To manage well, we need to measure

Insights from a webinar on Metrics, Innovations, and Perspectives for Sustainable Agri-Food Systems

Agrobiodiversity - the variety and variability of plants, animals, and microorganisms used in agriculture- plays a vital role in ensuring resilient, nutritious, and sustainable food systems. As climate change and unsustainable agricultural practices threaten this diversity, CGIAR is at the forefront of efforts to conserve and sustainably manage agrobiodiversity, recognizing its essential contribution to food security, environmental health, and the resilience of agricultural ecosystems worldwide.

Climate change and unsustainable agriculture have caused an alarming decline in Agrobiodiversity, posing a major threat to agri-food systems transformation with shortfalls of food systems worldwide that leave people undernourished, worsen social inequities, and contribute to wider biodiversity loss, water pollution and land degradation.

Significant progress has been made to assess the role of Agrobiodiversity, yet there are conceptual and implementational challenges. This is particularly true when we aim at quantifying potential future changes in Agrobiodiversity, and the related economic and food security impacts. Only then can we identify hotspots requiring urgent interventions.

A total of 140 people participated in the webinar titled "Advancing Agrobiodiversity: Metrics, Innovations, and Perspectives for Sustainable Agri-Food Systems." The event was organized by the CGIAR Initiatives on Agroecology and on Foresight to discuss the importance of integrating ecological and socio-economic factors into system modeling. The webinar also aimed at exploring the opportunities, gaps, and challenges in this area.

The scenario was outlined by Elisabetta Gotor, Principal Scientist & Program Lead for Performance, Innovation & Strategic Analysis for Impact at Alliance Bioversity-CIAT. She emphasized the importance of adopting an integrated agrobiodiversity research approach as a key strategy to halt biodiversity loss and improving general environmental conditions by 2050.

Integrating ecological and socio-economic considerations into system modeling

The Agrobiodiversity Index

The three-session webinar began by sharing tools and methods for integrating ecological and socio-economic considerations into system modeling. The first tool was presented by Sarah K. Jones, Scientist, Multifunctional Landscapes, Alliance Bioversity-CIAT. She discussed the Agrobiodiversity Index which collects data on biodiversity across often-disconnected domains: Nutrition, Agriculture, and Genetic Resources. In a context where all types of biodiversity are declining, this index provides methods and metrics to emphasize the multifunctional role of agrobiodiversity in food systems. It fills a critical gap in biodiversity and food systems monitoring and helps identify leverage points for positive change. It was developed through a collaborative process involving researchers, government, business, and civil society, and won the Food Planet Prize in 2023.

The Fable Calculator

The Calculator of the Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land-Use and Energy (FABLE) Consortium - presented by Charlotte Chemarin, Research Associate, Multifunctional Landscapes, Alliance Bioversity-CIAT, models the uptake of agrobiodiverse practices. It is an open-access Excel accounting tool that focuses on agriculture as the main driver of land-use change and tests the impact of different policies or scenarios for 2020-2050. It is the pillar of a strong community integrated by 24 member countries. Scenarios of adoption of agrobiodiverse farming practices (such as organic farming, no or reduced tillage, embedded natural, and cultivar mixtures) impact food security through yield but also greenhouse gas emissions and sequestration of carbon in soils, biodiversity in cropland, and agricultural labor needs.

The challenge of integrating agrobiodiversity into foresight models

Athanasios Petsakos and Chun Song are both scientists at PISA4Impact at the Alliance Bioversity-CIAT and part of the CGIAR Initiative on Foresight. They acknowledge the insufficient representation of agrobiodiversity in current foresight modeling tools. To answer the question on how agrobiodiversity is affected by different megatrends, they are researching how agrobiodiversity can be integrated into global foresight models that include not only diversity related to crops, but also appropriate metrics for example for water, climate, livestock, or fish.

Together with CGIAR colleagues, they are using the Agrobiodiversity Index to provide a working definition for agrobiodiversity and understand which of the 22 indicators of the Index can be used for modeling purposes. The biggest challenge they face is the spatially explicit nature of most agrobiodiversity indicators, which requires downscaling results from global foresight models to subnational/local levels to obtain more granular and actionable information for decision makers on the ground. An example is the modeling of food consumption patterns (who will eat what and where in the future?), which requires more local information about current and future food consumption patterns. The team is using machine learning and optimization techniques to answer this research question.

Illustration: Spatially explicit projections of dietary diversity changes in Kenya. The upper left shows national level changes. The bottom right shows the spatial heterogeneity of projected dietary changes.

Measuring natural and social systems

Holistic Localized Performance Assessment (HOLPA)

Assessing the performance of agroecology approaches presents challenges for researchers, farmers, and extension staff. The CGIAR Initiative on Agroecology launched a holistic framework to measure farming system performance across scales, from the farm level to the value chain and policy sphere, and at different stages of agroecological transitions.

The HOLPA framework - presented by Andrea Sánchez, Research Associate, Multifunctional Landscapes, Alliance Bioversity-CIAT - consists of three main components: (1) a context module describing the farm and household's socio-ecological setting, (2) a module evaluating the farm's adoption of 13 agroecological principles, and (3) a performance module. The performance module is divided into two parts: (3a) global performance indicators (with 17 global Key Performance Indicators) tracking agricultural, economic, environmental, and social outcomes across all food systems, and (3b) a Local Indicator Selection Process (LISP), a key innovation, which allows for the incorporation of locally relevant indicators. For instance, a cacao farmer in Peru's jungle will assess different conditions than an olive farmer in Tunisia or a rice-fish farmer in Laos. LISP engages local farmers in identifying meaningful indicators, ensuring the framework is sensitive to their unique contexts.

To date, HOLPA has been trialed on 1800 farms. The team is currently undertaking the cross-country analysis with results expected by the end of 2024 and plans a landscape level survey for 2025.

ACT: A framework for understanding agency and behavior change in agri-food systems transformation

The ACT framework - presented by Sarah Freed, Scientist, Multifunctional Landscapes, Alliance Bioversity-CIAT - is a conceptual model of agency and behavior change in agri-food system transformations. It integrates insights from multiple disciplines (social and behavior change science, gender and youth studies, agricultural innovation systems, and social-ecological systems thinking), broadening the scope of change levers applied in agricultural research and development.

The ACT framework can support transformative change in agri-food systems by moving beyond the common linear models of adoption/change. The complexity-aware and actor-centered design are unique features of this framework. It can support more effective approaches to transformative agri-food system change by 1) attending to the diversity of actors and their opportunities for change and 2) systematically identifying, prioritizing, and leveraging the range of factors that influence actors' agency and behaviors.

Illustration: Representation of the conceptual framework for agency and behavior change in agri-food systems transformation (ACT Framework) - Individual level.

B-ACT: Assessing the "agroecologiness" of business enterprises

The Agroecology Initiative is using the Business Agroecology Criteria Tool (B-ACT) - developed by Biovision and presented by Rosina Wanyama and Christine Chege, Scientists, Food Environment & Consumer Behavior, Alliance Bioversity-CIAT. The tool allows a holistic enterprise assessment that helps to identify how "agroecologically aligned" an enterprise is and its potential for systemically transforming food systems. The B-ACT evaluation shows the alignment of the enterprise with the 13 agroecology principles (AEPs), the potential for improvement of the enterprise to address additional AEPs, and the scores of assessments based on the AEPs.

Which tool to use to measure agroecological transitions?

Matthias Geck is an agroecological systems scientist at CIFOR-ICRAF, and coordinator of the Transformative Partnership Platform on Agroecology(TPP). In his discussion of comprehensive metrics that include environmental and social benefits, he presents a metrics meta-framework developed in the Metrics for Agroecological TRANSITIONS project based on a large amount of experience and literature related to the use of measurement tools and that a team is currently using with diverse stakeholders. Any group in need of holistic system assessment data has the challenge of selecting from available frameworks, adapting them to their needs, or innovating when there is nothing that meets those needs. This is the niche that the meta-framework occupies through a systematic stepwise approach for developing holistic agrifood system assessments, as well as principles to guide decision-making at each step of the design process. He further presented an interactive and user-friendly online database, based on a comprehensive review of existing metrics.

Geck welcomed the collaboration with the FAO on implementing the Tool for Agroecology Performance Evaluation (TAPE). In a collaborative TPP project, TAPE was combined with the Land Degradation Surveillance Framework, which assesses soil and land health. The application in four sub-Saharan countries reveals an increase in agrobiodiversity, but also in production, soil health or food security when agroecology is applied holistically.

Kenya - a case study

A case study of work done in the CGIAR Initiative on Agroecology in Kenya was presented by Lisa Elena Fuchs, Scientist, Multifunctional Landscapes, Alliance Bioversity-CIAT. In Kenya, the team is co-designing and using metrics with food system actors at various levels. The presentation focused on participatory on-farm innovation co-design, a valuable experience where farmers become researchers, capable of recording their experiences and generating context-specific data to make better-informed decisions at a local level.

The broader innovation co-design cycle in the Kenyan agroecological living landscapes (ALLs) included several instances in which metrics were co-designed, for example in the definition of selection criteria for field trials, productivity indicators such as plant growth and health, soil health and pest pressure. The iterative selection process is critical to identify what matters to partners and generate contextually relevant data that can meaningfully inform their decision-making. Learn more about how to make this happen.

Importance of evidence for decision making

The webinar closure included the participation of Rosinah Mbenya, Country Coordinator of the Participatory Ecological Land Use Management (PELUM) Association, who shared their experience in Kenya with the development of the National Agroecology Strategy for Food Systems Transformation (NAES-FST). Keith Wiebe, Senior Research Fellow, Foresight and Policy Modeling, IFPRI and lead of the CGIAR Foresight Initiative encouraged researchers to support policymakers with high quality data and analysis to support the inclusion of agrobiodiversity criteria in decision-making.

Agrobiodiversity is essential for securing a healthy planet and nourishing future generations. As the threats to biodiversity intensify, continued research, collaboration, and action are crucial to reversing its decline. CGIAR is committed to leading these efforts, and its success depends on the collective contributions of researchers, policymakers, farmers, and communities.

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