A regional research initiative is documenting how agroecology is transforming food systems through collective knowledge, resilience, and social equity.
Across Latin America, agroecology is emerging as a powerful response to environmental degradation, rural inequality, and food system instability. The Building Pathways initiative, documented in the report Agroecology Perspectives in Latin America, presents the results of a participatory action-research initiative led by 10 social organizations across Brazil, Paraguay, Ecuador, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico, in partnership with the University of British Columbia. More than 520 farming families contributed directly to the project, grounding the research in lived agricultural practice.
By assessing environmental regeneration, social organization, and economic viability, the initiative builds a data-driven foundation for understanding how agroecological transitions unfold in real contexts: how diversified production systems contribute to soil health, food security, income stability, and collective governance. This evidence-based approach moves farmers and organizations beyond anecdotal validation, equipping them with consistent, reliable information to guide decision-making at the farm level — and to make a stronger case for supportive public policy.
Rooted in relationships
Over more than a decade, grassroots organizations had been gathering through the Inter-American Foundation's (IAF) portfolio on Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security, learning from one another's experiences with Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) — decentralized, community-based forms of organic certification. By 2016, that network had formalized a Steering Committee with a shared ambition: to collectively measure the impact of agroecological transitions, not just certify them.
The missing piece was a methodology rigorous enough to generate credible data, and flexible enough to work across seven countries with radically different farming contexts. That's where UBC came in. Dr. Hannah Wittman, a professor in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems and a longtime collaborator with CEPAGRO — the Brazilian coordinating organization based in Santa Catarina — joined the initiative as a research partner. In 2018, she led the Steering Committee through a collaborative indicator-mapping process, starting from the PGS certification forms already in use by member organizations. The initial brainstorm produced over 100 potential indicators. Over the following two years, the group narrowed them to the 11 that best captured what mattered to families on the ground: from agrobiodiversity and agroecological practices, to gender relations, family succession, and marketing channels.
The power of participatory research
At the heart of Building Pathways is a methodological commitment that sets it apart: farmers were not treated as research subjects, but as co-creators of knowledge. Social organizations across seven countries collaborated to define indicators, gather data, and interpret results. Field technicians from each member organization were central to data collection, interpretation, and communication. Farming families were invited into a process of collectively understanding what their practices mean, and what evidence they need to make the case for agroecology to policymakers, funders, and the public.
This collaborative structure both strengthens credibility and improves relevance. It bridges grassroots experience with academic research capacity, demonstrating how cross-border partnerships can accelerate regional learning and coordination. Academic institutions contribute analytical tools and comparative frameworks; grassroots partners bring contextual expertise and long-standing community relationships. The reciprocal exchange creates more actionable insights and reinforces the legitimacy of agroecological approaches within institutional conversations.
One of the earliest decisions the committee made was to use LiteFarm as a core data collection tool. Initially developed at UBC by Dr. Zia Mehrabi, then a postdoc at UBC’s IRES working with Dr. Wittman, LiteFarm is a free, open-source farm management application built on the principles of food sovereignty and ethical data governance. For this project, it became something more: a co-developed platform, shaped by the input of participating families and field technicians across seven countries to become genuinely useful in each local context. The research also used SurveyStack for annual qualitative surveys, and over the course of the project the teams held 12 thematic webinars, each led by one member organization sharing its area of expertise, as a form of living knowledge exchange embedded in the research process itself.
What the data revealed
The 11 indicators tracked across the project spanned environmental, economic, and social dimensions of agroecological farming life:
Agrobiodiversity (the variety of crops, animals, and wild species present on a farm) emerged as one of the most telling markers of agroecological practice. Farms across the network documented significant crop diversity, ranging from 58 to 402 distinct cultivated varieties depending on the organization and region. The report notes this likely understates actual diversity, as many families registered only crops intended for sale rather than the full range of what they grow. The most widely adopted agroecological practices in 2025 included organic fertilizer application (83.5% of families), intercropping (83.2%), crop rotation (79.4%), and production diversification (76.3%) — alongside soil-protective practices like dry mulching (82.9%), green manure (78.5%), and cover crops (74.7%).
On the social side, gender relations and family succession proved among the most complex and significant indicators. The data offered a nuanced picture: women play central roles in agroecological production and marketing, yet often remain underrecognized in formal decision-making. Questions of who inherits the farm, and whether young people want to stay in farming at all, are among the most pressing challenges organizations across the network identified. In several participating communities, the agroecological farm has become a site where young people are choosing to stay, drawn by autonomy, ecological values, and the visibility that direct marketing and community certification provide. These findings reinforce a key insight from the report: agroecology's impact extends well beyond environmental outcomes. It contributes to gender equity, youth engagement in rural economies, and strengthened local governance — reinforcing the social dimensions of sustainability.
A regional model, and a platform for what's next
The project's results are designed not only to document agroecology, but to shape its future. In a region where smallholder agriculture plays a critical economic and cultural role, generating structured, measurable evidence is essential for building the supportive ecosystems — financing, technical assistance, policy alignment, market access — that agroecological transitions require.
The completion of the five-year project has produced two tangible outputs built for exactly that purpose: the synthesis report Perspectives on Agroecology in Latin America (2021–2025), available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and an interactive website where findings are presented not as static data but as living, navigable indicators. Visitors can explore results by indicator, country, and theme — making the evidence accessible to policy audiences, funders, researchers, and farming communities alike.
Supported by the IAF and Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the project represents a model of North-South research partnership that centers Southern knowledge and Southern priorities. UBC's role was not to design the research and hand it to communities, but to contribute technical and methodological expertise in service of a vision developed by grassroots organizations over more than a decade of relationship-building.
Building Pathways is more than a research project. It is a platform for collective reflection, evidence-building, and movement strengthening across Latin America. As climate pressures intensify and global food systems face mounting uncertainty, the initiative demonstrates that sustainable agricultural transformation is not only possible — it is measurable, replicable, and scalable when built on collective evidence. In building these pathways, agroecology moves from isolated practice to coordinated transformation, shaping more resilient, equitable food systems for the future.
