A/HRC/16/49 cannot be rewarded by patents, the private sector has been largely absent from this line of research.76 C. Strengthening social organisation by co-construction 39. Agroecological practices are best adopted when they are not imposed top-down but shared from farmer to farmer. Extension services play a key role in favouring the scaling up of agroecology. An improved dissemination of knowledge by horizontal means transforms the nature of knowledge itself, which becomes the product of a network.77 It should encourage farmers, particularly small-scale farmers, living in the most remote areas to identify innovative solutions, by working with experts towards a co-construction of knowledge to ensure that advances will benefit them as a matter of priority, rather than only benefiting the better-off producers.78 Co-construction is key for the realization of the right to food. First, it enables public authorities to benefit from the experience and insights of the farmers. Rather than treating smallholder farmers as beneficiaries of aid, they should be seen as experts with knowledge that is complementary to formalized expertise. Second, as the Special Rapporteur has previously illustrated in describing participatory plantbreeding,79 participation can ensure that policies and programmes are truly responsive to the needs of vulnerable groups, who will question projects that fail to improve their situation. Third, participation empowers the poor – a vital step towards poverty alleviation. Lack of power is a source of poverty, as marginal communities often receive less support than the groups that are better connected to government. Poverty exacerbates this lack of power, creating a vicious circle of further disempowerment. Fourth, policies that are codesigned with farmers have a high degree of legitimacy and thus favour better planning of investment and production and better up-take by other farmers.80 Participation of foodinsecure groups in the policies that affect them should become a crucial element of all food security policies, from policy design to the assessment of results to the decision on research priorities. Indeed, improving the situation of millions of food-insecure peasants cannot be done without them. 40. The best of what scientists can offer and the valuable experience of smallholder farmers should be brought together in order to develop participatory modes of learning. The development of participation can go beyond the field technology itself. In West Africa, for instance, citizens’ juries on the governance of food and agricultural research were set up by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the Coordination Nationale des Organisations Paysannes (CNOP) and other partners, resulting in farmers formulating 100 recommendations after having heard experts on the models of agriculture, land tenure and property rights, macroeconomic issues and the governance of agricultural 76 77 78 79 80 18 G. Vanloqueren and P.V. Baret, “How agricultural research systems shape a technological regime that develops genetic engineering but locks out agroecological innovations,” Research Policy, 38, 2009, pp. 971–983. K.D. Warner and F. Kirschenmann, Agroecology in Action: Extending Alternative Agriculture through Social Networks, Cambridge, USA, MIT Press, 2007. N. Uphoff, “Institutional change and policy reforms,” in Agroecological innovations. Increasing food production with participatory development, N. Uphoff (ed.), London, Earthscan Publications, 2001, p. 255. A/64/170, paras. 54-55. A well-known example is the process that led to the adoption of the Loi d’orientation agricole in Mali, the 2008 national agricultural policy: see FAO-IIED, “The Right to Food and Access to Natural Resources - Using Human Rights Arguments and Mechanisms to Improve Resource Access for the Rural Poor,” Right to Food Study, Rome, FAO, 2008.