# Pathways and schemes for Agroecology Territories across Europe

Perrine Vandenbroucke, Baptiste Grard, William Buckner, Jens Dauber, Alexander Wezel

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Perrine Vandenbroucke, Baptiste Grard, William Buckner, Jens Dauber, Alexander Wezel. Pathways and schemes for Agroecology Territories across Europe. XXIXth European Society for Rural Sociology Congress Crises and the futures of rural areas, Jul 2023, Rennes, France. [hal-05019702](https://hal-05019702v1)

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Submitted on 3 Apr 2025

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# Pathways and schemes for Agroecology Territories across Europe

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Vandenbroucke Perrine (pvandenbroucke@isara.fr), Grard Baptiste, Buckner William, Dauber Jens, Wezel Alexander - AE4EU

XXIXth European Society for Rural Sociology Congress
Crises and the futures of rural areas
Rennes, France. July 3 – 7, 2023
# The concept of Agroecology Territory

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>Figure 1: Schematic presentation of Agroecology Territory with stakeholders as central actors and the three essential domains for transition (Wezel et al., 2016).</figcaption></figure>
# Research question and methods

## AE4EU (https://www.ae4eu.eu/) :

* To develop an inventory and comparative analysis of AET throughout Europe.

* To discuss the relevance of different factors as enabler or barrier to foster the development of agroecology in Europe through a territorial approach.

## Methods:

- 26 interviews at national and case study levels (IT, DE, FR and SP)

- Comparison of 8 case studies (IT, DE, FR)

- A workshop with European partners
The role of place-based approaches for agroecology
transition in litterature

(1) to handle a **systemic approach at landscape scale** (Duru et al., 2015; Jeanneret et al., 2021)

(2) to take into account the **specificity and embeddedness of learning processes in agroecology** (Compagnone et al., 2018; Piraux et al., 2018)

(3) to include an enlarged approach at the **food system scale** (Francis et al., 2003) –
transformative potential of territorialized food systems

(4) and to include a **political dimension of transition including communities** and citizens' involvement (Anderson, 2019).
# Territorial schemes for agriculture and food systems transition

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2: Territorial schemes and their dominant AET domain of influence.</figcaption></figure>
Key findings

* A potential in EU for a place-based approaches for transition but still a gap between food systems and biodiversity conservation oriented-schemes

* Three schemes have a strong potential: Natural Regional Parks (FR), Bio-districts (IT), and Eco-model regions (DE)
  ... But different territorial pathways among case studies

* A place-based scheme for territorial transitions to agroecology should take into account:

- Long-term strategies for multi-stakeholders' cooperation and learning processes

- Bottom-up and community supported strategies

- Transversal approach that connects food system strategies and sustainable management of common resources (biodiversity, water, land)