Through the funding from the Freie Universität Berlin Spotlight funding program, we spent three weeks in the triple frontier of the Alto Parana Atlantic Forests, visiting local actors and universities in Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina. The overall objective of this field trip was to learn more about the complex interactions between ecological and human systems through workshops and semi-structured interviews with actors who reside in agricultural systems.

In Paraguay, we visited Ciudad del Este where we had the opportunity to talk and interview people from the municipality, the local food market, and a representative of the small agriculture community “El Triunfo”

In Brazil, we visited the universities UNILA and UNIOESTE in Foz do Iguazu and Cascavel. We had seminars with researchers in order to present our work and get their feedback. As in Paraguay, we visited agroecological and organic producers, and the Park Administration of the Iguazu National Park (Brazilian side).

In Argentina, we visited the Forestry Science Faculty of Misiones University in Eldorado and the Institute of Subtropical Biology in Puerto Iguazu. We had insightful meetings with resident researchers. Also here, we dedicated time to visiting diverse socio-ecological realities of the area, such as the agroecological producer from the natural reserve “Reserva 2000 hectáreas”, the administration of the Iguazu National Park (Argentinian side), and the Guarani indigenous community “Yriapu”.

Last but not least, we created a “Storymap” website, where we updated our visit sites during the fieldwork to include some preliminary observations. Thus, if you want to learn more about this field trip and our work, follow this link: https://mhei-fub.github.io/apaf.html.