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Means of adoption
- N.A.
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2011
- Paragraph type
- Other
- Reference
- SR Food, Report to the HRC (2011), A/HRC/16/49, para. 39.
- Paragraph number
- 39
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