Recherche et collectifs agro-alimentaires : vulnérabilité et tensions

Dam, Denise Van; Visser, Marjolein

doi:10.3917/pour.234.0163

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Together, Comeos' member sectors account for 11 percent of GDP and employ some 550,000 people, making commerce the largest private sector employer (https://www.fevia.be/fr; https://www.feb.be/en/). about the power asymmetries at play, and without clarifications on the respective roles of all the partners that embark and do not embark, PAR might actually do more harm than good (Van Dam and Visser, 2018).…”

Section: Issues With Immersion and Par -How Far Can We Go As Bridgers?mentioning

confidence: 99%

How researchers act as “bridgers” in Brussel’s food policy making

Visser¹,

Maughan²,

Davila³

2022

Acta Hortic.

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Urban agriculture and its potential contributions to a sustainable food system have been on Brussels' agenda for more than a decade. Launched in 2016, Brussels food strategy, the Good Food, is currently undergoing a reform, passing from a "Sustainable food system" focus to an Agroecology focus. Consequently, the administrations in charge -Bruxelles Environnement and Bruxelles Economie et Emploi -struggle to refine this new vision, facing the fuzziness around the normative concepts of Sustainability and Agroecology. Through the Good Food co-construction process, those administrations are having a hard time trying to arrange discordant points of view and facing different levels of participation among stakeholders. Researchers of the Agroecology Lab have actively contributed to the Good Food's vision process via a close dialogue with food policymakers and its stakeholders, especially urban farmers. Those discussions between the various stakeholders have fueled research proposals to enhance the transition process in Brussels Food Policy. This paper focuses on how researchers who support civil society dynamics -particularly through participatory action research methodologies -can play a crucial role in fostering public policies in general, and Brussels Food Policy in particular. Sometimes influenced, often influencers, how do these "bridgers" (also known as knowledge brokers or boundary workers) contribute to transition processes and help build collective innovation capacities? Throughout a process of reflexivity, researchers' posture is spelled out, in order to assess how both posture and process evolved and interacted.

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Section: Issues With Immersion and Par -How Far Can We Go As Bridgers?mentioning

confidence: 99%

How researchers act as “bridgers” in Brussel’s food policy making

Visser¹,

Maughan²,

Davila³

2022

Acta Hortic.

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“…Even if in theory it should be possible for research to help building public policies, the timings, needs and priorities have to find a compromise between researchers, administrations and field stakeholders. In our case, researchers took on the role of bridging actor (Hahn et al, 2006;Van Dam and Visser, 2018), and this allowed us to convey messages from the field actors to the administrations on the one hand, and on the other, the reality of administrations to be translated to field actors. This dialoguing exercise is an integral part of participatory actionresearch.…”

Section: More Generallymentioning

confidence: 99%

The multifunctionality of urban agriculture projects in Brussels

Davila¹,

Maughan²,

Rixen³

et al. 2022

Acta Hortic.

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In Brussels, as in other cities, urban agriculture projects place a more or less strong emphasis on food production but also develop other functions in social, health, training, education, environment or circular economy sectors. Until recently, in Brussels, these functions were barely recognized and received little support from the government. Nonetheless they represent an important part of many projects and may have a significant societal impact. In order to help current urban agriculture projects, and to support the administrations to co-create a fairer food policy, we studied a diverse range of urban market gardening initiatives: we interviewed 14 projects and carried out two workshops bringing together field actors and administrations. We identified 110 functions implemented by urban agriculture projects in Brussels, grouped these into 12 function groups and set up a tool to create their multifunctionality profile. The analysis of this profile compared to the business model of the project allows us to propose the hypothesis that the more the projects depend financially on food production, the less they seem inclined to develop a multitude of functions, and that the projects whose source of income is mixed (part from production and part from subsidies and external financial support) can afford to explore more functions. This work opens a new dialogue between food producers and different government administrations as it highlights the action urban agriculture can have on a very broad range of societal functions besides mere production.

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“…How to sufficiently consider these vulnerabilities and the resulting tensions when engaging in joint research-initiatives? (Louah et al, 2015;Van Dam et al, 2017;Van Dam and Visser, 2018). In some cases, the research "add-on" can actually worsen these tensions, instead of genuinely servicing the initiative.…”

Section: Concluding Reflectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resourcing an Agroecological Urbanism

Tornaghi¹,

Dehaene²

2021

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Recherche et collectifs agro-alimentaires : vulnérabilité et tensions

Cited by 3 publications

References 2 publications

How researchers act as “bridgers” in Brussel’s food policy making

How researchers act as “bridgers” in Brussel’s food policy making

The multifunctionality of urban agriculture projects in Brussels

Resourcing an Agroecological Urbanism

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