Sustain's Kiloran O'Leary awarded fellowship to research farmer collaboration

Sustain’s Bridging the Gap programme officer Kiloran has been awarded a Churchill fellowship to learn about the role of farmer collaboration in supporting just, sustainable and healthy food systems. She will travel to Brazil, France and Spain to understand how civil society, NGOs and policymakers have supported the proliferation of agroecological cooperatives in these contrasting economies and hear from farmers about their motivation to work together. 

The research will be published as a report with case studies and recommendations for policymakers. The research comes at a time when the UK Government has committed to double the cooperative sector and support SME food enterprises to supply procurement contracts but has not yet delivered a strategy and action plan. 

Kiloran says:

This is a perfect time to research farmer-led collaboration and cooperatives in nations where they are a major contributor to local economies and can be highly influential in support farmeres to shift to agroecological farming.

Small holder farmers form the back bone of food production in Brazil, making up 77 percent of all farmers, and producing over two thirds of the food Brazilians eat. Their relationship to agricultural cooperatives in Brazil, which can be extremely large, is more complex. However, alongside their struggle to regaim land, the Landless Workers Movement (MST), is embracing agroecology, cooperative production, and political education.

In France, 50% of all farmers are part of machinery sharing cooperatives called CUMA (Coopérative d'Utilisation de Matériel Agricole), while in neighbouring Catalunya, cooperatives are also part of the social fabric, where there are 38 cooperative schools.

Read more about Kiloran’s Churchill fellowship.

The Churchill Fellowship is a UK charity which supports individual UK citizens to follow their passion for change, through learning from the world and bringing that knowledge back to the UK.