Evidence increasingly shows that a key driver of resilience in food systems lies in how we value and support local knowledge, on-farm experimentation, and grassroots innovation. The HLPE report on Building resilient food systems (2025) stresses that recognizing and promoting grassroots innovations contributes to equitable transformative resilience. Similarly, a recent FAO report titled Transforming food and agriculture through a systems approach (2025) underlines that grounded voices and lived experiences must be treated as an integral part of the knowledge system if we are to identify equitable solutions to food system challenges.
The evidence is clear. Agroecological grassroots innovations decentralize power in society and in food systems. Across the world, communities are reclaiming the ability—rooted in their culture—to feed themselves and create locally adapted technical solutions, strengthening their autonomy and sovereignty. Grassroots innovations are increasingly documented for their capacity to adequately address local problems, including by the Grassroots Innovations Assembly for Agroecology. Local innovations – nourishing local food systems and vice versa – must be recognized by public policies and institutions, and promoted and funded for their multiple benefits at multiple scales. Funding scarcity is no longer a robust argument to justify the lack of public support (Pimbert, 2025).
The alarming crises of our times are closely linked to the concentration of power, data, research, agricultural inputs, finance and technologies. Resilience and sustainability of territories depend on transforming food systems so that communities, with their culture, seeds, knowledge and capacity to innovate return to the center. In short: agroecology. While many academics, governments, and institutions share this analysis, the dominant agricultural innovation narrative remains tied to a rush toward corporate-driven technologies, presented as the only serious solutions to today’s urgent challenges.
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Schola Campesina and the Grassroots Innovations Assembly for Agroecology is hosting an informal conversation on this theme with key actors from FAO, academia and civil society organisations (the 17th of October 2025, in Rome, Italy) to critically explore and strategize on how to place grassroots innovations at the center of public policies, challenging dominant innovation narratives and drawing on recent reports that identify grassroots innovations as a key element for food system sustainability and resilience. It will also be an opportunity to highlight ongoing efforts to strengthen grassroots innovations across the globe.
Photo credit: Zher-Ana Astana
