Farms And Networks Mobilised Together In Agri-Food Systems Transformation – FERMENTS Agri-Alimentaires II

Many scientific studies, even if they differ in their findings and recommendations, constantly refer to the need for transition in agricultural and food systems in order to meet the very contemporary challenges. Facing these challenges, a number of initiatives, often resulting from the combined actions of associations and citizens, private actors, institutions and public authorities, are experimenting and implementing new alternative models, which are nevertheless struggling to induce and generalise sustainable and fair transitions.
The Agri-food FERMENTS II project aims to address both scientific and operational issues around the notion of “scaling up” of alternative agri-food initiatives. This project focuses on societal issues relating to the agri-food systems transition, and on the analysis of the role of the change of scale of these initiatives for the operationalisation of these transition processes. The questions covered concern both the modalities of the scaling up of these initiatives and their concrete support. One of the hypotheses of the project is that the analysis and the characterisation of the processes allowing larger-scale projects to emerge and to stabilise can also inform on more transversal aspects relating to the necessary transformations of public policies and modes of action in favour of the transition of agri-food systems.
The project proposes to explore the notion of “resilient cooperative and solidarity farms” (FERMENTS), as an operational and possible translation of upscaling processes. ‘FERMENTS’ are farms that are strongly involved in formal and informal local networks and integrated, beyond agricultural production, in territorial action in favour of the preservation of agricultural land and/or the transformation of the local food system.
The project proposes to grasp the upscaling of initiatives from three articulated dimensions: 1) economic and legal models and their implicit or explicit rationale/objectives; ii) socio-cultural issues and their impact on these new forms of farm setting-up from a sociological and political point of view and, iii) territorial dynamics and their impacts on levers or barriers faced by these projects. These three dimensions are explored in the general conceptual framework of this participatory research project, as well as in the methodologies used, the ways case studies are documented or the ways of interviewing the stakeholders.
Thus, the project intends to answer a methodological challenge. The issue addressed calls for the co-construction of methodological frameworks around a common object that makes sense for a group of actors on the ground and researchers, a reflexive approach allowing the appropriation and implementation of methods for analysing a diversity of upscaling initiatives and proposing methods for supporting their dissemination to different audiences, as well as their networking. One of the hypotheses of this project is that a grounded and deep analysis of the FERMENTS farms, as well as an analysis of their networks and the stakeholders’ interactions in which they are involved, would make it possible to improve both their implementation and their support.
The project is structured around 3 work packages :
- The consolidation of a mtehodology to analyse and document projects on 5 pilot sites (including two sites already identified and in the process of being analysed since 2021), the implementation of which is based on the collaboration between research and civil society actors.
- The organisation of “learning visits” in relation to initiatives that meet the criteria of farms that are reffered to as “Ferments” projects.
- The valorisation and dissemination of joint productions undertaken during the project.