FORI results Brazil & Uruguay
FORI | Project results | Brazil and Uruguay
Farmers leading the research on agroecological transition
Every participating farmer diversified their agroecological practices. Through the Innova Ecovida project, farmer organisations in southern Brazil and Uruguay ran 30 Reference Units and 15 farm experiments on their own land, testing bio-inputs, no-tillage vegetable production, peasant seed and seedling systems and horticultural co-innovation, then turned what they learned into published good-practice guides and ten online courses.
Why this project
Family farming under climate and market pressure
Family horticulture and fruit growing feed the cities of southern Brazil and Uruguay. Both sectors are squeezed from several directions at once: intensifying climate extremes, dependence on bought-in seed, seedlings and chemical inputs, and, across much of Latin America, public policy for family farming that has been weakened rather than built up.
The Innova Ecovida project (ConversAgroecol) set out to make agroecological transition concrete, viable and measurable, not by importing a technical package, but through action research designed and hosted by the farmer organisations themselves.
It is the Latin American component of FORI, coordinated by AgriCord and funded by the European Union. Implementation was led by CRESOL Agri-agency with two co-implementers: CNFR, Uruguay's national federation of rural development societies, and the Lutheran Diaconia Foundation (FLD) through its CAPA programme, representing the Ecovida Agroecology Network in Brazil.
What the farmers did
A farmer-led research cycle
Farmers defined the research problems first. Brazil's nuclei identified bio-inputs, no-tillage vegetable production and peasant seed and seedling systems as their priorities. Uruguay's horticultural families and technicians named soil, water, crop health and farm management. From there the project followed three stages, all of them designed, hosted and validated by the farmer organisations.
Diagnosis and structuring
In Brazil, the 21 nuclei responsible for the Reference Units were identified and 30 research projects written, each with its own action plan. In Uruguay, 7 horticultural families were selected, with active leadership by women or young people as a condition of entry, and participatory research resumed with 8 fruit-growing families.
A baseline was set for the Uruguayan farms in May 2023, using indicators chosen with FAGRO/UDELAR.
On-farm experimentation
The 30 Reference Units worked through at least 60 research problems, testing home-made substrates, small-scale microorganism production, medicinal plant preparations, seed cleaning and pelleting equipment, cover crops and no-tillage mechanisation.
In Uruguay, seven farms ran a full co-innovation cycle of diagnosis, farm redesign and monitoring, while eight fruit farms continued five years of participatory evaluation of deciduous fruit varieties with INIA Las Brujas.
Knowledge consolidation
Findings and farmer know-how were systematised into three publications, four Reference Unit report booklets, three thematic leaflets, ten online courses and fifteen videos, so results can travel beyond the pilot farms.
The scope of the systematisation was agreed jointly by CRESOL, CNFR and FLD-CAPA in March 2025 and worked through with farmers, technicians and partners from June 2025.
Brazil used Campesino a Campesino, farmer to farmer: Reference Units act as living laboratories inside the Ecovida network's own nuclei and thematic working groups, and knowledge radiates outward through peer contact. Uruguay used co-innovation: each family paired with a field technician, with academic support from FAGRO/UDELAR and a horizontal relationship between the three.
Uruguayan families kept their own field records, and the indicator set was measured against the May 2023 baseline. The project is candid that this was the weakest link: record keeping and farm-level systematisation still need reinforcing, especially among young people.
Results at a glance
Before and after, in the same places
Bars compare the start and end of the period within each indicator. They are not scaled against one another, because the units differ.
The report links these gains to better soils, lower losses, a wider range of crops with commercial outlets and a stronger household position for the families involved. In Uruguay, 100% of beneficiary horticultural families successfully adopted good practices in soil, water and crop health management, and 100% of fruit-growing families evaluated new genetic material and took up agroecological management. In Brazil, 90 people led the work in the Reference Units: 42 women, 48 men and 14 young people.
Brazil
Four research themes, thirty living laboratories
The 30 Reference Units were split 10 on no-tillage vegetable production, 10 on bio-inputs and 10 on seeds and seedlings together. Each one is a working family farm, not a trial station. What follows is what farmers built, and what they replaced.
Peasant production of bio-inputs
The theme families rated most transformative, because it replaces something they would otherwise have to buy. Small-scale prototypes brought the cost of entry low enough for groups of families to produce together.
- A small-scale microorganism production prototype, cheap enough to be owned by a group
- Capture of locally adapted efficient microorganisms, including a new method using forest soil and leaf litter collected in a container
- Mineralisers: ash water, acetic bone extract, castor leaf
- A homeopathic complex for leaf-cutter ant control, developed through six workshops with 44 people
- Hierba baleeira hydrolate against fungal disease
- An agricultural homeopathy laboratory in the Vale do Rio Pardo nucleus, and biofertiliser practice built into teaching at the EFASUL agricultural school in Canguçu
No-tillage vegetable production, SPDH
Developed originally by Epagri, SPDH plants vegetables straight into the green biomass of a cover crop, disturbing the soil only along the planting line. It works as a bridge out of conventional agriculture, and as SPDH+ inside agroforestry systems. Innovations here were about mechanisation: cutting drudgery and raising output.
- A knife-roller with furrower for small tractors, built in the Vale do Rio do Peixe nucleus, which mulches the cover crop and prepares the planting bed in one pass
- A micro-tractor with coupled implements for rolling, furrowing and fertilising
- A ratchet key for direct seeding, and low-cost wooden rollers made from tied logs
- Papuã (Brachiaria plantaginea) as a cover crop, with cowpea and azuki bean as local substitutes where green manure seed is unavailable
Agroecological vegetable seed
Seed is the foundation of peasant autonomy, and under Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture Ordinances 52/2021 and 404/2022, seed used in organic systems must come from agroecological production from 2029. The project worked with seed guardians, some of whom hold extraordinary collections: one couple maintains around 1,240 varieties of beans and fava beans and 400 vegetable varieties, and one family has produced Aurélia carrot seed for 28 years.
- Creation of the Ecovida Seed Network, anchored on the Casa das Sementes in Mandirituba
- A vertical blower built for seed cleaning, plus upgraded cleaning, grading and storage
- Organic seed pelleting, developed and tested
- A cooperation agreement with Embrapa, signed in 2025
Agroecological vegetable seedlings
Almost no commercial nursery produces organic seedlings, which leaves market gardeners dependent on plants that are expensive, untraceable and often the wrong age. The Reference Units built the technical basis for family-run and collective nurseries.
- Enriched home-made substrates from compost, ruminant manure, coconut fibre, carbonised rice husk, ground charcoal and rock dust, developed in the Peroba Rosa, Planalto Serrano and Maria Rosa da Anunciação nuclei
- Nursery design guidance on siting, ceiling height, anti-aphid screening and windbreaks
- Two national encounters of Ecovida nursery growers, 63 then 42 participants
In the Oeste Catarinense nucleus, the Pitanga Rosa women's collective took charge of implementing the seedling Reference Unit. Their collective, solidarity-based way of working produced results that became a reference for other nuclei: one project site teaching the others.
Uruguay
Co-innovation on the farm, and fruit varieties tested in the field
Seven family horticultural farms went through a full co-innovation cycle in Salto, Canelones and Soriano: diagnosis, farm redesign, then monitoring against indicators agreed with FAGRO/UDELAR and a May 2023 baseline. Six cycles of local workshops, 18 workshops in all, let producers, technicians and institutions follow the process in real time while training in the concepts and methods behind it.
In parallel, eight fruit farms continued five years of participatory evaluation of deciduous fruit genetic resources with INIA Las Brujas. Varieties were selected for resistance to the main pests and diseases, lower chilling-hour requirements, later flowering to escape spring frosts, and tolerance of waterlogging like the autumn and winter of 2024. Outstanding varieties were propagated in an agroecological nursery and passed to three new families in 2025.
The good practices were deliberately published as a toolbox rather than a recipe book: soil, water, crop protection and farm management practices that each family and technician selects from according to their own farm.
100% of the participating horticultural families adopted good practices across soil, water, crop health and farm records, and 100% of the fruit-growing families evaluated new genetic material and took up agroecological management.
One participating farm was taken into the national Predios Faro lighthouse-farm experience of DGDR/MGAP and INIA, and MGAP approved Territorial Agroecological Nuclei in all three project territories.
The report is careful not to overclaim. Good horticultural practices are not a manual of recipes, and the right level of uptake differs farm by farm. Commercial constraints and product differentiation for farms in transition were not addressed explicitly enough, which limited market results.
"You can already see the change in the land: you touch it and it is looser, the plants grow better. And I will remember the technicians too. They are country people, very close to us, and they give me confidence." Héctor Clavijo, participating farmer, San Antonio, Canelones
One farm in detail
What three years of co-innovation changed
On the farm of Leticia Palleiro and Héctor Clavijo in San Antonio, Canelones, working with field technician Sebastián Peluffo.
The changes were unglamorous and cumulative: a simple register of purchases and sales, more surface water and better irrigation, land-use planning with medium and long-term crop and pasture rotations, adjusted fertilisation using local organic manures, plot systematisation with managed drainage, new adapted crops and varieties, biological control agents and bio-inputs, horticulture integrated with forage and livestock, and more protected cropping area.
Degraded soils that had been dropped from cropping were brought back with annual and perennial pastures. Acidity was neutralised, potassium, calcium and magnesium imbalances corrected, and organic matter trended upward. An area of 0.9 ha was added to the crop and pasture rotation, and the range of crops with commercial outlets widened to seven.
"If I look at a photo of the farm today, it looks a lot better than three years ago."
Leticia Palleiro, participating farmer"Sowing dreams, harvesting hopes" follows Jocelaine and Neomar, the couple behind the no-tillage Reference Unit. "The agronomist who learned from the land" tells the story of the young farmer leading a Reference Unit, and what formal training looks like when it is rebuilt around peasant knowledge. Both were produced as short films, alongside eight others.
The flagship outputs
Guides, courses and a list of what to scale
Systematisation was treated as a deliverable, not an afterthought: three publications, ten courses on CRESOL's virtual learning platform, and a shortlist of the practices judged ready to spread. Several products are being translated into English, Spanish, Portuguese and French.
See all 10 online courses 5 in Portuguese, 5 in Spanish
- 1. Organic vegetable seedling production PT
- 6. Soil management in horticultural systems for agroecological transition ES
- 2. Bio-inputs in agroecological farming PT
- 7. Agroecological pest and disease management, technical knowledge ES
- 3. No-tillage vegetable production system, SPDH PT
- 8. Practices towards agroecological pest and disease management ES
- 4. Introduction to SPDH techniques and tools PT
- 9. Farmer-organisation-led research, the Uruguayan experience ES
- 5. Campesino a Campesino methodology PT
- 10. Campesino a Campesino methodology ES
See the 15 practices and innovations ready to scale Validated with families
- 1. Participatory management based on Campesino a Campesino Both
- 9. Collection of locally adapted efficient microorganisms Bio-inputs
- 2. Vertical blower for seed cleaning Seeds
- 10. Papuã as a cover crop SPDH
- 3. Organic seed pelleting Seeds
- 11. Knife-roller with furrower for small tractors SPDH
- 4. Enriched home-made substrate Seedlings
- 12. Micro-tractor with coupled implements SPDH
- 5. Mineralisers: ash water, acetic bone extract, castor leaf Bio-inputs
- 13. Ratchet key for direct seeding SPDH
- 6. Homeopathic complex for leaf-cutter ant control Bio-inputs
- 14. No-tillage vegetable production system, SPDH SPDH
- 7. Hierba baleeira hydrolate against fungal disease Bio-inputs
- 15. Peasant bio-input production unit Bio-inputs
- 8. Small-scale microorganism production prototype Bio-inputs
See the 14 strategic actions the families set for what comes next November 2025
- 1. Seek new support projects to scale consolidated initiatives and back action research
- 8. Advocate for public policies that follow the Innova Ecovida way of working
- 2. Expand exchanges between nuclei and families
- 9. A communication plan in forms accessible to families
- 3. Practise Campesino a Campesino continuously, widening family autonomy
- 10. Build collective strategies per nucleus, such as community seedling nurseries
- 4. Find partners willing to research strategically important demands
- 11. Train multiplier leaders inside the collectives
- 5. Continue the training plan across all nuclei
- 12. Expand promotion of SPDH+ as the method for scaling transition
- 6. Build a plan to mass-scale mechanisation
- 13. Strengthen the Ecovida seed network, with local seed agents and seed houses
- 7. Structure bio-input production units in family groups and territories
- 14. Prioritise the involvement of young people in all activities
"The replicability of Innova Ecovida lies in the fact that the initiative is not based on isolated solutions, but on clearly defined structures, methodologies and processes that can be adapted to different contexts."
Guide to Good Practices, Innova EcovidaHow it was governed
Farmer organisations steering the research
Governance was treated as a structuring element, not administrative overhead. A Strategic Governance Committee of CNFR, Rede Ecovida and CRESOL took the macro decisions and linked the territories to FORI's global political committee. A Binational Technical Committee turned strategy into work plans, monitored the Reference Units and brought in universities, research institutes, public bodies and extension services. Below both, the work ran through Ecovida's own nuclei and thematic working groups in Brazil, and CNFR's local member organisations in Uruguay.
The report names this participatory management method as the project's first good practice: implementing organisations, support organisations and farming families managing the work together, organically integrated with the social movement whose local actors are the ones changing things on the ground.
Building common governance across organisations with very different structures was the main institutional challenge, and it also overturned some received ideas about whether farmer organisations can lead research at all, and whether research can happen outside fully controlled conditions.
The project's own lesson learned
Who benefits
Women and young people
In Uruguay, active leadership by women or young people on the farm was a condition of selection. Farms led by young people, such as the Las Gurisas collective and the Aranda Kirichenco family, started with more agroecological practice already in place and moved faster. Three women horticulturists who had led transitions on their own farms and now sell through agroecological channels were specially invited to the Salto and San Antonio workshops.
In Brazil, inclusion ran through the network's own structures. Of the 90 people leading the Reference Units, 42 are women and 14 are young people, and 46 women sit in Ecovida's general coordination, nuclei coordination and working groups, which decide how the movement functions.
Equitable participation broke down for activities that require travel and more than a day away from home, because household work and childcare still fall overwhelmingly on women. FLD's institutional gender justice policy was used to work through these situations as they arose.
Evaluation with participating farmers, 2022 to 2025
What the numbers say at the end
Dissemination
The results went public
Closing seminar, Santa Rosa
Held inside the programme of the 13th Extended Meeting of the Ecovida Agroecology Network, at the Santa Rosa exhibition park in Rio Grande do Sul, with members of all 34 regional nuclei. Ecovida's general coordination spoke for the family nuclei, and families set the 14 strategic actions in the closing plenary.
Final event, Uruguay
The sixth and final cycle of local workshops in Salto, Canelones and Soriano, followed by the national closing event, with FAGRO/UDELAR, MGAP, INIA, INASE, the Salto local government and COPROFAM taking part, alongside radio coverage in Salto and Montevideo.
Beyond the two countries
The project was presented at the Global Forum on Agricultural Research, at the REAF Mercosur regional workshop in Manaus, at a COPROFAM regional virtual workshop, at the Brazilian Agroecology Congress and to AgriCord's Steering Committee.
What it means going forward
Results that outlast the project
In Brazil, continuity is carried by the network itself. Rede Ecovida has more than 25 years behind it, the project's governance sat inside its own structure, and its thematic working groups continue to lead the work. SPDH, bio-inputs and seed and seedling production are already part of families' productive reality, and the published materials are the reference base for what comes next.
In Uruguay, follow-on funding is in place. Horticultural co-innovation continues to August 2026 under Senda Agroecológica 2 (DGDR/MGAP with the World Bank). Participatory research on deciduous fruit varieties continues to February 2026 through a project funded by BSF-5 of the ITPGRFA/FAO, run by CNFR with the Uruguayan Agroecology Network and INIA support, and to February 2027 within the regional project on articulating biodiversity in family production. SFR Colonia 18 de Julio is in talks with the Salto local government about extending the approach to more producers.
MGAP has approved Territorial Agroecological Nuclei in all three project territories, and advocacy continues through REAF Mercosur and COPROFAM. With the FORI programme closing in December 2026, the results live on through these projects, the published guides and courses, and the strengthened capacity of CNFR, Rede Ecovida and CRESOL to lead research themselves.
Resources
Download the outputs
Guide to Good Practices, Innova Ecovida4 LANGUAGES | PDF | Governance, methodology and replication
Farming families as protagonists in research and innovation in agroecology4 LANGUAGES | PDF | Rede Ecovida: seeds, seedlings, bio-inputs and SPDH
Good practices for the agroecological transition in family horticulture4 LANGUAGES | PDF | CNFR, Uruguay: soil, water, crop health and farm management
Producer booklets4 BOOKLETS | PT | PDF | Practical guides from the diagnostic phase
This project is part of the FORI programme (Farmer-led Research and Innovation), implemented by the AgriCord Alliance with the financial support of the European Union and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS).
