Knowledge Co-Construction Strategies Among Agroecology Farmers

• In Event: 30610 - Environmental Values, Knowledge, and Politics

Abstract

Agroecology —a set of food production and consumption practices based on ecological, social, and economic sustainability principles— has grown substantially in the last decade in Argentina, despite significant barriers to its development. Acquiring specialized knowledge in agroecology is a priority for farmers who pursue socio-environmental goals, but the process for building such expertise is not clearly laid out. While some consensus exists among agroecology practitioners about key guiding principles, knowledge is still contested and dynamic. This raises the central question of this paper: how do farmers develop agroecology expertise —understood here as practical know-how and as relationally recognized knowledge— in a context of uncertainty and conflicting information? Based on ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews with agroecology farmers, state workers, activists, and technicians in a rural town in Córdoba, Argentina, this paper examines how agroecology expertise is built among farmers. The article argues by way of empirical demonstration that expertise surges amidst uncertainty through what I term a work of discernment —a twofold process involving the selective adoption of institutional knowledge and peer-to-peer information diffusion, based on experience-based and relational-based criteria. As such, the paper draws on two bifurcated scholarly views on expertise: 1) as a property attached to qualified individuals and 2) as a relational process. The study integrates these views by advancing the argument that while agroecology expertise is negotiated among interested parties (relational view), it also depends on farmers’ embodiment of specialized knowledge through everyday practices and intergenerational communication (substantive view).

Author

• Águeda Ortega, University of Texas-Austin