To Progress On Food and Hunger, Funders Need to Redefine “Evidence” and Decolonize Research

“Evidence” isn’t the first word that comes to mind when you think about food systems. But the question of evidence comes up in most conversations about food systems transformation. On the one hand, people ask questions like: Do we have enough evidence? What does the evidence show? Where is the science to support that decision? On the other hand: There is ample evidence. But evidence for whom? Evidence for what? When it comes to food systems transformation—and other interconnected issues like climate, biodiversity and health—the importance of evidence cannot be underestimated.

Typically, food and agriculture outcomes are narrowly defined by data like crop yield and productivity. Yet the bigger picture of food systems is inherently more complex and requires a different way of measuring success or understanding impact. After all, food systems sit at the nexus of multiple, overlapping systems: ecological, financial, human and social. Consider, for instance, the role of food in cultural traditions, in gender roles and livelihoods, or, indeed, in issues of conflict and migration. These interconnections need to be considered when making decisions about the future of food.

So why does this matter to funders?

Funders rely on evidence, research and data to inform grantmaking. At the same time, philanthropic foundations, trust, and charities are also a critical source of funding for research that goes on to inform global priorities and policy directions.

To truly understand the dynamism of food systems and catalyze meaningful change, diverse forms of evidence, knowledge and expertise, including lived experience and traditional knowledge, as well as case studies, scientific analyses and peer-reviewed literature, all need to be considered equally in efforts to transform food systems. By centering decisions on easily quantifiable data and narrowly focused metrics or limited indicators, funders are missing the big picture.

For our latest report, the Global Alliance for the Future of Food convened 17 teams involving 70-plus experts from around the world who wanted to better understand what this narrow view of what counts as valid evidence means for food systems transformation. Together, they identified barriers to and pathways toward a transformative research and action agenda.

The research shows that by privileging quantitative evidence and targets to inform decision-making, an abundance of qualitative evidence from diverse sources and places goes unconsidered, unheard, and ultimately jeopardizes our efforts to advance effective, interconnected action for a better world. Solely relying on dominant Western scientific methods paints an incomplete or biased picture about the practice and potential of transformative food and farming solutions.

The good news is that some funders are modeling new, innovative research approaches that embrace comprehensive frameworks for evidence and data. For example, the work of the McKnight Foundation’s Collaborative Crop Research Program (CCRP) Farmer Research Network is grounded in a definition of knowledge that includes scientific knowledge—models, methods and insights from different disciplines, drawing upon qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods—as well as Indigenous or traditional/local knowledge, often involving experiential, tacit, individual and collective ways of understanding food systems.

In Andhra Pradesh, India, the Community-Managed Natural Farming initiative, which works with 6 million farmers who apply regenerative farming techniques, showed an average of 70% fewer GHG emissions than conventional farms, with yields that are similar or even higher. Their research provides different evidence for different audiences—farmers, local policymakers and national or global decision-makers. The Azim Premji Foundation was catalytic in establishing and scaling up this program.

Both these approaches show how research can account for interconnections, externalities and overlaps between issues. What this tells us is that to effectively enable sustainable, equitable and resilient food systems for all, funders need to support systems-based research that reflects diverse worldviews and includes qualitative information, storytelling, and innovative participatory methodologies from the get-go.

Building capacity for transdisciplinary and participatory research, funding training and maintenance of local repositories of knowledge, as well as supporting knowledge and evidence sharing and communication, such as peer-to-peer research and networking, also all require ongoing, long-term support. Unlocking the structural barriers that keep industrial food systems in place requires changing our research, education and innovation systems.

The other nettle we as a community of philanthropies must grasp is to understand whether the current model, in which funders tend to drive research agendas, is in fact reinforcing existing power structures.

Evidence bias hides in plain sight in the dominant tendency of many funders, researchers and policymakers toward overreliance on empirical data, Western science and English-language information in decision-making. All too often, what’s familiar gets funded, and what’s familiar is based on Western knowledge systems at the expense of research that upholds knowledge systems rooted in lived experience, traditional knowledge and storytelling. Legacies of establishment thinking and colonial mindsets have entrenched hierarchies of knowledge.

What is needed is an agenda for research and action that is transdisciplinary, with a focus on political justice and on challenging entrenched power. Increasingly, funders are supporting collaborative research and action that advances political justice–around things like food sovereignty, gender equity, and rights to land and seeds. But we must go further. Funders can and must work with farmer and food producer organizations to strengthen knowledge and evidence mobilization strategies that build these movements from within.

Funders can lean on their convening power to bring together diverse actors, including funders supporting agricultural research, to understand tensions related to agroecological transitions and to continue co-creating knowledge. Working with other funders and donors, bilateral and multilateral donors in particular can boost investments in public research that focuses on agroecology, regenerative approaches and Indigenous foodways, and builds capacity for participatory, multidisciplinary, multi-actor research and action, while supporting co-innovation with farmers and policymakers.

All around the world, millions of people are relying on agroecology, regenerative approaches and Indigenous foodways not just to ensure food security, health, and uphold culture, custom and tradition, but also to build climate and ecological resilience, foster biodiversity and sustain ecosystems. This stands in contrast to the industrial food system, which measures progress almost entirely by productivity and profit, with cascading negative externalities. To a large extent, this model, defined by chemical inputs, deregulated supply chains and mistreatment of workers, has been allowed to continue unabated because we haven’t broadened our understanding of the impacts of industrial agriculture by considering more diverse evidence.

At the same time, while new evidence, narratives and epistemological approaches are critical, the growing global efforts to advance agroecology, regenerative approaches and Indigenous foodways will require political change in this moment of crisis. This involves countering dominant narratives and strengthening new and emergent narratives that uplift the importance of interconnection, resilience, multifunctionality, health and well-being, and hope.

It involves more creative evidence mobilization that takes into account who needs what information when, and that often, evidence sharing needs to be accompanied by compelling narratives and relationship-building.

Agroecology, regenerative approaches and Indigenous foodways represent opportunities to repair our relationship with nature and build climate resilience while equitably nourishing our communities.

This is a publication for funders who are supporting transformational change. We need to decolonize our approach to research, data and evidence, and open up food, agriculture and climate research to a wider lens of understanding.

Lauren Baker is Senior Director of Programs at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food.

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