Farmers are scientists: the practice, science and movement of agroecology

We need an interdisciplinary approach to face the challenge of increasing global access to food substantially and sustainably. We need to do this using the same land base with less fossil fuels, water and chemical inputs within a scenario of climate change, social unrest and financial crisis. Alongside these great challenges are great opportunities: traditional farming knowledges which groups of humans the world over have been developing. These techniques are often tried, tested and optimised over millennia with a philosophy of land stewardship and care, where impacts and resilience are assessed on a timescale (multiple human generations) unprecedented in modern farming techniques. We are aiming to form a network in order to co-develop participatory research into how we create productive food systems that are environmentally, economically and socially just. Using an agroecological approach we hope to bring together agroecological practitioners, of varying scales, and their traditional farming knowledge with a cross-disciplinary group of academics and non academic experts in order to identify and co-create future projects relevant across scales.