BCFN YES! 2016

Agroecology (AE) is being taken up by scientists, civil society and governments as one of the important development pathways to improve the sustainability and equity of agri-food systems. Many of the most promising AE innovations are invisible or marginalized by mainstream policies and funders. The dominant thinking and policy around what constitutes desirable innovation, research and policy largely reflect a now defunct productivist model of development. This narrow paradigm undermines the wider range of economic, social, and political innovations that must be better understood and supported. This international research project will interrogate the meanings and the processes of innovation in agriculture and focuses on the ways that grassroots AE innovations can be better scaled up. We will analyse grassroots innovation in France, the UK and Spain. The project will also focus on how grassroots AE innovation processes can be diffused and how this can be supported by policy research.