Territorial Agroecological Transition in Action”: a tool-Box for designing and implementing a territorial agroecological system transition in agriculture – TATABOX

Impact of agriculture on environment and human health, energy crisis and climate change enjoin policy-makers and farmers to rethink the model of agricultural production. One way is to promote a strong ecologisation of agriculture reducing inputs using ecosystem services at field, farm and landscape levels. Design and implement such an approach requires changing deeply the management of farming systems, natural resources and food–chain while dealing with a wide range of environmental and societal changes. To accompany this change, agricultural actors and researchers require new tools. Based on the concept of agroecological transitions, the Tata-box project aims at testing and adapting a methodology to help local agricultural stakeholders to develop a vision of the desirable transition of local agricultural systems and to steer it. The methodology is based on 5 steps: i) identification of the actual local agricultural system; ii) definition of the exogeneous forces that will impact the local agriculture in a near future; iii) design a vision of a territorial agroecological system based on some ecological principals; iv) define steps to reach such system; v) propose a local governance and management in order to steer this transition.
The project is structured in 4 tasks: i) T1 manages the general project and deals with scientific, administrative and financial management, communication and valorisation; ii) T2 proposes and adapts the methodology to co-design local agroecological transition, develops the requested collaborative tools and leads a reflexivity analysis on the general project and on the feed-back from agricultural stakeholders participation; iii) T3 develops and steers the multi-level and multi-domains methodology designed by T2 and developed ad-hoc participatory indicators for management and governance in order to reach an adaptive management of transition; iv) T4 assists the on-going local dynamics that aims at developing agroecological innovations. It mobilizes agricultural stakeholders around various collective actions. It analyses and co-designs each dimension of the local agriculture (farms, agrifood chain and natural resources). Through collaborative tools and participatory meetings organized by T3, it aims to foster innovation integrating elements of the different dimensions of the system.
The project is greatly transdisciplinary, involves 986 person.month for a requested grant of € 1 million. Actors from the local agriculture will be involved in the project through different participative workshops. Researchers are from different disciplines allowing a fully analysis and understanding of the different processes at stake: agronomists, zootechnicians, ecologists, computing sciences, ergonomist, management sciences, social geography, economists. The field study project is a large agricultural watershed in the southwestern part of France (Aveyron & Tarn et Garonne). The Tarn river basin is about 300 km long from east to west and 50 km north-south, and covers a wide diversity of rural territories. From current and past projects, local agricultural dynamics have been identified.
Different results are expected: i) methodological results based on the improvments of the intial methology and on the production of adapted methods and tools (indicators, maps, collaborative tools...); ii) epistemological results such as methodologies to deal as scientist with uncertainty, complexity, transdisciplinary and participatory research; iii) academic productions published in disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals; iv) operationnal results: knowledge and data on the territory, artefacts, agroecological visions and transitions built by the stakeholders; v) a special attention will be paid to develop teaching materials from the different analysis. Territorial stakeholders are involved in the project and therefore will benefit from the results and tools.