Who are we
We are a Community of Practice that is passionate about Agro Ecology for whom a hub is emerging to catalyze transformational change. Our membership draws from a wide range of organizations across Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
What’s Agroecology?
According to the UN High Level Panel of Experts on World Food Security (2019), the term Agroecology (AE) refers to three distinct but related elements:
A suite of farming practices that harness natural processes, to create beneficial biological interactions and synergies among farm components.
An integrative science: Integrative study of the ecology of sustainable food systems. This is a transdisciplinary field that includes all dimensions of food systems – ecological, sociocultural, technological, economic and political, from production to consumption.
A social movement that rejects the industrial, globalized food system model in favor of transforming to locally relevant food systems that strengthen the economic viability of rural areas, with short marketing chains, fair and safe food production, respect for local knowledge, identity, culture and indigenous rights to seeds and breeds
What do the terms AE Hub, Hub CoP and Anchor Hub mean?
The AE Hub began as a project with a goal of cultivating a community of practice (CoP) for those with a passion for agroecology for smallholder agriculture development. Our CoP disproportionately targets farmers and development agents because of the way the project was initially conceptualized, namely as a CoP that undertook joint activities to identify specific agro-ecological practices that are effective vs ineffective and relevant vs irrelevant in various social and ecological contexts. The project is funded by the McKnight Foundation’s Collaborative Crop Research Program (CCRP)
The AE Hub project objectives:
a. Support Hub CoP members and their farmers to undertake joint research activities to distinguish AE practices that are effective and acceptable to farmers in their own context.
b. Facilitate shared learning. The Hub CoP members engage in knowledge and experience sharing around useful vs less effective agroecological (AE) practices.
c. Bring together science, movement and practice actors to engage in joint activities and shared learning that enhances mutual understanding and joint action. The focus on joint activities are what make the Hub fundamentally different from a network.
The AE Hub project is based at Manor House Agricultural Centre, which hosts Hub-related training and research activities as a core part of its mission. To avoid confusion as to whether the term AE Hub refers to the members or a place, people agreed to refer to Manor House as the Anchor Hub and the people that make up the community as the Hub CoP.
Roles of the Anchor Hub
- Anchor a practice-focused CoP emphasizing on agroecology and Farmer Research Network Approaches.
- Socialize key concepts and practices at our CoP workshops and convenings
- Facilitate sharing experience and knowledge about useful AE and FRN practices.
- Support CoP members to make evidence-based decisions about effectiveness of AE practices in their own context.
- Develop and support creative ways to share information and communicate CoP findings about effective and ineffective practices.
Definitions of terms
A CoP is a group of people who have a shared passion for something and come together for the purpose of learning on how to do it better by learning from one another.
Questions and comments: Leave in the comment box on the relevant web page or write to us at anchorhub@gmail.com
