DEployment of TERritorial AGRO-ecological Systems: A Collaborative Sciences User Approach

Background and challenges

We argue that two dimensions come into play in this dissemination. The first dimension is dissemination to users, which we argue can vary according to the territory, its stakeholders and their specific characteristics, whether agricultural or related to other dimensions. The second dimension relates to the transition from invention to innovation: a link is missing in the dissemination process between research and users, that of deployment, which needs to be institutionalised. 

Drawing on the lessons learned from projects carried out in recent years, we identify two significant obstacles to the dissemination of agroecological crop protection :

• The local deployment and dissemination of techniques or practices, with both communication and coordination issues, is not self-evident and requires territorialised organisational innovations.
• The institutionalisation of the development of agroecological innovations currently lacks a suitable space for elaborating techniques, diverse approaches, and stakeholders.

Objectives 

The aim of this project is twofold:

•  On the one hand, we aim to develop a network of academic players from various disciplines and civil society players to build collaborative knowledge that combines situated knowledge developed as part of an activity with scientific knowledge produced in controlled environments and following the scientific method. We hypothesise that interactions of these two groups of knowledgeable actors offer avenues for developing and disseminating agroecological approaches, including biocontrol.
• On the other hand, we will develop an associated ad-hoc project aimed at studying territorial cases of production tending towards zero pesticides based on the deployment of agroecological crop protection strategies.  We propose simultaneously to develop a knowledge base on the ways and means implemented and their specificities (contextual, sectoral, regional, etc.). More specifically, the project aims to identify the factors driving or limiting the deployment of zero-pesticide agriculture.

The consortium proposal aims to:

1. Specify the partners' expertise on territorial issues
2. Produce a map of territorial stakeholders and their interconnections
3. Characterize the opportunities and obstacles to territorial transformation
4. identify territorial sub-sets to support experimentation and demonstration of agroecological innovations.

Involved research units and partnership:

Partners

Contact of the coordinator(s) :