Toward genuine co-production for just and sustainable agri-food system transformation

Résumé fourni par la source

Co-production has become a dominant paradigm in Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D), reflecting growing expectations that agricultural innovation should be developed collaboratively with researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and local communities. While co-production is widely promoted as a means to improve relevance, legitimacy, ownership, and uptake of research, evidence increasingly suggests that it often falls short of its transformative ambitions. In practice, co-production frequently reproduces existing power asymmetries, privileges dominant knowledge systems, and fails to generate equitable outcomes for marginalized groups. We argue that one reason for this gap is the limited integration of justice considerations into both the conceptualization and practice of co-production. Rather than assessing co-production through procedural indicators alone, such as stakeholder participation or the number of engagement activities, we argue that its success should be evaluated by the extent to which it redistributes decision-making power, recognizes diverse knowledge systems, and contributes to more equitable outcomes. Without this grounding, co-production risks becoming an external exercise that lacks legitimacy. Building on a literature review and illustrative case examples from our own experiences in agri-food systems, we identify common institutional and structural barriers, including projectized funding, technocratic governance, epistemic dominance, and unequal benefit distribution, that constrain genuine co-production. We then propose principles and enabling conditions for embedding justice throughout co-production processes and discuss implications for researchers, practitioners, funders, and policymakers. By bridging the co-production and just transitions literature, this article positions justice not as an additional consideration but as the central criterion through which co-production should be designed, evaluated, and understood if it is to contribute meaningfully to sustainable and equitable agri-food system transformation.