Abstract
Agroecology is subject to a growing interest as a way to move toward more sustainable agriculture and food systems. However, the evidence of agroecology's contribution to sustainability remains fragmented because of heterogeneous methods and data, differing scales, and knowledge gaps. For facing these challenges, 70 representatives of agroecology-related organizations worldwide participated in the development of the Tool for Agroecology Performance Evaluation (TAPE), to produce and consolidate evidence on the multidimensional performances of agroecological systems. TAPE is a comprehensive analytical framework that uses agroecology for measuring the sustainability and the multi-dimensional performance of agricultural systems. Being based on the 10 Elements of Agroecology and strictly linked to the Sustainable Development Goals, TAPE can be used, among other, to characterize the level of agroecological transition of any kind of agricultural systems, to monitor and evaluate the impacts of projects for sustainable development, and/or to evaluate how agroecology contributes to the achievement of the SDGs. Its application can support the co-creation and sharing of knowledge among producers, favour the adoption of more sustainable practices of production, and inspire the formulation of public policies that support agroecological transitions. Preliminary results from pilot applications show that TAPE can perform in a variety of regions and agroecosystems and that it allows assessment of performances of various criteria that move beyond classic indicators to begin to build a global evidence base for agroecology and support transformation to sustainable agricultural production and food systems. This study is based on a more complete article in English originally published in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems under the title “Assessing Transitions to Sustainable Agricultural and Food Systems: A Tool for Agroecology Performance Evaluation (TAPE)”.