Elements for Devising a Methodology to Assess the Potential for Scaling up Agroecological Initiatives

Given the positive impacts of agroecology on crop yields, conservation of natural resources and biodiversity, food sovereignty, climate adaptation and livelihoods of rural people, scaling up thousands of isolated successful agroecological experiences in the territories, constitutes an urgent mechanism to transform agrifood systems. We explore two pathways: Farmers lighthouses and the Campesino a Campesino methodology (CaC) as strategies to expand successful agroecological initiatives to reach a greater number of farmers and cover a broader geographic area. After identifying the diversity of opportunities and barriers to the scaling up of agroecology it is possible for stakeholders to determine the actions needed to scale up agroecology. A scalability checklist is proposed as an aid in prioritizing alternatives to scale up and to identifying some of the actions that can be taken to facilitate the scaling up process. The amplification dynamics in a particular region can be assessed utilizing ten amplification indicators which include social organization, participation in networks, community leadership, and degrees of dependency on policies or markets among others, as well as degree of adoption of on-farm agroecological practices, all of which capture farmer lighthouses’ potential to amplify territorial upscaling.