The interplays between singularity and genericity of agroecological knowledge in a network of livestock farmers

The ecologisation of agriculture raises many issues about the knowledge needed to support the agroecological transition, both regarding their modes of production and their nature, and their forms of transmission and sharing. It is now recognized that this transition requires a diversity of knowledge natures and a renewal of extension practices, but the ways in which farmer's knowledge may be capitalized have been under investigated. In particular, few works have analyzed the epistemic work of extension agents, between singular experiences and generic knowledge. In this article, we describe how the facilitators of a network of livestock farmers make the sense of experiences that these farmers exchange, in order to support them towards autonomy, while legitimizing their own expertise. We show how these extension agents try to transfer a generic method while giving primacy to the each farmer's situation analysis, and the tensions that it creates to capitalize the knowledge expressed by the farmers.