Citizen science and farmer-led innovation at the frontiers of farming and biodiversity

TY - CONF

T1 - Citizen science and farmer-led innovation at the frontiers of farming and biodiversity

AU - Hager, Gerid

AU - Kragh, Gitte

AU - Poulsen, Michael Køie

AU - Danielsen, Finn

AU - Begg, Graham

PY - 2022/10

Y1 - 2022/10

N2 - Agriculture is a key frontier for ensuring planetary health and conserving and promoting biodiversity. One way to strengthen biodiversity and sustainability in the countryside is through 'top-down' implementation of, for example, land reforms or increased research on green conversion. Another way is by 'bottom-up' promotion of farmer-led innovation and community engagement. The EU project “FRAMEwork”, led by The James Hutton Institute in Scotland, is helping farmer groups, so-called ‘farmer clusters’, with a shared interest in monitoring biodiversity on their farms in partnership with researchers and local communities as well as implementing more biodiversity-friendly farming at a landscape scale. In eleven active farmer clusters from Spain to Estonia, the project is combining two concepts, stemming from different practice domains: Farmer Clusters and Citizen Observatories. A farmer cluster, a popular concept first started by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust in the UK, is a community of farmers, located in the same region, who work together to share knowledge and support and motivate one another to conserve and enhance the biodiversity and ecological health of their farming landscapes. Citizen Observatories, on the other hand, are considered as a particular form of citizen science and collective action with the aim of collecting evidence, creating knowledge, and applying the evidence and knowledge for advocacy and place-based decision-making to reach environmental and societal impact. The combination of the two concepts aims to maximise the strengths of both and create a strong, evidence-based, locally embedded community approach to biodiversity protection and enhancement by enabling the integration of structured monitoring with adaptive land management practices. In this poster, we will present a summary of the approach including different pathways to link farmer-led innovation via farmer clusters at a landscape scale with the Citizen Observatory concept as well as some intermediary results of the project ("Farmer Clusters for Realising Agrobiodiversity Management across Ecosystems"; €8M; 2020-2025; link: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/862731).

AB - Agriculture is a key frontier for ensuring planetary health and conserving and promoting biodiversity. One way to strengthen biodiversity and sustainability in the countryside is through 'top-down' implementation of, for example, land reforms or increased research on green conversion. Another way is by 'bottom-up' promotion of farmer-led innovation and community engagement. The EU project “FRAMEwork”, led by The James Hutton Institute in Scotland, is helping farmer groups, so-called ‘farmer clusters’, with a shared interest in monitoring biodiversity on their farms in partnership with researchers and local communities as well as implementing more biodiversity-friendly farming at a landscape scale. In eleven active farmer clusters from Spain to Estonia, the project is combining two concepts, stemming from different practice domains: Farmer Clusters and Citizen Observatories. A farmer cluster, a popular concept first started by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust in the UK, is a community of farmers, located in the same region, who work together to share knowledge and support and motivate one another to conserve and enhance the biodiversity and ecological health of their farming landscapes. Citizen Observatories, on the other hand, are considered as a particular form of citizen science and collective action with the aim of collecting evidence, creating knowledge, and applying the evidence and knowledge for advocacy and place-based decision-making to reach environmental and societal impact. The combination of the two concepts aims to maximise the strengths of both and create a strong, evidence-based, locally embedded community approach to biodiversity protection and enhancement by enabling the integration of structured monitoring with adaptive land management practices. In this poster, we will present a summary of the approach including different pathways to link farmer-led innovation via farmer clusters at a landscape scale with the Citizen Observatory concept as well as some intermediary results of the project ("Farmer Clusters for Realising Agrobiodiversity Management across Ecosystems"; €8M; 2020-2025; link: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/862731).

KW - Citizen science

KW - Agriculture

KW - Biodiversity

M3 - Poster

T2 - ECSA Conference 2022: Citizen Science for Planetary Health

Y2 - 5 October 2022 through 8 October 2022

ER -