---
title: "Citizen science and sustainable agriculture"
chunk: 2/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_science_and_sustainable_agriculture"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:13:55.360956+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Climate adaptation ===
Extreme climate events have increased the need for crop variety in order to sustain current food systems. Crop variety testing, also known as the tricot approach, involves the observation of three different crop varieties, fertilizer types, or a combination of both to evaluate which options work best. The tricot approach recognizes that there are gender inequalities in agricultural production and attempts to involve more women in the process. This approach has shown to be successful as it engages both researchers and farmers to find solutions that are specific to various environmental areas and needs. The tricot approach was employed on multiple plots in Nicaragua, Ethiopia, and India with farmers as citizen scientists. Each country analyzed climate effects on different seed varieties allowing them to adjust in the next planting cycle. This iterative process documented the replacement of seed varieties for climate adaptation allowing results to be replicated and scalable.

=== Pollination ===
Pollinators are an important aspect of human survival as many fruits, vegetables, and plants require cross pollination for reproduction. In urban areas pollinators face habitat loss as their natural environments are disrupted by human populations. A citizen science project, called Native Bee Watch, began in urban Colorado as a way to collect data on bee morphospecies. Both citizen scientists and researchers collected comparable data that is being used as a conservation tool for bee habitats.

== Limitations ==
There are a few challenges in integrating citizen science with sustainable agriculture. Many agriculture and food-related topics, such as nutrition, have no notable citizen science participation or research. Citizen science also most often occurs at smaller scales and the local level, so its coverage varies significantly across disciplines, geographies, and socioeconomic groups.
Farmers with smaller farms cannot contribute in the same way those with larger farms might be able to, as they may lack the resources or time to participate. There are also challenges in sustaining people's participation. Farmers have to consider the trade-offs between spending more time working versus participating in citizen science, weighing immediate needs against potential large-scale benefits. These disparities are further exacerbated by the fact that academics or researchers often need highly regulated large-scale studies for more accurate and structured data, which might only be possible in cooperation with larger farms.
Citizen science often has unequal representation in terms of demographics. Those who participate are  more likely to identify as white, male, and of higher socioeconomic status. Few citizen science projects have been completed in the Global South. These are often farming-dependent countries that are more vulnerable to environmental, social, or economic issues and could benefit from these projects. Citizen science projects should evaluate whether the diversity of participants represents the broader population and if there are barriers to participation specific to different subpopulations.
These limitations mean that the findings of citizen science work in sustainable agriculture may not be as easily aggregated to the regional or national level or applied to new or different contexts.

== References ==