Partnerships

Community partnerships are a cornerstone of our research process.

Reflections from the PI: Throughout my career, I have partnered with community organizations, both locally and internationally, to conduct field research and participate in knowledge co-production and exchange. My recent work in the Bright Spots of Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems project sought to identify existing solutions for sustainable agri-food systems across Mexico and India. In the first step of this process, we asked actors from across these food systems what “sustainability” means to them. We accomplished this through research collaborations with local scientists and workshops bringing together diverse actors to discuss their visions of a sustainable future. We produced summaries of our workshops, including artwork from local artists, which are freely available on our website here.

During my PhD, I spearheaded a participatory research and rural extension project called “Next generation cover crops” that ran from 2018-2023 and was awarded $85,000 by the Conservation, Food and Health Foundation. This grant directly benefited my research partner, the Brazilian nonprofit CEPAGRO, employed three female Brazilian agronomists, and provided technical support for cover crop management and seed production to farmers in the Rede Ecovida network and local indigenous communities.

Similarly, for my undergraduate thesis fieldwork in 2014 I partnered with the sustainable development non-profit EcoLogic Development Fund, whose mission is to empower local communities to conserve tropical rainforests in Central America. This research partnership led to my subsequent employment at EcoLogic, where I redesigned the agroforestry program through a participatory process involving interviews and workshops with field technicians from Guatemala, Mexico, and Honduras to ensure EcoLogic’s approach was in line with community conservation priorities.

Complementing our scientific publications, my community partners and I published educational materials for Brazilian farmers.

See several of our publications below: