SHERWOOD Stephen
EkoRural/Granja Urkuwayku, Ecuador and Wageningen University, Netherlands
- Current work: Stephen Sherwood is a Senior Scientist at EkoRural and a Lecturer/Researcher in Knowledge, Technology, and Innovation at Wageningen University. He is also an organic grower at Granja Urkuwayku, a family-run organic farm and CSA in the Ecuadorian Andes.
- Regenerative thematics: His latest work explores the intersection of plant and soil health with social change, specifically “enabling response-ability” in regenerative soil management. He investigates the “relational bio-power” of seeds and the socio-biological “vitality” of everyday food, moving beyond technical definitions of agriculture to include human-nature intersubjectivity.
- Capacity-building: Stephen focuses on farmer-centered processes, recently coordinating a major stocktaking and policy briefs for the FAO on farmer-led ecosystem restoration and Farmer Field Schools. He champions “learning in the social wild” to bridge the gap between scientific policy and local practice.
- Institutionality and movements: He studies and actively builds “counter-movements” and alternative food networks, co-founding organizations such as EkoRural, Groundswell International, and Ecuador’s Colectivo Agroecológico.
- Critical Perspective: Drawing on practice theory, his research examines the “unruly edge” of affective labor and the self-organization in food, critiquing modernization while proposing “re-imagined institutions” for regeneration.
Selected publications:
- Sherwood S, Caulfield M, Paredes M, Borja RM, Oyarun P. Response-ability: Establishing Regenerative Soil Management in the Northern Andes. In: Uphoff N, Thies J, editors. Biological Approaches to Regenerative and Resilient Soil Systems. Boca Raton (FL): CRC Press; 2024.
- Sherwood S, coordinator. Enabling Response-ability: a stocktaking of farmer field schools on smallholder forestry and agroforestry. Rome: FAO; 2023.
- Sherwood S, Arce A, Paredes M. Affective Labor’s ‘Unruly Edge’: The Pagus of Carcelén’s Solidarity & Agroecology Fair in Ecuador. J Rural Stud. 2018 Jul;61:302-13.
- Sherwood S, Arce A, Paredes M, editors. Food, Agriculture and Social Change: The Everyday Vitality of Latin America. London: Earthscan/Routledge; 2017.
- Sherwood S, van Bommel S, Paredes M. Self-organization and the bypass: Re-imagining institutions for more sustainable development in agriculture and food. Agriculture. 2016;6(66):1-19.