Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Transforming our global food system requires knowledge systems that support systems thinking, local adaptation, social learning, and cultural embeddedness, and therefore are based on the knowledge of farmers, peasants, and indigenous people. Agroecology is multidimensional and interdisciplinary, and it takes a systems perspective on our food system. This system’s perspective is built on valuing all types of knowledge within our food system, formal and informal, with people producing the food, such as farmers, put at the center (Anderson et al. 2019; Gliessman 2022; Pimbert 2018a; Pimbert 2018b). This thesis explores how agroecological knowledge, in the form of local, experience-based knowledge, is recognized and integrated into organic farm advisory services in Sweden and identifies the drivers and barriers shaping this process. This thesis is based on a qualitative thematic analysis of 10 semi-structured interviews with organic advisors. The findings contribute to agroecological theory by identifying organic advisors as knowledge brokers who simultaneously act as both drivers and barriers to the recognition, integration, and co-creation of agroecological knowledge. Advisors combine and operationalize formal and informal knowledge, where gathering local and experience-based farmers’ knowledge is viewed as the core of advising. The findings suggest that greater awareness among advisors of knowledge hierarchies within advisory services could support more participatory and inclusive knowledge processes. Most importantly, this thesis shows that knowledge exists everywhere and in many different forms; it is simply a matter of how we, as humans, take it in and how we as a society value and steward it.