Different knowledge paradigms and levels of intervention. It helped us to better understand what needed to happen:
indeed, it was not so much the technical knowledge that was lacking to start ‘breaking the glasshouse’, but rather the
transformational process guided by this technical knowledge.
A brainstorming meeting in Thika (Kenya 2012) resulted in the rough contours of a knowledge programme to co-create and
broker knowledge to catalyse a transformation towards biodiverse, resilient and just food systems. In the three years that
followed we co-created the Agricultural Biodiversity Community (ABC) which became the heart of the programme, and was
catalysed by its annual meetings.
Each in their own way, the community members are all frontrunners on agricultural biodiversity. They are stepping into the
future with ideas built on their vast knowledge of local realities of millions of smallholder farmers. Enabling people to move
forward is for us the largest achievement of this programme.
We now know much more about how change happens. We know that nurturing a process of transformation is a skill in itself
that merits reflection. This document contributes to such reflection. It is not meant to be an evaluation. Rather, the aim is
twofold: (1) to learn from the experiences of programme partners; and (2) to make these insights available to others with
an interest in both knowledge for social change and knowledge development around agrobiodiversity.
