Evaluating strategies for equitable co-design of sustainability interventions with smallholder farmers

Purpose: Global food and agricultural systems face mounting climate, biodiversity and livelihood crises. Co-design – where stakeholders with different experiences and views work together to develop and create sustainable solutions – has gained attention as an approach to generate agricultural innovations that can help address these crises. Focusing on smallholder Kichwa-managed agroforestry cocoa systems in Napo, Ecuador, we conceptualise a co-design framework that embeds procedural equity to enhance the legitimacy and relevance of agricultural innovations bridging different knowledge systems.Approach: Through a literature review and PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Environmental) analysis, informed by a series of focus groups with Napo cocoa producers, we identify principles, mechanisms and processes that can make co-design more equitable. These are combined into a framework incorporating equity considerations into all key co-design stages.Findings: Our analysis reveals that co-design potential in driving transformation in agricultural contexts depends not only on recognising equity as a goal but also relies on embedding procedural equity principles and mechanisms from the start and throughout all phases of the process. Early integration of fairness, inclusivity, and shared decision-making helps establish trust and legitimacy; prerequisites for sustained collaboration. In Napo, Kichwa farmer cooperatives’ tradition as spaces for discussion and collective decision-making offers favourable conditions to initiate equitable co-design processes. Our framework also redefines the role of extensionists and researchers as facilitators of knowledge exchange in co-design.Practical implications: The co-design framework we configured offers a structured but flexible approach for integrating equity within co-design processes, providing guidance for moving from top-down knowledge transfer to knowledge co-production.Theoretical implications: This study contributes to rethinking agricultural extension practices by demonstrating how embedding equity principles early in co-design can bridge diverse scientific traditions and enhance the legitimacy of agricultural innovations.Originality: This framework is among the first to explicitly operationalise equity-based co-design in Indigenous smallholder settings.