Part 1

• Introduction to the panel Gerben Nooteboom University of Amsterdam
• Analyzing pathways to agroecological change: mobilizing multiple monitoring methods in Laos Albrecht Ehrensperger Guillaume Lestrelin Jean-Christophe Castella French National Research Institute on Sustainable Development Pascal Lienhard Titouan Filloux

  For many years, academics have studied agrarian changes from multiple disciplinary perspectives and scientific traditions pertaining to e.g., land change science, development studies, ethnography, political ecology. Building on such approaches, some authors explore the drivers of an expected, or hoped for, agroecological transition, and attempt to capture its premises, thus emphasizing pathways towards sustainable agricultural, livelihood and food systems. Their research posture is different from classical agrarian studies as they document emerging trends and niche experiments as weak signals of alternative pathways to the well-documented mainstream processes of agricultural intensification and environmental degradation.
  In our presentation, we illustrate various approaches and methods used over two decades to characterize agrarian and agroecological changes in the context of the northern uplands of Laos. We point to the strengths and weaknesses of each monitoring method and to the potential benefits of combining them to explore the complexity of the socio-ecological processes at work. We show how the integration of data from household surveys, focus group discussions, village monographs, land use change analysis, agricultural census, etc. can help extrapolate the results of limited case studies for informing larger scale development or policy intervention.
  The key lessons learnt point to the diversity of changes that are observed and the importance of the indicators monitored to characterize and understand pathways to agroecological change. More emphasis should be put on services and disservices provided by agroecology, beyond the economic ones, i.e. along the HLPE 13 principles, and mapping of dimensions of change, which are not visible from the air using remote sensing tools. There is no one-size fits all monitoring method, but a necessity to integrate and articulate the existing ones. The co-existence in time and space of agroecological and non-agroecological pathways, of family farms and industrial farms, of multiple agricultural models, challenges the attempts to generalize local studies or intervention mechanisms. We conclude with the importance of creating adaptation spaces where understandings of changes at work can be mutualized and agroecological interventions can be negotiated among multiple stakeholders to better navigate agrarian transformations.

• The Food, Climate, and Agroecological Nexus in Eastern Indonesia: Livelihood Struggles among Marginal Communities in Flores John F McCarthy The Australian National University

  John McCarthy, Prudensius Maring, Desmiwati, Yovita Yasintha Bolly, Suraya Affif, Rini Astuti, Henri Sitorus, Yulius Regang, Feliksia Silvana Pau

  An emerging literature on the food, climate and agroecology nexus in the global south explores the interconnectedness of food and nutrition, climate, and agroecological practices. It suggests that agroecological approaches that holistically attend to environmental, social, and economic concerns provide a potential pathway to address urgent food, nutrition, and climate issues faced by vulnerable communities in semi-arid environments such as Eastern Indonesia. Yet the pathways through which agroecological interventions might improve food and nutrition security and support climate adaptation among marginal farming communities remain unclear. This paper examines the adaptive spaces emerging amidst livelihood transitions in Flores, Eastern Indonesia. With increasing climate variability leading to cascading production failures, climate change deepens existing food and nutritional issues. Livelihood transitions are speeding up as men leave for work elsewhere and agriculture feminizes. Policymakers aiming to alleviate poverty and reduce forest degradation are rolling out social forestry reforms for over 12 million hectares of Indonesia, including extensive areas under community agroforests in Eastern Indonesia. Yet, policy practices to sustain community resilience in agroforest areas remain underdeveloped. This paper explores this conjuncture drawing on research in Nusa Tenggara undertaken under the DFAT-sponsored Koneksi program. The paper studies the socio-economic processes and structures shaping predominant coping strategies and the feasibility of adaptation efforts. It anticipates what might be required to address the complex challenges facing vulnerable local actors struggling to sustain their livelihoods in the face of dramatic change.

• Exploring adaptation spaces towards sustainable rice practices in Cambodia Alexia Dayet Cirad Jean-Christophe Castella Jean-Christophe Diepart Sreypich Lim

  Rice is a crucial crop in Cambodia, serving as both a staple food and an export commodity. Promoting rice exports to meet growing international demand is a central policy interest of the Cambodian government, with a target of 1 million tons of rice. However, the intensification of rice production faces multiple environmental and socio-economic challenges. To address these challenges, rice stakeholders have developed incentive mechanisms to promote sustainable practices. Incentive mechanisms refer to the structures or systems designed to motivate individuals or entities to take specific actions or exhibit desired behaviors. In our case, we represent these behaviors as either maintaining existing agroecological practices or changing farming practices towards more sustainable ones.
  This presentation aims to evaluate the effectiveness of these incentive mechanisms for rice production through a comparative analysis. Our objectives are twofold:

  1. To build a framework to analyze incentives to agroecological practices.
  2. To test this framework in the case of the rice sector in Cambodia.
     We analyzed actors-network involved in designing and implementing incentive mechanisms. Drawing on actor-network theory, we used a broad definition of incentive networks and mechanisms, including both human and non-human entities, such as guidelines and farming practices. The incentives function as hubs (or negotiation/adaptation spaces) where social processes and political dynamics take place. Prioritizing connections over individual and isolated factors allowed to better understand power dynamics, which are not inherent to the properties of actors but rather to the relationships established among them.
     In total, we studied 12 incentives through 17 semi-structured interviews, using an interactive system of actor mapping. Several actors involved in research and development projects, national and international organizations, rice-millers, union of agricultural cooperatives, farmers organizations were interviewed. The comparative analysis of the incentives highlights the differences and similarities of the mechanisms, characterizes their evolution in time and institutional trajectories, turning points in the implementation and the indicators that players use to define their successes or failures.
     Our findings suggest that the existing economic incentives, in their current shape, are not influencing significant changes in farmers’ practices towards agroecology. We posit that incentives should extend beyond economic values to include others intrinsic values of rice farming, such as cultural value, farmers’ wellbeing, food safety, etc. Value-based incentives should be discussed among stakeholders in dedicated adaptation spaces before they are implemented, otherwise they face the risk of not being implemented by so-called beneficiaries on the ground. These findings will feed future research about the future of rice farming in Cambodia as a stepping stone to co-design relevant incentive and intervention mechanisms towards sustainable rice practices.

Part 2

• Inequalities, vulnerabilities and adaptation in Lam Dong province, Vietnam Lisa Hiwasaki University of Rhode Island Pham Xuan Nguyen Bidoup – Nui Ba national park, Lam Dong Steve Déry Université Laval

  During the last 40 years, the global agricultural production systems and their influence have spread to every region in the world, often contributing to the upheaval of local subsistence means. These have in turn led to the emergence of various different adaptation options: niche, local, family, organic, or reasoned agriculture, or territorialised food systems. Such trends have transformed agricultural production in Vietnam since the early 2000s, with a focus on territorial expansion as well as intensification for cash crops. In Lam Dong province, the Koho Cil, an ethnic group that has lived for a long time in what is now Lac Duong district, have followed the path imposed by the Vietnamese government since the 1990s: sedentarization of their agricultural practices, the development of coffee production, and eventually, as forest guardians in the neighbouring national park. While the Kinh farmers in the same area have successfully developed high-tech greenhouses and organic agriculture with high returns, many Koho Cil struggle with their livelihoods in a landscape where these Kinh-dominant agricultural transformations have completely re-territorialized the space where they have lived long before French colonial era.

  Our research implemented since 2022 and co-constructed with local people sought to understand what constitutes the “adaptive space” for the Koho Cil, how it has evolved during the last 20 years or so, and what strategies they employ to adapt to various economic and environmental shocks or changes. Using a vulnerability framework, we conducted a multiscalar analysis to better understand what enables or what limits the Cil in their adaptation efforts, what impacts their vulnerability, particularly considering more recent threats from climate change.

  The results of our first analyses show that: 1) historical trajectories dating back to colonial era are a determining factor of the Cil’s capacities to interact with the surrounding actors, including the way to adapt to new territorial situations, creating stark differences in vulnerability and of “adaptive spaces” available between the more remote villages and those closer to Da Lat city; 2) since 1954 State and capitalist investors are the most influential actors on how the Cil’s space is transformed and territorialized; 3) with various State programs on forest protection that include 327, 661 and, the PFES program starting in 2009, and the new ecotourism endeavours made by Bidoup - Nui Ba national park, their “traditional” knowledge has been revitalised. These changes have enabled the Cil to increase their revenues from tourism and NTFPs and increased NTFPs for self-consumption. We suggest that while the Koho Cil’s traditional knowledge has been important to help them to consolidate their livelihoods and in reducing their vulnerability to economic or climate shocks, such knowledge has not supported them to adapt to climate change. At the same time, further efforts are needed to support the Koho Cil’s capacities to withstand future shocks, including further impacts on their capacity by powerful external actors.

• The Missing Gaze: Feminist Perspectives on Food Systems Transformation Policy and Agroecology in Vietnam and Indonesia Judith Ehlert University of Passau Martina Padmanabhan

  In the wake of climate and environmental change, envisioning the future of food and agriculture is one of the most central concerns of our time. Especially in Southeast Asia, post-colonial agricultural regimes and the externalities of the Green Revolution have far reaching socio-ecological repercussions to the present. In the region, Vietnam and Indonesia emerge as important actors in the discourse on greening agriculture with great potential - but also lots of rhetoric. On the international scene and in domestic policy, Vietnam portrays itself as innovation hub for Asia in terms of green food system transformation. Major directives in this regard are the Prime Minister’s Decisions on Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (2022) and the National Action Plan on Food Systems Transformation in Vietnam (NAP-FST, 2023). The Vietnamese case study portrays a unique modernistic vision of greening agriculture declaring small-scale farmers obsolete in the pursuit of total agrarian change. Indonesia, chairing the G20 summits in 2022, hosted the task force on food security and sustainable agriculture in the T20 engagement group of global think tanks. Interestingly, the Indonesian case presents the contradictory situation of a top-down productivist state with an organic niche, envisaged for an export market with little role out, reducing the civil society initiatives of alternative agriculture to the margins.
  The paper pursues two goals. (1) Against the growing prominence of food system transformation and agroecology in international discourse and policy making circles, the paper aims to take stock of the social science knowledge and gender studies on agroecology through a literature review. This goal is driven by the assumption that agronomy and agricultural economics strongly dominate the field. (2) The paper interrogates recent agricultural policies in Vietnam and Indonesia and analyses them through an outspoken Feminist Political Ecology (FPE) lens. We identify the major narratives and discourses driving agricultural and food policies in Vietnam and Indonesia and make explicit what is not being said and whose perceptions, lifeworlds, and knowledges are ignored. Through the FPE lens, we reveal the blind spots of disembodied, gender-blind and technocratic food system policies and conclude on the meaning and the politics of transformation amid the food and climate crises for the two Southeast Asian case studies.

• Synthesis, conclusions and ways forward: Agroecology, An Archipelago of Hope Gerben Nooteboom John F. McCarthy Sango Mahanty The Australian National University

  Agroecology as an adaptive pathway
  At a time when the challenges of food security, climate change and the degradation of natural resources are increasingly pressing, agroecology offers a path to an alternative future to predicted disaster scenarios. Agroecology is a holistic approach, integrating the principles of ecology into the design and management of sustainable agricultural and food systems. These principles include crop diversification, integrated natural resource management, the promotion of biodiversity, the minimization of external inputs, and the strengthening of positive interactions between the biotic and abiotic components of agricultural ecosystems.

  Models, myths and metaphors
  Despite its many advantages, the widespread adoption of agroecology remains hampered by a number of challenges, including economic pressures from conventional agricultural models, gaps in support and promotion policies, and the locks-in of intensive systems supported by powerful agribusinesses. Agroecology principles are associated with a paradigm shift that key agents of change often misunderstand, as they tend to perceive and conceive agroecology from the perspective of mainstream system thinking. The required shift in paradigm and mindset calls for a renewed storytelling and system thinking approach. We propose a renewed vision of agroecology based on alternative models, myths and metaphors.

  An archipelago of local adaptation spaces in the ocean of conventional farming
  In contrast with the model of innovation diffusion that underpin conventional agriculture, agroecology emerges like islands of local equilibria between nature and culture. Based on case studies in Southeast Asia, (i) we illustrate these local models of agroecological equilibrium, (ii) we described how they emerged using the myth of the hero’s journey and (iii) we analyze its coexistence with conventional systems and its resilience to shocks through the archipelago metaphor. This new vision of agroecology have strong implications about how to co-create and nurture adaptive spaces conducive to local equilibria and how to support alternative governance mechanisms toward an agroecology transition, not conceived as an innovation diffusion but as an emergence process.

Abstract