The Social Side of Agroecological Systems: Farmers' Adaptation Capacity

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Background

As coupled human-nature systems, agroecosystems need to be understood by considering contemporary challenges and risks (e.g., climate change, water security, soil degradation, biodiversity loss) posed to farmers and the actions they take in response. These farmer behaviors are influenced by perception and risk awareness, and by the contexts in which farmers operate.

The way that individual farmers understand and perceive the environment affects their interactions with it by influencing the selection of a certain type of management on their farms. Thus, it is fundamental to understand how farmers’ perceptions and risk awareness influence behavior. Furthermore, farmers are not ‘blank slates’ when managing the information they receive about these challenges and risks; information is always and inevitably filtered through values, beliefs and previous experiences. Understanding these aspects allows us to assess knowledge exchange and decision-making processes which can help to both integrate scientific information more effectively in the day-to-day management and to foster the adoption of sustainable practices.

Farmers’ behaviors are also shaped by biophysical, socio-economic, institutional (‘the rules of the game’) and cultural conditions affecting agroecosystems management at the local level. Adaptive capacity, which describes the individual or collective ability to adaptively respond to current or perceived future stresses, therefore depends on how farmers’ perceptions are conditioned by these contextual factors. The adaptation process is thus a socio-technical one.

Consequently, learning from global experiences about the social side of the agroecological systems will contribute to enable policymakers and managers to have a deeper understanding of agroecosystems’ realities at the local level by putting farmers in the core of the analysis. Together with this, understanding that their decisions are also conditioned by structural barriers and enablers, is essential for good policy formulation and implementation. Accurate bottom-up knowledge on farmers’ behavior enables policy-makers and managers to move forward and re-think contemporary challenges and develop policies at the local and regional level, which is essential to achieve agroecological systems resilience.

The objective of this Research Topic is to: (i) bring together new results from research from around the world to provide conceptual methodological and empirical insights into farmers’ adaptive capacity when addressing challenges such as climate change and resource degradation, (ii) provide insights and an agenda for future research in agroecological cropping systems, which incorporate social as well as technical perspectives, and (iii) furnish guidance to policy and decision-makers on how they can enable, foster and leverage adaptive capacities.

We are interested in receiving original research articles, reviews, perspectives, and opinion pieces about all aspects of farmers’ perceptions and behavior in agroecological systems when adapting to contemporary challenges and negotiating conditioning factors. The agroecological systems can be at local or regional scale, from the global north to the global south, also including case study comparison. Likewise, farmers can be analysed as individuals or as community members and stakeholders.

Keywords: Farmers, Perception, Adaptive capacity, Management, Agroecological systems, Climate change, Water scarcity, Soil degradation, Biodiversity loss, Behavior

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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