The Institute for Agroecology aims to contribute to agroecology transitions through engaged scholarship and action to uplift agroecology as a holistic and systems approach that can confront multiple intersecting crises including: climate change, biodiversity collapse, inequity, food insecurity and diet-related illness. The UVM Institute for agroecology is distinguished in several ways: 

• Our work is grounded in a participatory action research approach. That means that we do research with and for farmers, indigenous people, movements and communities.
• We center equity in all of our work, actively working against exploitative land and labor relations, gender and racial inequality and an extractive relationship between the global north and south
• We work at the local, regional, national and international level
• We make connections across these geographies in our research, learning and action
• We are the first agroecology Institute at a land-grant university in the USA aiming to transform research and learning to support social change
• All of our work is guided by our values and a commitment to creating a more just and sustainable food system
• We are creative and out of the box – disrupting conventional patterns and approaches in universities to create change.

We invite you to learn more about our approach, mission, vision and values.