Sessions
3 Actors
3.1 Living labs for the transformation of agroecosystems
Convenors:
Jens Dauber, Thünen Institute, Germany
François Chrétien, Agriculture and Agri-Food, Canada
Maria Busse, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany
Stephanie Holzhauer, Thünen Institute, Germany
Christian Huyghe, French National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE), France
Muriel Mambrini, Mission Board a Soil deal for Europe, EU
There is a worldwide need for transforming the current agricultural systems to tackle the wicked sustainability problems we are facing. Transformation in this context goes beyond incremental changes in the farming systems to systemic innovations from the farm level to agricultural landscapes and the post-production system. Living labs (as physical and social spaces for co-design, co-experimentation, and co-learning) are seen as promising approach to stimulate and encourage such visioning of transformation processes.
The objective of the session is to focus on the use of agroecosystem living labs (ALL) to promote agricultural innovation and transformation as a way to establish productive and sustainable agroecosystems. The session will provide a platform for exchanging experiences and lesson learnt from transdisciplinary work in ALL or comparable open innovation approaches of agroecology. One aim is to promote the dialogue between scientific and empirical knowledge from designing, running, and evaluating ALL. Particularly (but not exclusively) contributions on best practices and challenges in the integration of different knowledge bases and the diversity of actors’ roles, as well as on general conditions for ALL are welcome.
3.2 Justice dimensions of agricultural landscape transformation
Convenors:
Lasse Loft, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany
Jana Zscheischler, University Vechta & Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany
In response to new societal demands and the consequences of the environmental and climate crisis, the need for a sustainability-oriented transformation of agricultural landscapes has become a central topic. However, the governance and design of sustainability-oriented transformations always raises concerns of social justice, as these processes can "create new injustices and vulnerabilities while failing to address existing structural causes of injustice". From an environmental and social justice perspective, sustainability practices carry a number of potential risks, such as the reproduction and reinforcement of marginalisation, power imbalances and exclusion. Examples include the social impacts of nature conservation, land-use based climate mitigation, or urban-rural and spatial inequalities. These undesirable consequences of sustainability transformations have so far remained largely neglected and only in recent years has a discourse on the so-called "dark side of sustainability transformation" developed. To date, we observe a lack of empirical case studies as well as consistent frameworks that can comprehensively depict justice dimensions in sustainability-oriented transformation processes. The aim of the session is to explore the various dimensions and foundations of a "just transformation" and how to better grasp them from a research perspective. We especially invite presentations with methodological and empirical foci but also welcome theoretical contributions.
3.3 Regional capacities for the transformation of agricultural landscapes
Convenors:
Luise Porst, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany
Jana Zscheischler, University Vechta & Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany
Successfully addressing the urgent sustainability challenges in agricultural landscapes is largely determined by the transformative capacities of regional actors. In this session, we will focus on these regionally embedded capacities that critically shape and enable transformational processes of agricultural landscapes and land use. The aim is to better specify the concept of „transformative capacities“, to identify various regional preconditions based on case studies, and to create an understanding of how regional transformative capacities can be strengthened. We consider transformative capacities as an essential prerequisite for social and regional resilience that goes beyond mere coping or adaptive capacities by proactively promoting change in agricultural landscapes. In accordance with Keck & Sakdapolrak (2013), among other scholars, transformative capacities relate to different types of resources or capital (social, natural, human or economic), institutions and power relations as well as knowledge and discourses. This results in a variety of different starting points for contributions to this session. Relevant questions include (but are not limited to) the following: What role do regional social relationships and networks, trust, and the ability of social learning play with regard to regional transformability? What influence do institutions, power relations and (non-)perceived agency have? What factors shape the ability of regional actors to form new narratives and visions to stimulate change of collective action in agricultural landscapes?
3.4 Farmers' adoption of sustainable crop protection practices for pesticides reduction
Convenors:
Fatima Lambarraa-Lehnhardt, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany
Spyros Fountas, Agricultural University of Athens, Greece
The current levels of pesticide use within the agricultural sector have had notable adverse effects on both human health, the environment, and its biodiversity. In response to these concerns, there has been a concerted effort at the European Union (EU) level to mitigate pesticide use in agricultural production. For instance, the Farm to Fork strategy aims to achieve a 50% reduction in pesticide application by the year 2030. This reduction can be achieved through the promotion of sustainable agricultural practices, notably the adoption of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) by farmers.
Despite various initiatives to promote the uptake of IPM and sustainable crop protection practices, adoption of such practices at scale remains limited. Therefore, it is important to understand the extant challenges that contribute to the existing gap between the potential and actual implementation of IPM and sustainable crop protection practices. Identifying the pathways to bridge this gap is crucial for designing well-structured and targeted IPM programs that take into account the economic viability of farms, thus potentially improving adoption levels among farmers.
Against this backdrop this session highlights potential drivers and barriers to farmers' adoption of IPM, considering farmers’ decision-making processes in heterogeneous socio-ecological environments and food-value chains. By applying an interdisciplinary approach, we 1) highlight a framework to assess farmers’ behaviour and identify opportunities and barriers for the adoption of IPM, 2) qualitative insights of farmers’ IPM adoption, barriers, opportunities and drivers, 3) quantitative ex-post insights of farmers’ IPM adoption, barriers, opportunities, 4) farmer behaviour and preferences affecting IPM adoption ex-ante using choice experiments and, 5) co-develop policy for enhancing implementation of change, to formulate mitigating strategies for responsible transition of IPM.
This holistic approach is geared toward paving the way for the implementation of enabling strategies and policies that facilitate the adoption of IPM by farmers and other stakeholders. It represents a concerted effort to address the pressing issues related to pesticide use in agriculture and promote sustainable and environmentally friendly practices within the sector.
3.5 Sustainable nutrient management in intensive farming: stakeholder engagement & nature-based solutions
Convenors:
Andrea Knierim, University of Hohenheim, Germany
Steven Emery, Rothamsted Research, United Kingdom
Qirui Li, University of Hohenheim, Germany
Simon Willcock, Rothamsted Research, United Kingdom
Purpose: Intensive farming practices present substantial challenges to sustainable nutrient management. This session seeks to explore effective stakeholder engagement (ESE) strategies that drive the implementation and dissemination of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS), aiming to transform intensive farming practices towards sustainability. We welcome submissions that explicitly incorporate practitioners' perspectives, showcase local and regional impacts of NBS, offer insights into value chain dynamics, and underscore the societal relevance of the ESE in the application of NBS.
Thematic Outline: On the basis of a number of selected cases, the session will offer a forum for exchange, targeted discussions and practical insights on effective interactions for implementation and spread of NBS. Examples may come from recent EU induced research and from other cases from around the world. Abstracts are expected to briefly sketch the conceptual bases, the context and the challenges to which the NBS application is responding to. A focus of the abstract shall be given to the process and the results of the science-practice cooperation and the authors’ conclusions. Discussion in the session will target the potentials of the presented cases to contribute with NBS to a transformation of intensive farming systems towards increasingly sustainable practices and a reduction negative social and ecological external implications. Submissions that explicitly include practitioners’ perspectives, reflect NBS’ impacts at local and/or regional level, or within value chains, and reveal their societal relevance are particularly welcome.
Outcome: As a result, convenors will summarize key takeaways of the discussion and explore options for potential collaborative communication and dissemination ahead. Societal relevance is emphasized by addressing real-world challenges, empowering stakeholders, and fostering collaborative efforts for impactful transformations in intensive farming practices.Abstracts are welcome which provide a concise overview of the conceptual foundations, contextual factors, and challenges that drive the ESE in the application of NBS. Authors are encouraged to delve into the process and outcomes of science-practice cooperation, elucidate the collaborative process, and showcase tangible and intangible outcomes by encompassing the perspectives of practitioners, policymakers, and/or community representatives.
3.6 Modelling farmers’ decision-making to investigate and enhance transformation of agroecosystems
Convenors:
Bartosz Bartkowski, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Germany
Birgit Müller, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Germany
Robert Huber, Agricultural Economics and Policy ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Ex-ante modelling assessments provide important knowledge about how changing environmental, economic, or institutional conditions and policies affect the transition towards a more sustainable use of agroecosystems. In this context, understanding farmers decision-making, including behavioural factors and social networks, is key to make ex-ante assessments more robust and useful for policymaking. In recent years, different innovative modelling approaches e.g., agent-based models or machine learning approaches have emerged that allow to consider farmers’ complex decision-making in ex-ante assessments. The purpose of this session is to bring together researchers working at the forefront of new and innovative methodological approaches in the representation of farmers’ complex decision-making across different agroecosystems and spatial levels. Beside the presentation of cutting-edge modelling studies, further contributions are encouraged which provide ways forward to successfully address specific challenges related to data scarce empirical basis of farmer decision making in models or on facilitating transferability of insights to other contexts. By doing so this session aims to bring together scientists from a variety of fields to integrate behavioural, social, and economic factors in analysing the impact of changing institutional conditions and policies on a sustainable transformation of agroecosystems.
3.7 Innovative governance of ecosystem services: collaborative and hierarchical models
Convenors:
Chen Cheng, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany
Bettina Matzdorf, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany
Moucheng Liu, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
The transformation of agricultural landscapes requires behavioral change regarding actors’ interests and value, institutions and public policies. This calls for an inclusive process to involve a diversity of governance approaches, such as regulatory frameworks (direct government regulation, mandatory policies) and incentive-based approaches (payments for ecosystem services, certificates, eco-labels). Recent attention has been paid to contractual solutions, which might better incentivize actors in comparison to current ‘mainstream’ approaches. In Europe, the co-designing and co-implementing process with broad stakeholders offer new prospects, such as result-based, collective, land tenure, and value chain contracts. In China, on one hand, contractual solutions have been adapted to state-coordinated model enable new benefit sharing using public funding. On the other hand, new business models for conservation are developed based on contracts between private actors. With the socio-technological innovations, digitally-driven governance approaches have bring new opportunities by supporting communication and generating alternative funding. To capture these emerging phenomenon, the session covers new and innovative governance in a combined or stand-alone way to create incentives for behavioral change. The session seeks to offer empirical insights into the necessary adaptations required for governance in contexts beyond Europe.
3.8 Collective payments for ecosystem services for landscape level conservation: promise, perils and research gaps
Convenors:
Tobias Vorlaufer, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany
Claudia Sattler, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany
Bettina Matzdorf, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany
The session will focus on the emerging role of collective payment for ecosystem service (CPES) schemes (also known as agri-environmental payments) and investigate to what extent CPES deliver on their promises. It is increasingly recognized that effective conservation at the landscape level requires land users and other actors to coordinate actions. Examples of such collective approaches have emerged, for example, in the Netherlands, the UK, and Germany. Experiences with CPES have been made as well in the Global South. Collective approaches are frequently associated, with i) higher ecological impacts through local coordination and adaptation through participatory planning at the landscape level; ii) higher participation rates due to lower transaction costs, flexibility, and peer dynamics; ii) reduction in transaction costs and administration for governmental agencies, and iv) peer monitoring that may enhance compliance. But collective approaches may also fail in settings with insufficient trust and social capital, lack of facilitating institutions, and may adversely affect the likelihood of specific land-users to participate in PES. The session’s goal is to synthesize research in this field, in particular regarding the emerging effectiveness of CPES and identify research gaps. The session will be open to presentations based case studies, quantitative empirical, and theoretical work.
3.9 Farmers’ decisions towards biodiversity friendly landscapes
Convenor:
Kati Häfner, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany
Moritz Fritschle, Universität Osnabrück, Germany
Farmers are considered key actors to halt biodiversity loss in agricultural landscapes. It is crucial to understand and investigate the barriers and enabling factors for farmers’ adoption of more biodiversity- friendly practices in their farm management. Their decision making is influenced among others by 1) social-cultural aspects, such as their values, attitudes, identity, or risk perception, 2) the political and economic setting in which they operate, e.g. potential value-chains, (the design of) public and private incentives, or a post-communist/structural development setting, and 3) environmental aspects that limit or enable their decisions for or against the implementation of biodiversity measures. In this session we present and discuss our most-recent findings from three inter- and transdisciplinary projects (among them the EU H2020 projects SHOWCASE and FRAMEwork) that assess the importance of the aspects for the decision-making of farmers to implement biodiversity enhancing measures mentioned above, and therefore, contribute through transitional management changes to the transformation of agricultural landscapes. All studies are based on experimental approaches, and assess farmers’ viewpoints in several countries across Europe allowing for cross-country comparisons. They were partially co-designed with farmers in living labs, and range from field to farm scale, as well as to the scale of innovative governance mechanisms and new business solutions.
3.10 The role of science policy interactions: visions for transformation pathways in the living labs
Convenors:
Keerthi Kiran Bandru, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany
Line Carlenius Berggreen, Aarhus University, Denmark
Gianluca Brunori, University of Pisa, Italy
Lukas Bayer, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany
Katharina Helming, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany
The increasing demand for the evidence-based knowledge in policy processes has created momentum for the science policy interfaces. Sustainable development goals, farm to fork strategy, European green deal, EU mission “A Soil Deal for Europe” and Soil health law are some of the recent policy drivers of the agri-food system transformation. Several science policy interfaces are operating as boundary organisations that apply a combination of modelling tools, knowledge synthesis, and participatory approaches for policy impact assessment. The transformation of agroecosystems requires science policy interfaces to co-design the long-term visions and to understand the needs for respective political frameworks, starting at the living lab level by involving actors and addressing socio-economic conditions, bio-physical characteristics, institutions, and policies. Furthermore, feedback mechanisms from the living labs to regional, national, and EU level policy making needs to be strengthened.
To address these challenges, the session invites papers that identify the conditions (methods and tools, visions for the evidence based advice) for establishing and operationalising the science policy interfaces in living labs and beyond. The presentations identify the theories and analytical frameworks, future challenges, success factors and governance of implementing science policy interfaces at different scales.
3.11 Scales of collaborative action between farmers, politicians and scientists
Convenor:
David Rose, Harper Adams University, United Kingdom
This session addresses the multifaceted challenges confronting agricultural sustainability, emphasizing the need for evidence-based policies, innovative practices, and stakeholder collaboration. The contributions stress the significance of context-specific approaches and tailored solutions, recognizing the diversity of regional conditions, farmer motivations, and policy contexts.