What is the role of traditional and local knowledge in ecoagriculture?
Many indigenous peoples and rural communities have developed, maintained, and adapted different types of ecoagriculture systems for centuries. Local farmers, pastoralists, fishers, forest users, and other community members are the foundation of rural land stewardship. Their knowledge, traditions, land use practices, and resource-management institutions are essential to the development of viable ecoagriculture systems for their landscapes. The mainstreaming of ecoagriculture approaches will be crucially dependent upon mobilizing local communities to become leaders in ecoagriculture, as teachers and as advocates for political and institutional change. Communities facing similar challenges can share questions, ideas, and solutions with each other. Local communities also need effective processes for sharing their expertise with national policymakers and the international community and thus play a more central role in settingecoagriculture objectives in policy and program development.
