Towards a future network of Living Labs and Research Infrastructures for an agroecology transition in Europe

How should a future network of Living Labs (LLs) and Research Infrastructures (RIs) for the European agroecology transition look like? How will it support inclusive place-based innovation and accelerate the transition at the local, regional and national levels in every European country? And what are best practices of existing agroecology LLs and RIs? With its activities ALL-Ready is paving the way for a future European Network.

ALL-Ready lays the ground for a network of agroecology LLs and RI. The network should aim at connecting and empowering place-based innovation across Europe supporting practices for agricultural production that pilot, create and use diversity. ALL-Ready has launched a pilot network and welcomes initiatives based on their self-evaluation of the added value of and for the network, thanks to a qualitative test focusing on six key aspects.

the status of co-creation of knowledge and innovation;
the way resilience is promoted regarding either the production or the landscape;
the means developed to support climate change adaptation and mitigation,
the intention to build synergies between ecosystem functions;
ways by which efficiency and responsibility in the use of natural resources are promoted;
the efforts to develop circular and solidarity economies and the value given to social and ecological justice.

For this purpose, ALL-Ready listed criteria and indicators to identify organisations for possible inclusion in the future Network of Living Labs (LL) and Research Infrastructures (RI). The criteria and indicators were meant to be used for organisations that might be able to strengthen the transition to agroecology across Europe. Out of those, ALL-Ready developed an online questionnaire with the aim to reflect on the extent to which particular organisations are involved in the transition and the activities that could be accelerated in a network of LLs and RIs. The results of the questionnaire helped to get a first overview of initiatives (based on a developed score) to assess their maturity within the process of transition.

Furthermore, ALL-Ready started an inventory of European LLs and RIs, organised regionally, and examines how they perform or prioritise specific activities according to the indicators and criteria. We picked several of the initiatives with the highest scores and described them in detail as ‘best cases’ and practices of agroecology transition. Furthermore, we focused on the funding mechanisms, on a national and European level, and pointed out the geographic variety in involvement and financial support, as well as differences in the agroecology categories (crop farming, animal welfare, agroforestry etc.) across Europe. To be able to receive additional first-hand information from initiatives about their maturity, main focus or major problems they cope with (e.g. regional funding), ALL-Ready is currently planning four, free-of-charge, half-day regional workshops related to agroecology transition, that will take place in four different countries covering Northern, Southern, Western and Eastern Europe, with the first one in Seville on 2 November, followed by Frankfurt on 18 and Budapest on 24 November.

The future Network should offer upscaling and out-scaling capacities through productive synergies beyond cultural frontiers and the monitoring of the progress of the agroecology transition across Europe. As a whole, the Network will provide capacities to empower the diversity of actors involved as knowledge-makers, to produce a continuous science-policy dialogue, to deliver evidence for a stronger alignment of the funding landscape with the needs for agroecological innovation, and to enable the production of new and relevant transdisciplinary research questions to strengthen the field of agroecology. Not only did the ALL-Ready consortium adjust the missions of the Network, but it began to specify how they can be practically translated: The official Vision & Mission document will be published soon.