ABSTRACT
A participatory initiative that took place in 2017 –2018 sought to facilitate ecological food producers in both the Global North and the Global South to develop strategies and action plans to change their food systems through deliberative processes. The composition of the farmer panels in our research makes their insights particularly distinctive: rather than being a representative sample of the farming population in each country, panel members were producers involved directly or indirectly in the agroecology and food sovereignty movements of their respective countries. Agroecological farmer panels in Nicaragua and England agreed on the fact that, at present, prices received by farmers and paid by consumers do not adequately respond to the actual costs of food production or the wider social and ecological effects of farming approaches, what farmers in England referred to as ‘true costs’. Farmers in England also discussed the limitations of consumer knowledge and the complexity of the issues.
