Learning from farmers’ experiences with participatory monitoring and evaluation of regenerative agriculture based on visual soil assessment
Autor
Luján Soto, Raquel
Vente, Joris de
Cuéllar Padilla, María del Carmen
Editor
ElsevierFecha
2021Materia
Participatory action researchAgroecology
Almond farming
Drylands
Spain
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Participatory action research involving farmers and researchers is crucial to enhance the adoption of farming
innovations and ensure the long term sustainability of agroecosystem restoration. However, the factors for
successful participatory research for agroecosystem restoration are not always clear and have been rarely
evaluated from the perspective of the subjects from whom change is expected. Despite the increasing call for
agroecosystem Living Labs, farmers are still seldom involved in structured and shared co-monitoring and co-
evaluation of farming innovations as part of participatory monitoring programs. Therefore, we developed a
participatory monitoring and evaluation project to evaluate the impacts of regenerative agriculture between
farmers and researchers in the Mediterranean drylands of Spain. Here we present and evaluate the project
outcomes by reporting farmers’ monitoring results using a co-developed visual soil assessment (VSA) manual,
and by documenting farmers’ evaluation of the VSA and other key aspects of the participatory monitoring and
evaluation in the third year since the beginning of the project. Farmers’ VSA results pointed out regenerative
agriculture as a promising solution to restore degraded agroecosystems in Mediterranean drylands with insights
that are complementary to the scientific monitoring. Farmers’ evaluation of the participatory monitoring process
revealed the need to enhance farmers’ support for implementation of VSA tools in initial stages, and to include
farmers in the design of VSA tools to adjust them to farmers’ priorities, possibilities and needs. Farmers high
lighted the importance of the participatory monitoring and evaluation process to enhance knowledge exchange,
learning, and capacity building regarding soil quality management to adapt and adopt regenerative agriculture.
Our results confirm that including farmers in the design, decision-making and evaluation of research projects for
agroecosystem restoration is imperative to enhance efficient, sound and inclusive transitions towards long term
sustainable agroecosystems.