Value created for small-scale farmers in an agroecology movement in the Eastern cape region of South Africa: an application of the value creation framework

ABSTRACT

The paper reports on an evaluative study of an agroecology movement that has been running in South Africa for over 20 years. The study applied a Value Creation Framework to gather value creation stories from key movement members, farmers, trainers, and the involved organizations. Data was generated through storytelling interviews, document analysis and participant observations. The findings show that the functions of the movement are enabled by support from tertiary institutions, government departments, NGOs, international networks and the private sector. In the initial stages, the movement’s growth as measured by the uptake of agroecology faced resistance because the associated labor intensity, especially in the early stages and farmers considered it to be very slow compared to conventional methods. However, the movement’s mobilization through open dialogs, co-creation and farmer-centered learning approaches has seen a gradual and wide adoption of agroecology practices by over 2700 new and existing farmers in the Eastern Cape alone, thereby widening the learning and seed-sharing network. In the communities it has reached, the movement has registered transformational gains in biodiversity preservation, social cohesion, market power, gender equality and food security.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate action
• zero hunger
• gender equality
• value creation framework
• learning networks

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS:

• SDG 2: Zero hunger
• SDG 5: Gender equality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics approval statement

The research study was approved by Rhodes University’s Education Faculty Research Ethics Committee under the approval reference number: 2021–52846406

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Change Communication and Education [RPCS100033].