Agri4D - a place to meet and learn

Agri4D reflections, day two, let's go!

Yesterday I told you about the sights, sounds, smells and feelings of being here - so today I want to talk in more detail about the knowledge.

The keynote speakers both challenged my perspective on what it means to be an agricultural researcher.

First Miguel A. Altieri at the University of California, Berkeley and Centro LatinoAmericano de Investigaciones
Agroecologicas (CELIA) pointed out how, even though it is now a buzzword, agroecology builds on the knowledge of generations of millions of farmers and their own kinds of science. So we as researchers participate in a ‘dialogue of wisdoms’ rather than producing knowledge we ‘teach’ farmers.

Then Nitya Rao from East Anglia University added to this with insights on how women farmers are often invisible in this picture. So they suffer from a double marginalisation and are made invisible, often not even being recognised as farmers. And how addressing gendered power dynamics are crucial to solving agricultural inequality in general.

These insights not only challenged me, but sparked debate among attendants here at Agri4D. I think this shows that intellectual diversity, like biodiversity, also means friction and conflict and disagreement and we should welcome this and see it as a path forward, through challenging each other's ideas.

But in case you thought today's report would all be very cerebral, today I also got to experience the life cycle of a seed through a guided meditation! The artist-researcher helped to bring us into contact with the past, the present and the potentialities of these seeds we held in our hands. Then I made some (very bad) art about it. It is so important to do things badly sometimes!

The other session I attended was all about transforming food systems, with insights ranging from literature analysis of the switch from local markets to online shopping in Vietnam, all the way to how local tamarind drinks compete with mass market soft drinks as the preferred taste for people in east Africa. Again, can I say ‘diversity?’

I'm looking forward to telling you about tomorrow, stay tuned!

Cheers from Loukas, 

Master's student at SLU