Co-Designing Agroecological Futures: Kukama–NGO Intercultural Collaboration in the Peruvian Amazon

Abstract (English)

Current thinking about prosperity seriously constrains and indeed limits the development of agrifood policies that would promote truly autonomous, resilient, and sustainable outcomes. There already exist in the Amazon region projects that promote a paradigm shift, while demonstrating in practice how to redesign agrifood systems for inclusive, holistic, and local prosperity. Through a mixed-methods approach—comprising participant observation, semi-structured interviews, focus groups and secondary data—this research explores how the Chaikuni Institute and Kukama-Kukamira communities co-design agroecological niches that challenge dominant agrifood paradigms in the Peruvian Amazon. Grounded in localized, bottom-up structures, their collaboration reimagines farming as a cultural, ecological, and political act. Through intercultural dialogue, rooted in Kukama animistic cosmology, they have innovated diversified chacras—regenerative agroforestry systems that integrate Indigenous knowledge with modern agroecological science, including native seedling recovery, lunar and riverine planting cycles, zero-burn techniques, soil regeneration, meliponiculture, and value-added processing. These initiatives not only enhance agricultural resilience and ecological restoration, but also revitalize Indigenous identity, empower women, and foster a multispecies ethic of care. By bridging ethnographic insights with transdisciplinary analytical frameworks, this research explores how such niche practices serve as catalysts for system-wide agrifood transformation, and argues that farming must be revalued beyond productivity, as a means of regenerating land, restoring community, and reimagining food futures anchored in dignity and ecological justice.