Agroecological Transitions for Territorial Food Systems

The ecological and social unsustainability of our food systems is widely acknowledged by scientists, citizens and governments around the world. To address the challenge of sustainable transitions, agroecology is also increasingly recognised as a promising model and the territorial scale as an appropriate scale of analysis and action. ATTER will develop an interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral exchange program to help filling the lack of knowledge and methodology for scaling out agroecological transitions for territorial food systems. It will gather researchers and practitioners around cross-case studies work through secondments, trainings and workshops, relying on the specificities of the five countries under study (France, Italy, UK, Brazil and USA) and on the complementary expertise and skills of the 18 participating organisations (10 academic and 8 non-academic). We will manage the ATTER network as an action-research eco-system to boost the emergence and dissemination of knowledge, innovations and tools for the agrifood systems’ transitions.
The specific objectives of ATTER are to i) build a portfolio of 15 regionally embedded case studies representing diverse agroecological transitions and trajectories and transform this portfolio into a lasting observatory; ii) based on this portfolio, elaborate a typology of transition pathways in diverse contexts; iii) develop evaluation approaches and tools aimed at integrating the different dimensions involved in agrifood transitions; iv) analyse the effects of policy instruments and facilitating approaches and define policy recommendations and context-sensitive methodological frameworks aimed at facilitating these transitions; v) develop a diversity of adapted training and exchange activities both for academics and practitioners, which will allow more than 100 staff members to develop new skills, discover new research environments and expand their career perspectives, as well as to consolidate a wider and lasting network.