Living Labs: a chance for practitioners to work with researchers

Summary

Joint learning improves practices, builds trust, strengthens resilience, sustainability, and innovation. Farmers act as co-creators, ensuring results are useful.
Practical recommendations
For Farmers
• Plan time for coordination — treat meetings as part of the learning process, not as extra work.
• Agree early on roles, data-sharing rules, and expected outcomes.
• Start small: test new practices on limited plots before scaling up.
• Build trust through transparency — share both successes and failures.
• Use advisors or facilitators to translate between research and practice.
• Include no-treatment plots and document experiences, so benefits become visible to all partners.
Good practices for farmers, advisors and researchers:
• Engage actively from the start: co-define goals and on-farm experiments.
• Keep transparent records and share practical results, even when outcomes are mixed.
• Dedicate time for reflection with peers and researchers.
• View Living Labs as long-term learning, not just short projects.
Living Labs are rooted directly on farms and must always be adapted to the site-specific context of each farm.