Ahmedabad gathering Jan. 2025 (India)
Building on the first GIA gathering in Italy held in October 2023, the second international meeting took place in Ahmedabad, India, from January 24 to 27, 2025 hosted by the Gujarat Grassroots Innovation and Augmentation Network (GIAN) and HoneyBee Network. This four-day event enabled deep discussions initiated in Italy, focusing on strengthening the global network for technological sovereignty and agroecology.The Grassroots innovations assembly for Agroecology (GIA) gathered in Ahmedabad (India), end of January 2025 for a 3 days internal meeting, and 3 days of participation to the Fifth International Conference On Creativity And Innovation At/For/From/With Grassroots. The giant efforts of our host Honey Bee Network and @GIAN made possible to welcome 15 organisations, active at the grassroots’ level for developing local solutions to farmers’ real needs ; Schola Campesina Aps, (hosting GIA secretariat), is immensely grateful to their team: @Prof. Anil Gupta, @Anamika, Aneeta Salaria, @Deepika, @Kishore, @Sapna and others. Apart from the richness of the exchanges, these past days have been full of joy, kindness, care and humanity.
Some findings from our exchanges :
1. Horizontal learning processes, free of hierarchy are the learning environment where local solutions can trigger,
o Our learning culture, methods and mechanisms that are peer-to-peer, poeple-centred, and grounded in ancestral knowledge, are the necessary ground for communities to develop their own solutions ; and gain autonomy.
2. The increasing concentration of data, technologies and power in the hand of few actors is working against grassroots solutions.
o The Innovation concept is not neutral. Awareness is essential. Alternative tools too.
o What kind of technologies are making us gaining autonomy ? Our collective intelligence (GIA and allies) should continue drawing a (context neutral) tech assessment framework for agroecology.
3. Our social processes for identifying needs, co-creating, documenting and sharing solutions are real knowledge to be further exchanged within this Assembly
4. The needed technical, legal and financial tools, mechanisms, infrastructure to safely share local innovations and guarantee the Rights of knowledge holders
o Social agreements, Common licence, IP regulations, Prior consent for sharing, Commons Governance Organization (CGO), Ag Data Oath of Care and Ag Data Bill of rights, Glossary, appropriate languages used, databases and repositories ; Guidelines for documentation, Funds for grassroots R&D, etc. (OpenTeam, Farm Hack and Prolinnova longstanding experiences)
o How to safely enable a sharing of our innovations, farmer to farmer, accross continents ? Through an Agricultural Knowledge Common ?
5. Our economical strategies for ensuring a grassroot-driven research and development processes of innovations.
o Organisation internal capacities, Public funding and infrastructure, Strategic alliances, …
6. We work for society transformation, our alliance with social movement of Nyéléni and the networks of LVC Agroecology schools is essential.
7. We explored ideas for concrete common activities, and the needed adequate governance model of our assembly.
2025 will be a dynamic year of exchanges on the above topics. We are looking forward to it !
A proper report will be published on www.gia-agroecology.org