Thank you for offering the opportunity to comment on the proposed draft scope. After having reviewed the scientific competencies required in the call for experts as well as the above listed scope of the report my impression is that a few key points of view are missing in order to fully inform the report and create a more holistic and effective outcome.
Expertise that should be sought (likely outside of the official expert team) is from the business/entrepreneurial world for the following topics:
- Tech (specifically fintech/insurtech and related fields): Long term sustainability and success of agroecological principles and management methods for small holder farmers etc. will depend on accessing individual customers (consumers) directly and engaging with them by circumnagivating the established agroindustrial players. Communications technology has the huge potential of disrupting established industrial market practices but it requires representatives of the agroecological method to engage directly with tech entrepreneurs/developers to inform and establish products/systems that can achieve this. Please see the example of Agrocenta (Ghana) and Farmdrive (Kenia) for interesting approaches that attempt to support small holder farmers with access to finance and access to market.
- Financial systems: Financial flows being at the heart of the world economy, focusing only on academic economics ignores the real world actions that drive many developments behind the scenes. Impact investors that have a real world understanding of current trends and financial flows in the markets may offer a realistic appraisal of challenges and dangers that an independent agroecological system will face. While the agroecology and finance are in many ways diametrically opposed, understanding the motivations/challenges of investors will inform the report and should make its conclusions more pertinent and effective to achieve the aims of defending agroecology from cooption.
Agroecology as a holistic approach needs to broaden its horizon to make use of other parts of the economy that are trying to reshape the current industrial paradigms.
Patrick Winterhoff