AGRICITES – Territorial innovations for the agroecological and food transition

The continuing urbanization of the world is a challenge for UMR Innovation’s research, as this urbanization transforms human societies’ relationships with the environment, agricultural production and food, in both the Global North and the Global South. City-agriculture relationships, in particular, are subject to territorial recompositions and social confrontations, but also benefit from cooperation and innovations. These processes deserve to be identified, analysed and evaluated. It is this perspective that forms the basis of the mission of the AgriCités research group, which analyses situations of sustainable territorial innovations that link agriculture to the city, transform work in agriculture or contribute to the agroecological and food transition in urban, peri-urban and rural territories.

Objectives

AgriCités’s goal is to study territorial innovations, defined as arrangements and configurations that bring together agricultural, urban and environmental actors in a perspective of territorial agroecological and food transition, at different geographical scales, ranging from intra-urban to rural. It is a matter of identifying and characterizing these territorial innovations by evaluating them in terms of their contribution to sustainable development, particularly its social aspect (land justice, food justice, decent work) and political aspect (governance).

Research areas

Understanding the spatial and temporal dynamics of city-agriculture relationships: characterizing the diversity of urban and peri-urban agricultural systems and of food landscapes. Method: comparative case studies of situations in Europe and around the Mediterranean.

Analysing processes of territorial innovation that contribute to the agroecological and food transitions of regions. Method: identification, classification and longitudinal analysis of innovative projects, with a particular focus on new interactions between actors (arrangements, mediations, complementarities).

Supporting actors in their experiments in situations of territorial innovation: analysing the dynamics and lessons of territorial governance, identifying obstacles and levers for action, building possible action scenarios. Method: territorial action-research, partnerships, collaborative platforms.

Diversity of the objects studied

AgriCités researchers are interested in several issues and objects of territorial innovations:

  • Urban and peri-urban agriculture in all its diversity (of actors, practices, relationships with space and nature for example),
  • Management of agricultural land, from buildings to food landscapes,
  • Collective organization of agricultural work,
  • Insertion of farmers in agricultural territories,
  • Contracts, mediations and arrangements between actors (agricultural and non-agricultural),
  • Citizen or institutional initiatives that promote an integrated approach to the agricultural and food system on a territorial scale.

In these situations, AgriCités members analyse the spatial organizations and territorial governance processes that these innovations imply. The challenge is to discern the development models that are based on these innovations.

Disciplines

Geography, economics, sociology, political science, and territorial agronomy.

Sites

The main sites are in France, Switzerland, Southern Europe (Italy, Portugal), Southern Mediterranean (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), Japan and Latin America (Argentina, Ecuador).

Partners

Science partnerships: Portland State University (USA), Chicago State University (USA), University of Lausanne (Switzerland), University of Lisbon (Portugal), École française de Rome, and the laboratories of INRAE, CIRAD, CNRS and French universities working on urban and peri-urban agriculture and territorial innovations, in particular the Agriterris network (France-Brazil-Argentina), the ‘Work in agriculture’ network and INRAE’s geographers’ disciplinary group.

Scientific communities: Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP), Association des Sciences Régionales de Langue Française (ASRDLF), Rural Geography Commission of Comité National Français de Géographie (CNFG), International Geography Union (IGU), Agriculture & Food group of Association of American Geographers (AAG), Société Française d’Économie Rurale (SFER), International Farming System Association (IFSA), International Association on Work in Agriculture (IAWA)

Development partnerships: Inter-municipal, Pays-PETR, government departments, associations and agricultural organizations, local development agents.