For the past four years, the Family Farming Barometer has been looking at the issues that affect family farming and to which family farming is responding. It investigates the transition to sustainable food systems, which would ensure food security for everyone, now and in the future.

For this 2021 edition, the Family Farming Barometer focuses on knowledge and research. Building sustainable food systems means creating, exchanging and disseminating knowledge that is adapted to the challenges of our time, the needs of farmers and the specific characteristics of each region. In this barometer, we ask whether the production of knowledge and science is neutral. We will discover that agri-food research remains largely at the service of industrial agriculture and the status quo, and that it can be instrumentalised or even manipulated to benefit certain vested interests.

In the interviews, we explore with Fernando Lopez how research can respond to the demands of family farming; we learn from Charlotte Pavageau how international research can evolve to support the agro-ecological transition; and we discover from Pierre Stassart that, despite numerous initiatives within universities, there is still a long way to go before agro-ecology is truly taken into account.