Tropentag, September 10 - 12, 2025, Bonn "Reconciling land system changes with planetary health"

Uncovering decolonial pedagogies for learning agroecological transitions: Comparative analysis of South America cases

¹Leibniz Centre for Agric. Landscape Res. (ZALF), Sustainable Land Use in Developing Countries, Germany
²Unversity of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
³Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany
⁴Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
⁵University of Vila Velha, Brazil
⁶International Rice Research Institute, Sustainable Impact, Philippines
⁷Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil
⁸Universidad Nacional de Colombia, sede Bogotá, Colombia
⁹WWF · Mediterranean Marine Initiative, Italy
¹⁰ETH Zurich, Agreocological Transitions, Switzerland
¹¹The Alliance of Bioversity International & CIAT, Italy

Abstract

Agroecological transitions represent strategic pathways for transforming agricultural systems to meet urgent global sustainability goals. These transitions encompass fundamental changes in social-ecological relationships, knowledge systems, and power dynamics within food systems. However, the mechanisms facilitating such transitions remain insufficiently understood, particularly regarding the diversity and efficacy of pedagogical models employed in existing agroecological initiatives.
Within Latin American contexts, agroecological pedagogies, fundamentally grounded in Freirean critical pedagogy (Freire, 2000), have emerged as critiques of traditional agricultural education methodologies as well as of linear and hierarchical knowledge transfer models. These kinds of decolonial pedagogies constitute theoretical and practical frameworks that interrogate and deconstruct colonial mechanisms inherent in contemporary knowledge production and educational practices (Mignolo, 2011). Their approaches fundamentally challenge established epistemological hierarchies while seeking to legitimize knowledge systems historically marginalised by colonial and neocolonial educational paradigms (Quijano, 2000; Maldonado-Torres, 2007). By explicitly creating epistemological spaces for marginalised knowledge systems, experiences, and ways of being, these pedagogies foster critical consciousness (Freire, 1970) and advance social-ecological justice (Zavala, 2013; Tuck & Yang, 2012, Pope et al., 2024).
Using a decolonial lens, this study explores the pedagogical models used in community-led agroecological initiatives in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and workshops (n 140), alongside participant observations, we applied a qualitative archetypes analysis to examine three community-led agroecology initiatives. We identified three distinct but interconnected contextual narratives of the decolonial pedagogies: a. Living Pedagogies; b. Resistance Pedagogies; and c. Hybrid Pedagogies. Despite these different contextual narratives, they share clear patterns, which allowed us to identify one major archetype - the South pedagogies archetype. The decolonial pedagogies found can be fundamental to accelerate agroecological transitions. Traditional communities in Colombia and Peru have preserved and evolved their agroecology knowledge systems through generations of collective learning, offering profound insights into sustainable food production that transcend the limitations of Western scientific methodologies. In parallel, decolonial pedagogies in the Brazilian case were essential to promote agroecological transition that started during the 2000s. These findings inform agroecological transition development based on learning processes that value multiple ways of being.

Keywords: Co-creation of knowledge, community-led agriculture initiatives, decolonial practices, endogenous social learning

Contact Address: Michelle Chevelev-Bonatti, Leibniz Centre for Agric. Landscape Res. (ZALF), Sustainable Land Use in Developing Countries, Müncheberg, Germany, e-mail: michelle.bonattizalf.de