In entering a new phase in the development of humanity, we are moving away from the notion that “knowledge is maintained or held by the very few;” so how can “we see everyone as a protagonist in the process of generating new knowledge?” asked Baha’i International Community (BIC) Representative Rachel Bayani. Such ideas were part of the BIC’s Brussels Office roundtable discussion which explored the role of local knowledge generation in sustainable food systems, drawing together participants working across both Africa and Europe.  

One aspect of the discussion highlighted the need for farmers, community members and local governments to systematically learn together about improving food production. Roundtable participant Lyndah Mwangi, the Organizational Learning Lead at the Kimanya Ngeyo Foundation in Uganda, described their educational process, which was designed to facilitate joint-learning in a community with the goal of enhancing agriculture production. She shared that farmers and the community “think of both knowledge that exists within modern science, but also knowledge that has existed and accumulated from the experience of farmers, which is sometimes referred to as traditional knowledge.”

By applying these two sources of knowledge to the cultivation of an actual plot of land, Ms. Mwangi added, with ongoing research, a growing number of people are “able to engage in a process of generating new knowledge”. During her remarks on how experiences and insights gained at the level of small farming communities can inform policy decisions, Ms. Mwangi said that the Kimanya Ngeyo Foundation deliberately involves the local government in many of the conversations they have with farmers. This contrasts with the “passive adoption of prepackaged solutions to local challenges”, which has typically dominated mainstream development approaches. 

Dr. Dhanya Vijayan, a researcher focusing on documenting Indigenous knowledge at the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape in Germany, added that knowledge sharing “should not be top to bottom”, instead it should be a dynamic process between the grassroots and institutions. She emphasized that it is also necessary to rethink our current food systems, as currently they “contribute to large-scale environmental degradation.” Dr. Vijayan added that since ecosystems are changing and evolving, Indigenous knowledge and practices too must reflect these changes and that it is important to value different knowledge systems equally. 

On exploring the theme of education, as well as the role of local languages in documentation, Mohamed Samu, an entomologist from the Erasmus Mundus Plant Health Master program, highlighted that in Sierra Leone when a generation of students begin “schooling in a different language, most of the local knowledge that our people generated before, will go missing.” And, Dr. Phillipa Ryan, an interdisciplinary researcher at Kew Gardens in the United Kingdom, added that documenting different species of crops in local languages can help with “conserving that information locally to pass through generations.”