Iocola Ileana, Ciaccia Corrado, Colombo Luca, Grard Baptiste, Maurino Stefania, Wezel Alexander, Canali Stefano
Council for Agricultural Research and Economics, Research Centre for Agriculture and Environment, CREA-AA, Rome, 00184, Italy.
Italian Foundation for Research in Organic and Biodynamic Agriculture, FIRAB, Rome, 00159, Italy.
Open Res Eur. 2023 Mar 29;2:139. doi: 10.12688/openreseurope.15264.2. eCollection 2022.
Redesigning the agri-food system through agroecology represents a common ambition among practitioners, activists and scholars to achieve environmental and socio-economic sustainability. Research can have a main role to support this path. Although it seems that there is a gradual increasing body of agroecology research, it clearly lacks good knowledge about this. The main objective of this study was therefore to map research projects related to agroecology in Europe with the aim to characterize European research in terms of implementation of agroecology elements, identify needs for future cross collaboration between countries and networks, and support the setting up of appropriate research agendas fostering agroecology research in Europe. A desktop research with different databases related to European and transnational funding programmes was carried out to identify funded research projects involved in agroecology. The obtained projects were used to perform a social network analysis. Furthermore, two surveys were conducted, one with coordinators of identified projects and a second one for researchers engaged in agroecology. Our study highlighted a predominant trajectory of agroecology research prone to the transformation of the agri-food system. France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and United Kingdom were the most active countries engaged in agroecology research. In all surveys, issues related to efficiency improvement, synergies strengthening, local economy development, and co-creation and sharing of knowledge were the most implemented to support agri-food transformation. Transdisciplinary approaches were mainly addressed by European projects. Surveys reported a limited participation of value chain actors, while researchers, farmers, and their associations were the most involved. Survey respondents suggested to increase project duration and introduce flexibility methods to modulate research actions according to dynamic of the contexts. On the basis of the results, some policy recommendations were provided to fostering agroecology research in Europe and its contribution for transformation of agri-foods systems.
通过生态农业重新设计农业食品系统是从业者、活动家及学者们实现环境与社会经济可持续发展的共同愿景。研究在支持这一途径方面可发挥重要作用。尽管生态农业研究似乎在逐渐增多，但显然仍缺乏对其的充分了解。因此，本研究的主要目标是梳理欧洲与生态农业相关的研究项目，以便从生态农业元素的实施角度描述欧洲的研究情况，确定各国及各网络未来开展跨领域合作的需求，并支持制定适当的研究议程，以促进欧洲的生态农业研究。我们利用与欧洲及跨国资助项目相关的不同数据库进行案头研究，以确定参与生态农业的资助研究项目。利用所获得的项目进行社会网络分析。此外，还开展了两项调查，一项针对已确定项目的协调人，另一项针对从事生态农业研究的人员。我们的研究突出了生态农业研究在农业食品系统转型方面占主导地位的发展轨迹。法国、德国、意大利、荷兰、葡萄牙、西班牙和英国是参与生态农业研究最活跃的国家。在所有调查中，提高效率、加强协同作用、发展地方经济以及知识的共同创造与共享等问题在支持农业食品转型方面得到了最广泛的应用。跨学科方法主要由欧洲项目涉及。调查显示价值链参与者的参与度有限，而研究人员、农民及其协会参与度最高。调查受访者建议延长项目期限，并引入灵活方法，以便根据实际情况的动态变化调整研究行动。基于研究结果，我们提出了一些政策建议，以促进欧洲的生态农业研究及其对农业食品系统转型的贡献。
