The 10 Elements of Agroecology interconnected: Making them operational in FAO’s work on agroecology

Abstract

Since 2014, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has played a leading role in facilitating agroecology discussions and dialogues among many different regions and stakeholders. FAO’s engagement with agroecology as one promising way of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) was confirmed in 2018 with the launch of the Scaling Up Agroecology Initiative. FAO’s function is of a dual but interconnected nature: that of normative operational work. This is reflected in FAO’s work on agroecology, which combines the normative and operational aspects to create synergies through their linkages, thus creating a policy bridge for transformation. Undergirding this work is the framework of the 10 Elements of Agroecology, which was approved by FAO Governing Bodies in November 2019 and has been expanded to include its use in visual narratives to describe plausible theories of change to facilitate food systems transformation. The 10 Elements serve as the foundation for the normative and operational aspects of the Scaling Up Agroecology Initiative (SUAI), which include various tools, knowledge pieces, projects, policy initiatives, and sharing platforms. Nowhere is this foundation of the 10 Elements clearer than in the Tool for Agroecology Performance Evaluation (TAPE), a tool for assessing the multidimensional performance of agroecology. TAPE relies upon the 10 Elements to characterize the level of agroecological transition of production systems in agriculture at scale and in time. Upon this snapshot of transition, criteria of quantitative performance are assessed. Recent utilization of TAPE across the globe has strongly shown how TAPE can help actors make data-driven decisions to elicit transformational change at all levels of the territory, when it is linked to the other aspects of the SUAI underpinned by the 10 Elements, thus effectively bridging policy and praxis.

Economic, environmental and social indicators of sustainability among smallholders in Ethiopia: Based on tool for agroecological performance evaluation data

“…Data collected included socio-economic, environmental and demographic characteristics and contexts of the production systems, such as location, household size, household assets, agro-ecological zone, land use patterns, topography, forests, access to land, and agricultural commodities produced. More specifically, data were collected on the 10 elements of agroecology [ 4 , 5 ].…”

“…The average scores for CAET and 10 elements characterizing agroecological transition [ 4 , 5 ] are given in Fig. 1 .…”

Information curation in agroecology and territorial development: protocols for the management of digital collections

“…Initially, this interdisciplinary field focused on promoting ecological conservation and the sustainable use of energy resources on farms. As highlighted by Bicksler et al (2023) and Plateau et al (2021), agroecology has evolved from a practical, localized approach to a more comprehensive scientific discipline that integrates ecological principles into agriculture while seeking to optimize relationships between plants, animals, humans, and the environment. This evolution reflects the growing importance of sustainable agricultural practices in response to contemporary environmental and social challenges.…”

“…Recently, international organizations such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have recognized that agroecology is a path to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the 2030 Agenda. "It [agroecology] represents a way to inform a holistic approach to food and agricultural systems that can better meet the societal and biophysical needs of this current generation and generations to come" (Bicksler et al, 2023). The territory can be understood as a multidimensional field (economic, social, environmental, cultural, political, institutional), where different social groups coexist and always Interact through power relations, conflicts, and competition.…”

How can GIS support the evaluation and design of biodiverse agroecosystems and landscapes? Applying the Main Agroecological Structure to European agroecosystems

“…Well-documented tools to assess the agroecological sustainability of a system and their application in different global contexts include the Tool for Agroecology Performance Evaluation (TAPE) developed by FAO, which operationalizes the 10 elements of agroecology stated by the organization (Mottet et al, 2020;Bicksler et al, 2023), and MESMIS (from the Spanish acronym Marco para la Evaluación de Sistemas de Manejo de recursos naturales incorporando Indicadores de Sustentabilidad, Framework for the Evaluation of Natural Resource Management Systems incorporating Sustainability Indicators), initially developed in Mexico for the sustainability assessment of agro-socio-environmental systems using a participatory, interdisciplinary, and flexible framework (López-Ridaura et al, 2002). Recently, the Main Agroecological Structure (MAS) has been developed in Colombia and proposed as a socioenvironmental index that aims to promote a dialogue between landscape ecology and agroecology, encompassing indicators that focus on both landscape parameters and in-farm agrobiodiversity and variables of sociocultural order (Quintero et al, 2022a).…”