ABSTRACT. Theoretical background – The post-modern citizen-consumer appreciates lifestyles characterized by less waste, environmental sustainability and preference of brand products with a greater attention to ethical and value dynamics. These aspects are promoted by the new model of multifunctional and multivalue farm through the valorization of the short supply chain. In the new models of value creation, the short supply chain becomes a competitive instrument for multifunctional and diversified farms, as a response to the asymmetric contractual power, allowing the farm to regain margins of value added, and the consumer to save on the purchase of healthy and safe goods and exercise a function of direct control on the quality of the products. Both producer and citizen-consumer share the value created for behavioral strategies. The direct relationship creates a "welfare effect" due to the use of localized positive externalities, that makes the citizen-consumer available to recognize a premium price (willingness to pay) to the basket of goods and services offered by the farm and the territory, compared to competing products distributed through traditional channels. The short supply chain generates different value chains and plays a social responsibility function not only for the producer and the citizen-consumer but also for the whole local context, generating new forms of value sharing.

Objectives – In this paper the short supply chain is analyzed as a responsible and competitive strategy for multifunctional and multivalue farms, preferred channel of approach of the citizen-consumer to the farm and territory, able to create value and contribute to the improvement of farm and territory reputation. The aim of this work is to analyse the value created and shared through strategies of short supply chain, empirically verifying its consistency and impact on both producer and consumer-citizen.

Methodology – The objective of the analysis will be empirically validated through a direct survey that will concern a sample of both multifunctional farms, which have taken paths of socially responsible short supply chain, and consumers who usually resort to this channel, verifying, in specific local contexts, the impact of this commercialization strategy on value creation and sharing.

Expected results – The results should allow to understand how value is created and shared, and identify the strategic variables of success implemented by this innovative model of direct governance of transactions between producer and citizen-consumer, and indicate useful policy implications.

ABSTRACT. The paper refers to the debates on sus-tainability transitions regarding our present food system in general and agriculture in particularly. The concepts of social metabolism and colonization of nature serve as theoretical and analytical frame-work. The paper is concerned with small-scaled farms, local food systems and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) within Austria. The paper asks whether and in what way small-scaled Austrian farms that apply the concept of CSA changed their socio-economic and ecological performance. We discuss whether and how these changes allow for a more sustainable way of farming, ecologically, so-cially and economically. Results show that the farms became more resilient economically and socially while little has changed ecologically. It becomes obvious that CSA allows small-scaled farms to con-tinue or start organic farming in a way that is com-patible with the farmers´ and consumers´ need and expectations while general market dynamics be-come less important. These examples discussed might serve as inspiration for innovative ways of small-scaled farming, contributing to sustainability transitions.

ABSTRACT. The ‘nested-market’ practice which aims to promote the direct connection between rural peasant producers and urban consumers in mainland China, is an alternative approach to respond to the deterioration of the livelihoods of the rural peasants and the food safety problems of the urban consumers. However, various problems and obstacles also emerged at the same time during the direct encounter due to the enormous discontinuities between the two groups of people. Frequently, there are mis-interconnections, divergences, and even failures of the connection process, and it is usually difficult to build up mutual trust. This paper attempts to reflect the discontinuities between urban consumers and rural producers at the interface of ‘nested-market’; the interactions between consumers and producers, the reactions to problems, the interpretations and narrative about their own actions, as well as the mechanisms of such a mis-interconnection.

According to our study, we argue that the discontinuities at the interface of the connecting process are rooted in the discontinuities of the different modernization courses between rural and urban – the gap is widening and deepening. Therefore, in the contemporary food regime, the relationship between production and consumption reveals a more significant ‘dual’ structure. We are still facing the inevitable challenge of how to bridge the gap and convert discontinuities into continuities in building an alternative food system, which is a slow process of difficult adjustments and adaptations between producers and consumers.

ABSTRACT. Italy, for its particular shape, is one of the countries most characterized by agricultural activities within the park areas, the presence of which is one of the most characteristic elements of the landscape, occupying vast areas both in coastal areas than in the interior. In these areas, agriculture is identified mainly in the local production, often one of the main economic resources of the territory. The proposed research is part of a wider project that aims to enhance the overall biodiversity in the Italian agro-food sector, with particular reference to local productions that insist in areas of particular environmental sensitivity. The research project aims to reconstruct the history of some traditional products of Italian agriculture from production to consumption, estimating economic, social and environmental impact. This work presents the most significant results of the analysis conducted on the Madonie Provola, that is a typical cow cheese produced in Madonie Regional Park (Sicily) The methodology used is that of the case study (Creswell, Maietta, 2002; Laws et al., 2003; Yin, 2002), approach widely used to study in Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology. The interviews are intended to collect the information about the production costs of Provola, the environmental and the social sustainability of Provola and the marketing analysis. The economic analysis conducted by financial ratios and the calculation of the cost of production of Provola based on the use of the simplified balance sheet showed a great profit for farmers. The companies surveyed are practicing sustainable agriculture: in general the environmental indicators used have values comparable. In particular, the companies do not resort to the use of plant protection products and bring only organic fertilizers by manuring; the value of the indicator suggests a practice of self-sufficiency forage for extensive farms and therefore the use of a sustainable grazing. From the social point of view, the farms have a very low risk of abandonment of farming, because of are run by young farmers, including women, and the company's agricultural profitability is low. It is also estimated high probability of permanence of the population in the rural area as companies do not make use of temporary labor. Moreover, this factor represents a way to preserve agriculture and culture in rural areas.

ABSTRACT. Background and Aims On 15 May 2014 the TAR Lazio (Italian Administrative Tribunal) set aside the specification of the product “Piadina Romagnola PGI”. This very underestimated case must make us reflect on what PDO/PGI schemes really are and what their true potential is. Indeed, the restrictive interpretation of GI protection accepted by the Administrative Tribunal (that may be reversed on appeal) may not be completely in line with the text of the relevant EU Regulation 1151/2012. The paper is aimed at reflecting on the nature of EU PDO/PGI schemes with the intention of understanding what practical and strategic role they can/should play in the protection of origin products and what should be left to private-based tools such as collective marks.

Methodology The legal analysis conducted in the paper predominantly applies a conceptual approach. It is necessary to investigate the concept of EU PGIs and its underlying policy as well as that of marks. Once the legal function and essence of these instruments is clarified, it is possible to draw some conclusions based on the “Piadina Romagnola” case and especially on the analysis of the positions of the opposing parties.

Results Art 5(2) EU Regulation 1151/2012 defines the characteristics that a product must have in order to qualify for PGI protection. The artisanal production of the good is not among them, nor the high-quality nature of it. In addition, the whole Regulation presents some gaps that allow for some flexibility. A more restrictive standard can be achieved through private forms of protection such as collective and certification marks. Indeed, this strategic use of marks was explicitly accepted by the annulled specification.

Conclusions The “Piadina Romagnola” case shows two different ways of construing GI protection. The first one considers it as a way to involve and benefit different undertakings, artisanal or not, that are linked to a specific territory. The second one considers them as a pure indicator of niche quality opened to few selected producers. However, this view is less in line with the text of Regulation 1151/2012 and implies a call for a re-conceptualization of the institute. In the last analysis, the potential of GI rules as well as their strategic use must be realistically assessed. If specific groups of producers want to achieve a higher level of protection, they should probably resort to the trademark system in addition to GI protection without expecting too much from GI rules alone.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this paper is to present the process, followed by a producers group from the Kopaonik mountainous region in South-West Serbia, of developing a regional branding for their local products. It also provides insights in comparing the two approaches: GI for a single product vs. territorial label for a basket of goods. This case comes from a FAO/EBRD project of supporting GIs development in Serbia through pilots, which is a result of EBRD partnerships/collaboration with leading producers in Serbia. In this pilot, Foodland Company – producer of quality traditional F&V products - was interested in regional branding of Kopaonik products in collaboration with local producers and processors. There were two options: defining a key local product as GI, or a regional label for a basket of local F&V products. Kopaonik is famous for its winter sports, mountain attractions and naturalness, but it is also a production/collection area for different fruits, especially wild blueberry. After a consultation process and inputs from advisers, the working group (producers and local self-government) chose to go for the GI approach for the Kopaonik Ajvar (a traditional quality preparation from grilled pepper). Justification of this choice provides elements for comparing two approaches (GI-product or label-territory). The common point was to use the Kopaonik’s reputation for promotion of local products and to focus on a single product that can benefit from the Serbian GI policies, perspectives of EU market and the high quality GI product image. Additional value of the case is that the original working group has formed an Association “Kopaonik original”, which will apply for registration of the GI Kopaonik Ajvar and will be in charge of GI management/promotion. In future, their intention is to lead the processes for other local products too (like blueberry slatko). The association includes representatives of bigger and smaller processors from the Kopaonik area, and is actively supported by local self-governments and Touristic organisations. Finally, this case extends the concept of GI as an IP tool to protecting existing reputation: the Kopaonik is well known, but not yet associated to the ajvar (according to the consumer survey). The GI strategy will help transferring reputation of Kopaonik - natural and ski resort - to a local product with all characteristics of high quality product linked to the geographical origin.

ABSTRACT. The actual legal framework of Vietnam for protecting geographical names designating origin products, remodelled in 2005 to allow the country’s accession to the WTO, confirmed the choice of a sui generis geographical indication (GI) system with the particularity of a registration and management processes driven by state authorities through a top-down approach. In practice, collective or certification trademarks (TMs) are increasingly used as origin labels, following the same path of a state-driven process, with around 130 collective TMs and 36 certification TMs rather than with GIs (42). This is mainly explained by the very demanding criteria of the proof of the qualitative link with the origin for GIs, which can almost be considered as going beyond European ‘experience. It thus requires resources and technical expertise that are lacking, which make the TM road easier. However, some products protected through a TM could in theory meet the criteria for a GI based on the reputation, a valid criterion.

Drawing upon case studies of collective TMs, certification TMs and GIs in Vietnam, the paper will show that the choice of a particular means of protection in Vietnam may sometimes be done in an arbitrary way, answering to a public policy of quotas. Further, it will seek to demonstrate that the choice between GIs or TM is not the most relevant factor to contribute to local economic development, preserve traditional knowledge and conserve biodiversity. Indeed, a number of contextual factors related to the actual operation of the initiatives, including the marketing channels, seem to be more significant. Moreover there is little awareness about the weaker level of protection conferred to TM compared to GIs, with trademarks including a logo and thus not enforceable against other uses of the name alone. Finally, in light of the arbitrary decision to go for TM or GIs, it seems legitimate to question the appropriateness of the EU’s preferential policy for GI protection over TM in the newly signed Protocol to the Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Partnership and Cooperation between Vietnam and the EU where only Vietnamese GIs will be legally recognised in the European Union but none of the Vietnamese TMs. A good idea could have been to see whether some TM could have been converted into GIs, on the ground that the link with the origin is present in most of the certification TM and the government being behind TMs.

ABSTRACT. This study analyses household’s land enlargement behaviour and their cropping decision change in northern China. Information needed for the study was collected through a questionnaire survey in 2014, covering 1079 farm households in four provinces in northern China, namely Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu. The sample farm households are mainly apple growers, chosen as specialized farms, among them, there are 203 households rent land to enlarge their farm size, accounts for 18.81% of total. Moreover, 177 of these households use their leased land for apple production, which takes up 93.17% of households who rent land. The descriptive result reveals that land transaction promote agricultural professionalization. The regression analysis revealed that land-holding size, subsidy, land transferability, and income per unit of land are positively related to both land rent and apple cultivation decision. Off-farm work time and negotiation time has negative impact on both land rent and apple cultivation decision. Whether household rent land from their relatives and friends and possession of rotavator positively affect household land rental decision. Whether household have tricycle is positive related to household apple cultivation decision.

ABSTRACT. Olive growing played for centuries a major role in the central Regions of Italy, notably in Latium and Abruzzo, with acres of olive groves surrounding hill towns and hamlets, part of a strong tradition deeply rooted in the land. Nowadays, it provides a substratum of common knowledge within the countless variations of local cultivars featuring different landscape patterns within a single land cover class.

Abruzzo's and Latium’s "Oil Cultures", where identity and economy issues find their balance, have been conferred the Protected Designation of Origin brand, DOP Aprutino-pescarese e DOP Sabina (Reg. CE 1263/96) according to strict technical production policies. Lately, the Common Agricultural Policy, locally enforced by rural development programs (RDPs), has enhanced the establishment of consortia collecting small producers (2014 was the International Year of family farming) by providing basic services: certification, presses, transparency in international trade, etc.

In these regions olive growing dates back to the Roman era and to the early Middle Ages, when monastic orders (Benedictine) settled in and shaped their huge estates, trying different species and improving yields. Centuries later, in the 1800s, a pervasive sharecropping reform leading to incentives for the planting of olive trees resulted in a dramatic change in land use with the progressive transformation of fields and woods into olive groves. Ever since, this economy has supplemented farmers' income from agricultural work. In several rural areas close to the cities, olive groves, once grown in combination with other crops and now, ever since the terrible frost of 1956, in specialized cultivations, have somehow preserved the structural features of the historic landscape. Their persistence in land use, which can even be read as a material survival of several tree specimens, is a tangible sign that olive farming holds its own against urban sprawl.

Since the destiny of our regions is increasingly tied up with the efficiency and resilience of open spaces, related agri-forestry strategies and health and food security policies, the attractiveness of these peri-urban contexts lies in coupling the privileges and facilities of the city with the benefits of the countryside: a better living environment, a healthier lifestyle, and also nature close at hand.

ABSTRACT. Global value chains (GVCs) in the agrifood sector have transformed the face of global production and are reshaping world trade to an increasing extent. This raises questions about land-use transformation trends in the primary products’ originating countries, in response to changing international consumer demands, and the implications for food security. To address these issues, we focused on how Peru’s land has been displaced in response to international coffee demand for the period from 1995 to 2013. Results show that consumers around the world have stimulated the growth of export-oriented agricultural production in Peru. This has created new opportunities for upgrading in GVCs; however, land-use impacts embedded in the international agricultural trade lead to new concerns over local food security. This paper argues that to understand the land-use change process and links with GVCs is fundamental to the food security challenge.

Keywords – Coffee; Peru; Global Value Chain; Market Orientation; International Trade; Agricultural Frontier

ABSTRACT. In the Italian context, neoliberal policies aiming at pursing new dynamics of accumulation and economic development in times of crisis have been promoted with even more evidence and contradictions according to a tendency generalized to the European. They are centred on new forms of privatization of public and common goods and the exploitation of natural resources. Agriculture and land are also themselves invested by this process – in some ways comparable to the land grab till now analyzed especially in the global South. In Italy different local groups and institutions, movements and networks of farmers and citizens are engaged in practices and initiatives for the protection of natural resources, local agriculture and the promotion of sustainable agriculture. The question of land use has become really relevant in this perspective especially after national laws (D.L Salva Italia in 2012 and D.L. Terre Vive in 2014) and their application at the regional level have promoted the liberalization of prospecting and extraction activities (for oil, gas and minerals) and the selling of public lands. After the reconstruction of the general framework within which changes in land use are developing, this paper focuses its analysis on some case studies in Italy concerning local and regional policies as well collective initiatives around land use addressing different societal expectations for alternative models of agriculture pointing out their innovative as well as controversial aspects.

ABSTRACT. Agroecology is a scientific and social practice critical of modern agriculture and its impacts. It fosters socio-ecological sustainability through the reconnection of social and ecological systems, and a balanced use of local resources. It emphasizes the application of participatory methodologies and seeks synergies between scientific and traditional ecological knowledge within a process of adaptation to local cultural and environmental conditions. As a multi-dimensional framework it articulates three perspectives and scales: productive (farm level), social (community), and political (society). In the urban context agroecology is a common benchmark among self-governed community gardens, which in turn are claimed to be mechanisms for an agroecological transition in the cities. In this paper we approach how the agroecological framework is implemented in those urban gardening experiences. In particular, we study how and to what extent each of the three agroecological dimensions is being developed. Our case study is Barcelona, Spain, where self-governed community gardens are bottom-up gardening initiatives started by different social movements and groups, most of them originally squatted. Our field work was conducted from March to June 2014 through a combination of qualitative methods, including the collection of background information, semi-structured interviews, field diary, and participant observation. We also performed a review of the available literature on urban gardens in Barcelona, including scientific articles, master’s thesis, and grey literature. Our results show that the social and political dimensions of the agroecological framework are approached by urban gardens in a larger extent compared to the productive one. Indeed, stated motivations and benefits are mainly framed in social and political terms, pointing out that urban gardens enhance social cohesion and promote collective action, a result backed up in literature. However, we find that specific references to productive dimension-related benefits of urban gardens (i.e. the maintenance of agrobiodiversity and its associated knowledge) are less abundant. We conclude that further research should deeply investigate the role of agrobiodiversity in urban gardens, since the maintenance of agrobiodiversity and its associated traditional knowledge is a basic element for social-ecological systems’ sustainability.

ABSTRACT. We have witnessed how urban community gardens have been stemmed by grass-root initiatives, based on the commitment of engaged citizens. Urban gardens, locally organized fruit orchards and different forms of urban agriculture are creating spaces for community building and collaborative learning as well as touching upon often forgotten questions of environmental justice. They make visible and advocate in questions of climate change, sustainable resource management, biodiversity and environmentally compatible and sustainable consumption. As places of self-organization and participation, environmental policy awareness is strengthened and promoted. Not only do these initiatives have a broad medial impact and influence on public opinion, they also reach and integrate population segments not traditionally taking part of the “green” and environment-affine discourse.

Despite the positive response towards this new urban phenomenon within both sciences, policy, as well as planners and in the media, their situation is often precarious. Based on our recent work supporting new gardens in their initial starting phase and evaluating their needs and risks, we have found key issues such as long-term availability of land and financial strains often putting the longevity of the gardens at risk. Despite growing demand of space within the city, local authorities are losing influence and power to support new initiatives in their efforts to attain and maintain community gardens. Therefore, to allow the proliferation and evolvement of these educative and experimental spaces, and to allow for new social groups to be incorporated, we have to find new strategies and partners. On the basis of our past work we have identified a possible key actor as a future partner for the development of urban community gardens – housing associations. Through the cooperation with housing associations, we not only influence sustainable housing and urban development, but also reach new target groups. 2.5 million homes in Germany are owned by municipal housing companies. 5.2 million people live in them. They have access to land that often is both socially and ecologically un- or under-used. Tapping into this potential can contribute to sustainable, resilient urban development as well as the construction of strategic food reserves in densely populated areas. We are evaluating the potentials and requirements of integrating community gardens into the work and planning of housing associations as a form to proliferate these spaces as community based answers to environmental and social injustice and as a way of incorporating productive landscapes in our living environments.

ABSTRACT. Dhaka is one of the fastest growing megacities of the world where about 15 million people live in 360 km2. It is the largest and fastest growing city of Bangladesh. A large number of people are moving from countryside to Dhaka for their subsistence, which already exceeded the carrying capacity of the city. New settlements and infrastructures are being developed on agricultural lands. Due to over population, poor management and unplanned settlement, it is experiencing multi-dimensional problems and challenges. With rapid and unplanned urbanization, incidence of urban poverty increases alarmingly in Dhaka. It is losing some 2.5 hectares of fertile land every day to brick kilns, housing projects, industrial structures and roads. According to agricultural statistics, four ‘upazilas’ and three metro areas have lost 7,982 hectares of agricultural land between 2002 and 2011. The loss of agricultural land has forced about 300,000 farmers to change professions. It has been reported that 53% water body and wetlands of Dhaka city have been decreased in last decade due to induced landfill for infrastructural development, while 59% of vegetation and cultivated land has been reduced. Urban people have to rely on rural areas for supplying food. Climate change is worsening the situation. As a result, food security of urban people in terms of food availability and quality is very poor. Urban people spend more than half of their income on food. In many cases, people cannot afford food as the price is getting higher. Therefore, food production at household level in urban areas could be a substantial solution. In Dhaka, where land is most expensive, traditional agriculture is difficult. However, crops such as vegetables, fruits and herbs can be produced on flat and accessible rooftops with a good design by using available resources in Roof Top Gardening (RTG). The gardeners buy their materials at the adjacent markets of the city. If proper technological and technical supports are provided, most of the owners of the residential buildings are interested in RTG. This will ensure the supply of quality food at household level and improve the urban living environment. Our paper discusses the current problems of Dhaka has to face in food provision and presents the results of a design week, which delivered several design solutions to combat food challenges at different spatial scales.

ABSTRACT. The paper addresses the question of how urban community gardens contribute to food sovereignty. While the concept of food sovereignty was developed by peasant movements to address the injustices in the current globalized industrial food system, it has also come to be applied to urban contexts. For purposes of this paper, food sovereignty is broken down into six elements: 1) Access to adequate, nutritious, culturally appropriate foods; 2) Sustainable income/ livelihoods; 3) Localisation as well as democratisation of the food system; 4) Environmental sustainability of the food system; 5) Empowerment of marginalised groups; 6) Empowerment of women/ promotion of gender equity. The paper focuses on access to nutritious foods, food system localisation and empowerment, while also considering the importance of scale in assessing garden impacts on food sovereignty. Research was conducted at two case study gardens in socio-economically deprived areas of Johannesburg, South Africa, with additional research at other gardens around the city. The research found that the gardens do increase access to nutritious foods, but that levels of vegetable consumption (by garden members and the surrounding community) do not necessarily increase to recommended levels. The research found evidence of food system localisation at the case study gardens, in the form of face-to-face relationships between customers and farmers; shortened food value chain; and a contribution to the local economy. Gardeners report gaining knowledge and skills. This form of empowerment may occur through training or simply by learning from experience. However, there is little indication of transformed social relations, or even of increased consciousness of the need for such social transformation. While community food gardens do contribute to food sovereignty in a number of ways, their transformative potential is not being fully realised. In order to transform the food system and people’s relationship to it, additional education and improved networking opportunities will be required. Thus in addition to the technical assistance already being provided, government agencies and the non-governmental organisations that support food gardens should consider providing these types of support.

ABSTRACT. The dominant role of global food supply chains to feed urban dwellers, and claims to solve food and nutrition safety (FNS) while facing global challenges linked to resource scarcity, environmental degradation and climate change (Morgan and Sonnino, 2010; Marsden and Sonnino, 2011) call for empirical research on how to reorganize the food system effectively. Although European citizens are generally food secure today, this is not the case for all European citizens: 80 million people live below the poverty line and among them, 30 million suffer from malnutrition (Source: Eurostat and European Congress of Experts on Nutrition, 2009). Next to quantity, availability and the quality of food increasingly the origin of food is on the agenda: how food is produced, consumed and distributed (Goodman and Depuis, 2002; van der Ploeg, 2014). While in modern metropolitan areas processes of urbanisation and industrialisation often result in the abandonment of land that traditionally has been used for farming, stockbreeding and forestry activities, the remaining green space in metropolitan areas increasingly is considered to be an asset to deliver multiple sustainability and health benefits to the urban population is (Forster and Getz Escudero, 2014). This combined with different food crisis of over the past decades results in practitioners to reverse the disconnection between agroforestry production and food consumption. In this context we focus on how a multitude of actors (farmers, consumers, urban and rural dwellers, market enterprises, NGOs, and policymakers) strategically sustains food security in the city-region of Vigo (Galicia, Spain). Like in many cities in Europe and in the global South also in the case study area grassroots initiatives recover (potential) synergies between often-underused green space and the implementation of a more sustainable way of food production. Among the initiatives are urban gardeners, small-scaled enterprises, horticulture farmers and neighbourhood communities. They apply new approaches to urban and peri-urban farming, thereby each of them touching upon the importance of multifunctional land use in combination with closing cycles and short food chains. This contribution identifies, maps, and analyses the activities that perform ecologically (so as organic farming) and use locally available resources (so as biomass production in use as compost), and selling the local produce directly. Finally it draws conclusions on how the grassroots initiatives contribute to a more sustainable agro-food system as well as on how governance strategies recognise the importance of this alternative food system, and enable or block its performance.

ABSTRACT. Green Care is currently understood in Finland as an umbrella concept for the services utilizing nature-related interventions for benefits of various target groups in the social and rehabilitation arena as well as in the educational sector. Since introduction of the concept in Finland in 2006 it has became popular among the rural institutions (research, education and extension organizations) and rural entrepreneurs. In Finland the concept has emerged interest among particular broad audience and type of actors. Accordingly many Green Care projects have been launched across the country especially during past decade. At the same time it has been great challenge to achieve a mutual understanding over the consistency of the concept and the activities/phenomena. The definitions of Green Care vary from country to country reflecting the policy setting, current practices, and the interests of the promoters. In Finland efforts have been put to find a common definition for Green Care.

The evolution of a concept can be seen as an expansive learning cycle/process according Yrjö Engeström (1987, 2010). Expansive learning leads to formation of a new, expanded object and patterns of activity oriented to the object. Expansive learning calls for formative interventions. In formative intervention the subjects face a problematic and contradictory object, which they analyze and expand by constructing a novel concept with contents of which is not known ahead of time to the researchers. In formative interventions a researcher aims at provoking and sustaining an expansive transformation process led and owned by the practitioners. The contents and course of the intervention are subject to negotiation.

The Finnish researchers have conducted formative interventions in the evolution of Green Care in Finland since 2006. Their work has been influenced by the international discourse on the topic, and later on by a number of Finnish research and development activities in the field. As a result of number of activities, the Green Care is currently considered to compose of two types of services: 1) Green care, as cure and rehabilitation and 2) Green empowering targeted to prevention, education and recreation of special groups. This division is a result of a systematic analyse of the customer types, targets of services, requirements for education of service producer, laws, regulations and quality attached to the service group, and types of methods used while providing the services. The paper analyses the development of the concept and the typology of the Green Care services.

ABSTRACT. Social farming (SF) is an innovative practice differently organised both in EU and all over the world, and organised in accordance with local needs, cultures, institutions and resources. SF links agriculture with a broad range of sectors (health, social affairs, education, justice), related competencies, and it match with diverse rules and policies related to each of the sectors involved. SF mobilises local unexpected resources from agriculture in order to meet local emerging social and economic needs. Social innovation (SI) can be considered one pillar of the EU 2020 strategy and all EU policies are translating the SI concept into tools and policy instruments that in the case of rural policies are related to innovation partnership and operative groups. This is why the organisation of SF initiatives and its formal recognition is the outcome of a strong process which implies strong negotiation and knowledge brokerage able to locally - but also regionally and nationally - reorganise the interest of many private and public stakeholders and to re-orient their attitude and way of acting along towards an innovative perspective. Perhaps, in some Country SF is embedded in the State-Market logic where the State recognizes and pay new providers –farmers- using nature based solutions (soft subsidiarity specialised model of SF). In others cases the innovative core regards the use of natural tools toward the negotiation of principles like co-production of economic and social values, a deep subsidiarity among many actors and the promotion of civic economy (deep subsidiarity communitarian model of SF). Each SF models has diverse outcomes and in the same time demands specific processes able to foster innovation. Especially in the communitarian model of SF, the evolution can be better analysed under the lens of transition theories and the analysis of boundary objects able to link and to attract the interest of many actors into a new arena of interests where to co-design small bricks of a new society. Starting from the Italian situation and the results of a research action process in Tuscany, the paper focuses on SF as a SI process and its dynamic in its development process in the light of new political tools defined in the perspective of European Innovation Partnership and Operative groups (RDP 2014/2020).

ABSTRACT. Public services and social support are specially required in rural areas, characterized by a depopulation pattern, aging of rural communities and isolation; as a consequence of the transition from rural to urban societies. Thus, the welfare state crisis makes rural areas especially vulnerable to the decline of public services. At the same time, rural areas and its ecosystem services are vulnerable to global change consequences. Rural areas and its ecosystems are the source of most essential services demanded by both urban and rural areas (e.g. food from farming, forestry, genetic materials, climate regulation, mass stabilization and control of erosion rates, cultural heritage, aesthetic experiences, etc.). Ecosystem services have an impact on economy, cultural, ethnological or environmental values. Though, the current human transformation of land cover have promoted the loss and abandon of most intangible ecosystem services (not included in conventional markets), especially those involved in the regulation of ecosystem processes (regulating services) or those related with the spiritual enrichment, culture, recreation and aesthetic experiences (cultural services). Under this context, neither public services (state/market public expenditures), neither public goods (in terms of ecosystem services) could be guaranteed, and new models are required to maintain their supply. They would need to (1) look for different sources of public services with an emphasis on the role of nature on human wellbeing, (2) rethink the governance framework behind public services provision, uncovering the role of local communities and non-formal institutions on it. Social farming is a good example of transition management and social innovation tackling both aspects. In this study, we present social farming and ecosystem service approaches in rural and agrarian landscapes. We use the social-ecological system framework to analyze the complex relationships established between biophysical and social systems in the context of agricultural areas conducting social farming. Then, we explore the key elements of both approaches and their potential association. We intend to facilitate the social farming approach to embrace its environmental relevance, being not only a social innovation solution but a nature-based solution. At the same time this provides an opportunity to find the explicit connection between ecosystem conservation and human wellbeing, uncovering the health values provided by agricultural areas and ecosystem services. It would also provides a case where governance solutions are found beyond market instruments, uncovering the relevance of bottom-up approaches and community institutional possibilities on the governance of agroecosystems to increase their environmental conservation.

ABSTRACT. A wide range of terms such as Social Farming, Care Farming, Farming for Health, Green Care in agriculture, etc. describe the diverse approaches utilising nature as a means for providing health and wellbeing services to vulnerable groups through structured and organised programmes on farms. Growing public awareness of the importance of nature for human health, on the one hand, and the need for sources of additional income for marginalised farms, on the other, are contributing to the swift development of farm-based social, pedagogical and care activities across Europe.

Many of these Social/Care Farming (SCF) concepts appear to be well designed in terms of organisational structure and the functionality of services. But the emphasis is mainly put on the model as such while the role of the physical environment and the local communities tends to be utterly neglected. As a matter of fact, the use of SCFs in working with target groups prone to social exclusion, such as drug addicts or ex-convicts, has in many cases provoked a negative response from the local population and thus prevented the establishment of SCF facilities. Social capital theory, which was initially proposed by Bourdieu (1986) and further elaborated by Coleman (1988), Putnam (1993, 2000) and others, might serve as an explanation for this reaction on the part of local communities. Social capital refers to connections among individuals, i.e. social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from these. In that sense social capital is closely related to what some have called civic virtue. The difference is that social capital calls attention to the fact that civic virtue is most powerful when embedded in a dense network of reciprocal social relations. The amount of social capital revealed in networks of reciprocity, honesty, trust and tolerance relies on interdependencies between socioeconomic development and traditions of civic involvement. Social capital allows citizens to resolve collective problems more easily. Joiners also become more tolerant, less cynical and more empathetic towards those who are less fortunate, and thus also more tolerant of vulnerable social groups.

The presentation will discuss the results of a comprehensive survey conducted in three Austrian case study regions. The findings suggest that policy makers should recognise local social capital more clearly as a key issue in the process of establishing new SCFs. After all, even the best concept can fail if implemented in the wrong place at the wrong time.

ABSTRACT. Pedagogical rural tourism is characterized as a set of educational activities undertaken in the context of rural properties using agricultural and livestock activities as well as natural and cultural resources with small improvements in the existing infrastructures as a didactic resource. The main objective of this research was to analyze the educational role played by agriculture based on the pedagogical rural tourism and its relations with social, environmental, economic, cultural, and health and food safety functions. For that purpose, 8 entrepreneurs from the “Viva Ciranda” pedagogical tourism project in Santa Catarina, 5 entrepreneurs from the “Rural Tourism and School – Echoing” project in the Federal District, and 9 entrepreneurs from the Pedagogical Rural Tourism of the State of São Paulo were interviewed. The analysis of the data showed that the practice of this kind of activity has a set of features that benefits several aspects: economic ones – allowing the owners to complement their household income by adding value to their agricultural products and the sale of services developed in the properties; social ones – related to the improvement of owners’ self-esteem and the recognition by the community of the work developed in the properties; educational ones – by enabling school groups the exposure to knowledge and practices associated with rural and natural environments; environmental ones – evidenced by the concern to promote environmental education; and, food security ones – from direct contact with activities that promote the recognition of the origin of the food consumed.

ABSTRACT. In February 2015, the Territory Landscape Plan of the Apulia Region (PPTR) was approved. This planning tool is characterized by a high cultural and political value, as social, economic and cultural stakeholders were involved in the construction process. The aim concerns the definition of objectives, strategies and projects for the increase of the quality and usability of the regional landscapes, hence for the growth of the community awareness towards historical and cultural values. To this end, the plan focuses on rural areas and agricultural sector, putting them in a holistic local and socio-economic context. This strategy is implemented through the town-country pact, one of the five local projects proposed by the PPTR. Such an approach is very relevant since Apulia is characterized by unique and variegated rural landscapes that have strongly contributed, in recent years, to the growth of the regional rural tourism. One of the areas that are consolidating their tourist sector is the northern Salento, in which natural beauties, such as rural and coast landscapes, coexist, characterized by olive groves, historical rural houses and charming towns. Hence, the research aims to study the context and specificity of agritourism in Ostuni and Fasano territories, neighbouring municipalities with similar landscapes that are consolidating their districts based on the excellence of the rural tourism. These areas, however, highlight some differences: on the one hand (Ostuni), there is a greater sensitivity to the landscape aspects, on the other hand (Fasano) there is more attention to the quality of the services offered. Therefore, the study analyses these two rural contexts by means of the relationship between agritourism and territorial framework in order to check the sustainability of the development processes and their consistency with the programmatic guidelines of the PPTR. Qualitative approaches, such as semi-structured interviews and photographic material will be used. The latter, in addition to the traditional illustrative purposes, is a research tool aimed at the interpretation of the rural landscape through techniques of the sociological analysis, such as photo-elicitation, visual focus groups, etc.

ABSTRACT. The Italian Agritourism is a really original formula, a model with peculiar characteristics, different from any other country. It is no coincidence that Italy is the only European Country with a specific legislation for the enhancement of the rural heritage and the national territory. Nowadays the Italian model is the focus of interest for many countries in the world because of its ability to exploit local resources; however, it has always shown a fundamental weakness in the great diversity of forms and rules established by local law. Also the difficulty in clearly communicating the quality of available services was an important weakness. An effort to harmonize design and communication of the quality was therefore necessary. This project was launched in 2013 by the National Observatory of Agritourism, which has entrusted the technical working group inside ISMEA the implementation. In order to carry out the project, characteristics and trends in domestic and foreign demand were deeply analyzed. The desk and field research conducted by Ismea have highlighted that the demand of an urbanized society is particularly complex, also because it comes out from sometimes contradictory elements. Ismea research also led to several hypotheses about market segmentation; an example is the model mainly based on two parameters: • the preference of experiencing in a dynamic way instead of a restful and relaxing stay • the propensity to live on the farm doing the activities proposed by the farmer instead of considering the farm as a base for visiting the attractivenesses of the area. Every group of consumer shows significantly different requests and expectations. Even more complicated is the picture of the foreign tourists, composed of really peculiar cultures, behaviors and feelings. Some areas of the world seek tangible elements (such as comfort, plenty of food, healthy products, etc.), while others have a propensity for intangible aspects: intense feelings, unforgettable emotions, unusual and genuine situations, history and culture of rural planet, green philosophy, the idea of preserving local areas. The Ismea research have resulted in a national scheme for classifying the quality of services, subsequently accepted by almost all local governments; it is based on a shared list of objective requirements (quality descriptors), completed by a system of easy to control scores, a selected list of important requirements, an institutional and national brand, a graphics system to identify categories.

ABSTRACT. Among the actions aimed at contributing to the fight against famine and poverty in the poorest regions of Brazil, the Food Acquisition Program (PAA), created by the Federal Government in 2003, has proposed as the strengthening of family farming. This strengthening is through income generation, in addition to promoting access of the population to food and nutrition insecurity purchasing healthy foods. This program allows the formation of an arrange of socio-productive inclusion, involving the countryside and urban areas. In this context, the state of Pernambuco, investigated the progress of the PAA in the County of Garanhuns, located in the Territory of the Southern Agreste. Even with a significant rate of urban population, with about 89.1% of its 136,057 inhabitants, the city proves to be as important center of convergence for the other municipalities of its surroundings that make up the territory, largely with the supremacy of rural population. In Garanhuns, PAA is operated in buy direct mode and simultaneous donation since 2012, a partnership between the County government and the Agronomic Institute of Pernambuco - IPA. To that end, acquired at market price fresh products and processed products (cakes, pastries, cookies etc.). Currently, 34 farmers are registered with the IPA to provide their products alone and can get an annual income of up to R$ 6,500.00 (2,000 U$). Foods acquired are passed on to 10 charities that receive and assist about 1,000 people in a situation of food and nutrition insecurity among children, young and old. Therefore, it appears that the implementation of the PAA in the purchase and simultaneous donation mode enables family opportunities for local farmers market opening and completion of income; still benefit a needy public wide age range, which will have access to a higher quality food. However, problems with the program regularly gives rise to the need for a continuous process of procurement and supply of feed, requiring more concrete actions to what actually occurs strengthening family agriculture in the municipality and the help of the public served with the donations, benefiting an increased number of persons.

ABSTRACT. The thesis addresses the constructing meanings in the food security and the key local agents in the reconnection between producers and consumers of agroecological food by means of the Food Acquisition Program for Family Farming (PAA) in Brazil. It is an operational dynamic of the Food Bank of Urban Rural Formation Center Irmã Araújo (CEFURIA) empirical analyse. This center assists the population affected by food and nutrition insecurity and social vulnerability in Paraná state. In this respect, agroecological farming families implement a project mode of Simultaneous Donation of Program. This paper aims to analyze reconnect producers and consumers in the institutionalization process of this policy as a short circle commercialization of agroecological products, as well as to measure the public intervention in meeting the basic needs of individuals. It is assumed that the construction of social relationships is linked to the inherent characteristics of social agents that operate as individuals assisted by the program, and that are able to influence and 'create' reconnection factors. Furthermore, it is assumed that such social relationships are affected by normative and regulative operational dynamics that are created at a local scope by social agents that implement the Program. Finally, it is presumed that social relationships created by social agents can influence the creation and modification of shared meanings and values, as well as the behaviors and attitudes in promoting the feeling of reconnection between producers and consumers of agroecological food. This debate aims to incite a cognitive approach focusing on individual and organizational social action in the institutionalization process of a public policy that has been analyzed in recent studies due to its capability to reconfigure production, distribution and food consumption models, facing disconnections of the current food system. Thus, a qualitative methodology was applied. Participative observations and semi-structured interviews with agents located in different points of the Food Bank of CEFURIA, from production to consumption were conducted. The results were as expected. The trajectories and views of individuals and organizations involved in the Program implementation in Curitiba and in the settlement of Lapa, as well as the organizational configuration and dynamic operational created by them to execute the Program through the Food Bank of CEFURIA may influence social relationships and creation, modification and sharing of institutional elements along the food circle. These relations may influence attitudes and behaviors of the agents in order to promote reconnection between producers and consumers of food.

ABSTRACT. It is well known that our daily food choices significantly affect not only our personal well-being, but also the environment. Food production is very intensive in terms of land and water resources, and greenhouse gases emissions. Starting from this premise, the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition has devised in 2010 the Double Pyramid, a graphic framework aimed to relate the environmental and nutritional impacts of food consumption in order to increase people’s awareness on these issues. This paper will present the scientific underpinnings of the Double Pyramid as well as its usefulness as a framework for appraising and comparing the impacts of different consumption patterns.The Double Pyramid consists of two frameworks, outlining the relationship between food products and nutritional value according to the principles of the Mediterranean diet (Food Pyramid), and food products and environmental impacts in terms of water, land and CO2 intensity (Environmental Pyramid). The Double Pyramid shows a strong correlation between healthy and environmentally-friendly products. The food products whose consumption is recommended to be more frequent, such as fruit, vegetables, and cereals are also those associated with low environmental impact. The concept has been tested by assessing the environmental impact of two different menus, with similar macronutrient profile but different quantity and quality of animal products. The results suggest that a diet based on the principles of the Double Pyramid generates lower environmental impacts than a diet relying mainly on a daily intake of meat.Thanks to its communicative efficacy, the Double Pyramid is certainly a valuable tool for helping the consumers decide what to eat on a daily basis in order to adopt a sustainable diet. This paper will also provide an estimation of the impact generated by the use of the Double Pyramid model on consumption patterns of the general population.

ABSTRACT. In recent years practices carrying social and economic innovation through agriculture and food production have rapidly grown, both in numbers and in terms of quality and attention paid by the society. Even more modern economic sectors (like informatics or tourism) are looking with interest to these potential innovative charge coming from the primary sector. These practices find the way for identifying and implementing solutions that, besides being economically sustainable, contribute to the social and environmental community improvement. These initiatives are “revolutionary solutions”, carrying real social innovation in a lot of fields, like: environmental and nutritional education to new generations (school gardens, pedagogical practices,…); environmental safeguard (biodiversity, landscape, energy, ...); governance, with modern and participated experiences (food planning, common goods management, urban-rural solutions,…); social justice paths (food access, social farming, critical consumption, poverty reduction,…); urban planning (community gardens, farmers’ markets,…). These practices are related to food production, based on both rural and urban communities’ wide needs and requirements. Often involves a large number and kind of stakeholders, each with a different expertise and role as farmers, third sector, institutions, users, consumers, different forms of active citizenship. Local food systems as well as individual practices and their impacts on the development of territories, may be analyzed by using a wide range of theoretical and methodological tools, from very different points of view, and with the contribution of various sciences and expertises, within a multidisciplinary debate, able to involve the society. However there is a strong feeling that, even for a strong dynamic of change taking place at present, in the fields there is a lot more innovation than normally encoded and debated. We have now the need to bring out the practices that proved to be effective carriers of solutions, in order to better understand them also from different scientific view points. In this perspective, the aim of this working group is to give voice to the leading actors of the change, the ones working in the field, by selecting practices that may deeply change the way food and farming are designed, organized and managed. Aim of this working group is also to introduce practices in a context of international research, able to analyze and valorize them by making practices instantly more visible and easier to understand, so to facilitate their transfer in a logic of partnership between field innovators and scientists.

ABSTRACT. We propose short food chains as a revolutionary solution and identify small-scale farmers as the revolutionaries to realize a sustainable and food-secure future. Food chains that are too long and com-plex cannot be understood and its actors will create more problems than they solve. These conclusions are based on recent insights in the origin of cognition suggesting two mindsets: one for problem solving and one for co-creating a sustainable future. Only food chains that are sufficiently short and overseeable can be understood and farmed sustainably. Farmers in food chains that are too long and too complex will gradually deplete the resilience of soils, livestock, and crops, and will harm societal health.

ABSTRACT. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) under its strategic objective to enable inclusive and efficient food systems, is analyzing the role of institutional buyers in the development of smallholder market integration in food supply systems.

An institutional buyer refers to either a public or a private sector entity with a presence in the domestic market that purchases large quantities or volumes of produce. Despite the recognized potential of private actors as institutional buyers, the focus of this work is mainly on the public sector.

Institutional public buyer refers to public institutions such as schools, food reserve authorities, the military, prisons, hospitals, food aid organizations and relief development agencies. Typically these buyers do not have a profit motivation and are usually driven by the need to acquire food products for consumption within their own institutions or as food donations. They are often guided by public procurement policies that can leave little room for flexibility in contract negotiations or choosing suppliers.

To increase the knowledge on institutional procurement for smallholder market integration, FAO developed a series of case study appraisals. WFP’s Purchase for Progress (P4P) was identified as an entry point for analyzing models of institutional procurement.

The P4P pilot was launched in 2008 in 20 countries to leverage WFP’s purchasing power to support local agriculture and market development. P4P links WFP’s demand for staple food commodities with the technical expertise of a range of partners, to stimulate smallholder productivity and collective marketing with the objective that smallholders sell their surplus to formal markets. P4P is a good example of an institutional effort that links the organization’s procurement needs to local development concerns, by building a support initiative to increase the volume of staples procured directly from smallholders and or small traders.

The objective of the cases is to analyze the role of P4P within the overall framework of inclusive food systems and to identify examples of other institutional procurement models with potential for smallholder inclusion.

This paper will discuss lessons and policy recommendations based on a global analysis of the case studies which comprise seven countries: Ghana, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Kenya, Rwanda and United Republic of Tanzania. The analysis looks at the P4P experience in each country, including an identification of the main challenges and an assessment of their sustainability, potential for scaling up and replication.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the innovative aspect involved in public policies for food acquisition of the Brazilian family farming. Creating alternatives to improve performance standards, in both, food security (of quantitative order focusing on hunger containment), and the design of new market mechanisms mediated by public organizations, Brazil innovates determining an institutional environment, effectively able to create incentives for a quality capture of the food products, produced by family farmers, which would not occur in the sale of equipment of traditional distribution channels. This solves a market organizational failure for this segment. Using a theoretical cut based on industrial organization and Neo-Schumpteriana approach, some constraints are discussed on the extent of the screen policies, namely: the Food Acquisition Program of Family Farming - PAA, the National School Feeding Program - PNAE and the Paulista Program Social Interest Agriculture - PPAIS (operating in the State of São Paulo). The business model innovations, institutionally created, provide greater scope for the PAA and require major adjustments to the other two programs in achieving the stated objectives, referring to the need to review the coordination mechanisms between the social participants involved.

ABSTRACT. The article shows the operational dynamics of the National School Feeding Programme (PNAE) in state schools of the city of Santa Maria-RS. The methodological procedures include, in addition to the review of the literature about the theoretical approaches of the New Institutional Economics (NEI), an empirical analysis performed from the use of direct documentation technique in 14.63% of state schools in the city, em-phasizing relations involving the buying and selling pro-cesses by representatives of formal and informal social groups. The results infer that the administration of PNAE resources has taken place efficiently, but there were some failures in governance and perception of quality of school meals. These results could form the basis for the improvement of complementary policies and specific forays into infrastructural elements, enabling better quality in school meals and resulting in improvements for all social groups involved.

ABSTRACT. Possible key drivers to foster change in the incumbent food system are social movements, environmental and related agricultural sustainability movements as well as local efforts for building an alternative food regime in order to create a pathway for necessary environmental and social change by challenging the ways we think and talk about food. However, as it is not sufficient to engage actors and stakeholders as change agents for a new agro-food system in political and social struggles, local food-system stakeholders from public and private sectors need to be actively involved and empowered for a complete transformation that requires a complete transformation of the society. Besides a supportive actor network, the positive interaction of actors on different levels is a prerequisite for a successful transformation. Besides the actor level, local action needs to be institutionally embedded at the level of technical, market, social and institutional support. When implementing a local food system strategy it is indispensable to take into account local institutional interests, though with consideration of dividing between local institutions that are a great support and are more successful in promoting democratic, reflexive localist solutions and institutions that merely perpetuate local inequalities. In this context, the Agriculture Strategy 2020 “Ökoland Vorarlberg – regional und fair” (Organic Farming Vorarlberg – regional and fair) is presented as best practice example towards a sustainable local food system in Austria that is both locally supported and institutionally embedded. In interplay with the local government this process is not only fostered through bottom-up approaches, but even supported by top-down engagement. Collective action where actors bring in their different perceptions over local, sustainable agriculture and build their joint strategies and aims resulted in a 16 objectives framework in fields such as quality of life, education, entrepreneurship, tourism and trading, agricultural income, local supply, organic farms, energy autonomy, protection of land and property and grassland management. This paper analyses the potential of the Organic Farming Strategy Vorarlberg to foster a socio-ecological transformation towards a local food system by questioning in what ways existing structures are challenged through reflexive and critical actions and in how far underlying values and beliefs are negotiated between actor groups. In the framework of an institutional analysis and narrative policy analysis relevant actors, institutions and structures as well as their relations and their role are identified. Expert and stakeholder interviews of involved actors give insight into sites of resistance and hegemony.

ABSTRACT. Socio-technical systems like food are composed of and shaped by the everyday practices that are performed in specific places. Transitioning large-scale systems involves changing the practices that constitute and reproduce them. This is true of the food system, which is enacted by the repetitive performances of everyday food activities (e.g., shopping, cooking, discarding) in communities.

Cities are uniquely positioned to change food practices, and by doing so transition socio-technical regimes like food to sustainability. Cities are tightly bundled agglomerations of everyday practices, and are the stages on which healthier and more sustainable practices are performed, repeatedly, until they become normal, everyday activities. Municipal policies, programs, and infrastructure influence practices, while activists, spiritual leaders, media, teachers and other urban thought leaders shape our understanding of practices. By strategically influencing food practices, cities can potentially advance public health, improve the environment and economy, and ultimately transform the food system.

This working group explores the potential for cities to advance transitions through the strategic management of everyday food practices through various methods and cases. Together, the papers investigate the extent to which theories of social practice shed light on how changes in food practices transform the food system, the role of cities in fostering transformation through the support of sustainable food practices, and methods to map practices and the elements that shape them.

The four papers explore how cities and civil society groups have facilitated the adoption, implementation, and normalization of practices through changes to the elements of practices – the meanings attributed to a practice, its material dimensions, and the competences required for practitioners to engage in the practice. We examine changes in local practices that affect different segments of the dominant food regime (e.g., urban agriculture, food shopping, public health interventions, food recycling), which illustrate how city governments and city-based civil society groups have influenced the adoption, implementation and normalization of sustainable food practices.

ABSTRACT. In the last decade, food issues have gained prominence on political and research agendas. Food is increasingly perceived as a lever with the ability to link different fields such as health, economy, transportation, climate, social cohesion and other. In the domain of sustainable food planning, conventional approaches, based on individual and behavioral patterns, have shown clear limitations. Rigid traditional top-down approaches impose restrictions instead of enabling opportunities. This paper aims at exploring potentialities of social practice theory (Shove, 2004; Shove et al., 2012) to provide an innovative framework for ‘practice-oriented’ sustainable food planning. In this practice-oriented approach, the unit of analysis is the practice and not the individual. By analyzing how food practices relate to each other, how their elements (meanings, materials and competences) are linked, who are the practitioners, etc., new pathways to sustainable food policy can be discovered.

In order to achieve a successful transition from conventional to practice-oriented sustainable food planning, cities must play a crucial role (Cohen & Ilieva, 2015). Living in a world of cities, the future food system will be determined by how the aforementioned food practices are handled in cities. This paper provides a tentative exploration of food practices in Amsterdam and Berlin. Acknowledging the great diversity of food practices taking place in these two cities, spatially situated food practices such as urban food growing and food retail (co-ops and markets) are exposed, because they highlight pros and cons of spatial planning in the field of sustainable food planning. Also the paper makes a contribution to the emerging discourse on appropriate methodologies in food planning and the contours of food practice scholarship.

References

Cohen, N. & Ilieva, R.T. (2015). Transitioning the food system: A strategic practice management approach for cities. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions.

Shove, E. (2004). Sustainability, system innovation and the laundry. In: Elzen, B., Geels, F.W., Green, K. (Eds.), System Innovation and the Transition to Sustainability: Theory, Evidence and Policy. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 76–94.

Shove, E., Pantzar, M., Watson, M. (2012). The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life and How it Changes. Sage, New York.

ABSTRACT. The Mediterranean region is one of the areas in the world most exposed to urban growth and increasing food insecurity. The population should continue to increase (from 446 million in 2000 to 570 million in 2025) and remains concentrated in cities and on coastlines, strongly depending on food imports. In this context, some cities in the Mediterranean begin to develop food and agricultural strategies that aim to renew and strengthen the links with the local agricultural production: these strategies involve short supply chains and alternative food networks, urban agriculture and gardening, farmland preservation, local procurement for schools meals or farm-to-school initiatives. This paper discusses the role of cities and local governments in the implementation of strategies for sustainable urban food systems. In six Mediterranean metropolitan regions we analyze urban policies and agricultural practices, along with the political processes involved. The comparison confirms that cities are pertinent actors, capable of encouraging new practices and transversal governance. Nevertheless, questions remain concerning their ability to mobilize the agricultural community, and civil society in general, both elements crucial to the sustainability of any agricultural and food strategy. In concluding, we discuss the conditions that could lead to the emergence and implementation of sustainable urban food systems.

This paper will discuss these questions using two perspectives. First it focuses on the motivations that can lead or not Mediterranean cities to seize food and agricultural issues. From the DAUME research project and the partnerships that were established through it, we describe what happens in 6 city-regions in the Mediterranean: Constantine (Algeria), Athenes (Greece), Montpellier (France), Lisbon (Portugal), Meknes (Morocco) et Pisa (Italia). We analyze how urban policies, focused on the necessity to deal with urban growth, face difficulties in interacting with approaches of agriculture and food related issues. This panel underlines the various drivers of the agriculture and food urban policies : land and urban planning priorities, food security, social or environmental issues, etc.

Secondly, we focus on the case study of the city-region of Montpellier (France, 500 000 hab.). Montpellier is currently elaborating a food and agricultural municipal policy, part of it involving changes toward more sustainable social practices. The analysis of this policy elaboration, which our research team was a part of (action-research), helps revealing the agricultural and food practices of the local authorities, the levers for potential action and the co-design process.

ABSTRACT. It is widely uphold that it is necessary to shift diets towards reduced levels of meat, increased consumption of fruit and vegetables, while promoting more healthy lifestyles, so to address environmental problems, support public health and contribute to finding new paths for feeding present and future generations in a sustainable and fair way. It is also recognised that any successful initiative requires a “systemic approach” that include not only individuals, but also governments, business actors, as well as civil society initiatives that work in synergy to promote a change practices towards the desired change (Dibb & Fitzpatrick 2014).

In 2010 the FAO defined sustainable diets as “are those diets with low environmental impacts which contribute to food and nutrition security and to healthy life for present and future generations. Sustainable diets are protective and respectful of biodiversity and ecosystems, culturally acceptable, accessible, economically fair and affordable; nutritionally adequate, safe and healthy; while optimizing natural and human resources”. It is important to draw attention on sustainable diets as this notion help concentrate policy attention on transforming consumption, not just production and distribution (Lang 2014).

With over 50% of population living in urban areas and the largest wave of urban growth in history (UNFPA 2015), the issue of sustainable food consumption and production is rising up urban agendas. The challenges faced by cities vis-à-vis their urban food policies are common, although the local context influence to great extent the range of choice of policy makers. These local factors include the historical and cultural roots of the city, the characteristics of the local economy, as well as its geographical setting and natural resources endowment, infrastructure, and finally societal and political factors. In urban context, food can act as a “a vehicle to integrate the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability, as well as for addressing justice and health issues at different geographies and scales” (Moragues 2013).

Against this backdrop, the overarching aim of this article is to investigate how urban systems can contribute to shift towards more sustainable diets and to create a system for producing, processing, distributing, and consuming food that is environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable. The study will explore these concepts theoretically while reviewing current experiences of cities that have engaged in urban food policies over the past few years. Finally, the study will provide a number of recommendations for different stakeholders at the local level.

ABSTRACT. Cities concentrate people, goods, capital investments, infrastructure and knowledge. They gradually expand worldwide, housing a growing population, whereas rural exodus accelerates the decline of many territories. Despite the evidence that a city eats. It eats food, but also it consumes the land needed to produce it, food is not usually considered among the competences of a city.

Despite this general trend, several cities start to re-evaluate food as a mean to improve urban planning and citizens' wellness, opening simultaneously several avenues for reflection, research and action. As illustrated by the different cases histories presented in this essay, they can be driven by different motivations, but share a common vision in which food-related projects are transversal to siloed mainstream policies such as health, education, landscape management, transport, environment, waste and water management, adaptation to climate change, local economy and social welfare, thus strengthening social cohesion and creating a social bond.

The needed paradigm shift in both food planning and policy making calls for a concerted commitment at both continental, regional and local level. To move in this direction, cities must equip themselves with adequate structures that works as a vehicle for change, embedding all different stakeholders, including citizens in a stimulating space of innovation, being in charge of vision-making and practical projects, looking at tailor-made interfaces of cooperation between urban centers and adjacent territories.

Twelve cases studies have been implemented within Eating City platform to evidence the relevance of city food policies promoting social and ecological resilience.

The exam of successful projects shows how these pioneers have been able to detect the capacity of food-related projects to strengthen social cohesion and create a social bond, on top of such benefits. Indeed, not only food can become a thread that connect all the main competences of the cities related to urban environment, economic development, education, solidarity, culture and leisure, health, politics and governance, but it can also give consistency to a synergic osmosis between cities and adjacent territories.

ABSTRACT. Urban agriculture can be divided in three major categories: urban food gardening, urban farming and non-urban oriented farming. Inside the urban food gardening category we can distinguish some sub-categories like family gardens, allotment gardens and community gardens, as well as inside of urban farming category are included rent equipped spaces like family gardens. These different typology of urban food garden may be different for production model, consumption practice and form of governance. The paper examines the different typology of urban food garden using the economic concepts of ri-valorous and excludable to classify them in private goods, common goods, club goods and public goods. The main variables considered are the key resources used, the key activity carried out and the shared values (like social inclusion, joint gardening, reclaiming the commons, etc.). Empirical analysis concerns the urban area of Rome where the urban agriculture movement is growing. Nine case studies were chosen and economic, organizational and social aspects of community and edible gardens were analyzed. The data were collected through a questionnaire in 2014. The results shows that the community and edible gardens are increasing the socialization of groups of citizens that share the common goal of beautifying and enhancing their neighborhoods and re-qualifying some disuses area, despite the lack of a regulation about the community and edible gardens in Rome. The results underline also that these social aspects are more important than economic aspects in the case of common goods like urban community gardens that opposing the increasing privatization and commercialization of public space. While the economic aspects are important in the case of private goods like the food gardening in urban farming.

ABSTRACT. The structural features characteristic of present-day humans are the same as those of the line of 3.5 million year old hominids to which we belong. From the beginning of humankind, food has played a crucial role in creating communities. Indeed, the changes in the early hominids that made language possible relate to their history as social animals in close-knit interpersonal relationships associated with collecting and sharing food. Conversely, nowadays the food economy is the most evident symptom of human alienation. Thus, the basic assumption of this paper is that civic agriculture based on the economy of the commons needs to rediscover the original nature of food, namely an element of mutual cognition and community creation. We explore how a rethought peasant agriculture can be crucial to such a goal. Nevertheless, peasant economics does not appear feasible in urban society mainstream economics and this creates the paradox of sustainable development. The Solidarity Purchasing Group (SPG) experience in Marche Region, Italy, shows the main features of this paradox and offers an effective perspective to investigate the role of peasant agriculture in a post-industrial society. 

Keywords – Peasant economy, habit loop, quick fix.

ABSTRACT. The quality of relationships among people is increasingly perceived as a crucial determinant of well-being (Kahneman, 2006). Despite this relevant shift, economic analysis is still deeply rooted to an individualistic conception of people acting and living together. In this paper we shall argue that to better understand the subjective and inter-subjective multiple dimensions of well-being, it is necessary to further deepen its conceptual framework to deal with its genuine relational essence. The several forms of civic agriculture and short food supply chains emerged in the last decades are an interesting case to highlight the limits of an individualistic conception of well-being and to suggest a possible development of the analysis towards a genuine "relational" approach. Scholars widely agree that positive social impacts in terms of development of personal relationships and sense of community are among the benefits of their diffusion. Concepts as "social embeddedness" (Granovetter, 1985) and "relations of regard" (Offer, 1997) have been extensively used to depict the alternativeness of these forms agriculture and food production. In this paper civic agriculture is analysed within a framework explicitly recognizing that some of its features are intrinsically not reducible to the simple interaction among individuals conceived as "independent "entities". Our framework focuses on the emergence of participatory goods (Reaumè, 1988; Taylor, 1995), i.e. goods whose individual enjoyment depends on sharing them with others, and on relations as a constitutive feature of individual being and acting (Emirbayer, 1997). Within civic forms of agriculture people follow pathways of personal change affecting the relational dimension of their lives, according with the use they do of money and spare time. At the same time these personal pathways contribute to the emergence of rural economies and cultures as participatory or shared goods.

Emirbayer M. (1997). Manifesto for a relational sociology. American Journal of Sociology, 103(2): 281-317. Granovetter M. (1985). Economic action and social structure: the problem of embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology, 91(3): 481-510. Kahneman, D. (2006). Developments in the measurements of subjective well being. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20: 3-24. Offer A. (1997). Between the gift and the market: the econpomy of regard. Economic History Review, 50(3): 450-476. Reaumè D. (1988). Individuals, groups and rights to public goods. University of Toronto Law review, 38(1):1-27. Taylor C. (1995). Irreducibly social goods. In Taylor C. Philosophical Arguments, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 127-145.

ABSTRACT. Localization of food production is considered as one of key factor leading to the food availability within a particular locale which is a determinant of food security. It calls for the re-localization of food production from big farms to smaller ones and also to shorten the distant travel of food. This shortened food supply chain greatly reduces the dependence on food imports and thereby act as a vital component towards achieving self-sufficiency and sustainability in food production. It also eliminates the chances of vulnerability associated with external dependence for food. Therefore, studies on various aspects of food system localization are pertinent to the context of Kerala where a food-deficit economy exists.

Kerala is a coastal state in India and exhibits rurban phenomena in which the boundaries of rural and urban areas are blurred. It depends on neighbor states for more than 50% of its food and demonstrates high vulnerability to food price, supply cuts due to socio-political factors and quality of food articles. The growing health concerns about the pesticide-contaminated food has resulted in a shift towards self-sufficient food system and vegetable production is being localized in the state on a slow pace. Governmental and non-government agencies promote organic vegetable cultivation in backyards, schools, hospitals, government offices etc. in rural and urban areas. On the informal side, the popularization of facebook have been effectively utilized for the promotion of localized production of vegetables and other food articles. Drawing from the theoretical insights of Science & Technology Studies, this paper analyzes deeply the role of facebook networks in the promotion of self-sufficiency and sustainability in vegetable production and addressing the challenges of food system localization in Kerala. The study specifically looks into the functioning of three facebook groups viz. Krishibhumi, Agriculture and Adukkalathottam which focus on technical and social aspects of localized farming in Kerala. The observations of the study indicate that these facebook groups play significant roles in motivating people to start backyard farming, acts as a seed repository of rare and local varieties, share the knowledge of innovative technologies for minimal-space cultivation etc. to a wider public. One of the groups also carry out field trainings to ensure inclusive approach towards those who do not have access to facebook. In these ways, the concerns of achieving sustainability in a rurban society has been addressed by them to an extent.

ABSTRACT. Dynamics of transitions: differentiated analysis and interventions for different institutional frameworks Colombian indicators for rural areas (Ocampo 2014, Olarte 2015) compared to urban ones, illustrate a case for analysis and understanding of the “complex dynamics of societal change”. According to different studies and experiences, agriculture, a key activity in rural areas in Colombia, demands a technological transition to become a strategic factor of change. Different innovation environments, condition the patterns and mechanisms in technological transition processes in rural areas. Institutional frameworks are clear differentiators for these processes in developing countries (Sanchez 2015). It can be observed that public policies, as orientation for public and private planning of investments, are missing or are not strong enough to support a transition process in these cases. A multi-level perspective (Geel 2010) appears convenient to put together related aspects for alignment towards a socio technical transition, mainly when agents coordination is not evident. Not many examples of implementation of systems of innovation in Colombia, and/or studies of them are in place. A field of research is open in this subject. To build a framework for this research needs to clearly differentiate the contexts of existing references in other countries and circumstances. This paper aims to call the attention to some differences and similarities to be taken into account within common approaches of socio-technical transition processes, for different innovation environments, to contribute to differentiate analysis and interventions. It could be useful to analyse cases in EU countries, regulated through common, well-known agreements, compared to latino-american cases, with different conditions, regulation and innovation systems. The institutional framework is not the only difference, but is probably one of the most relevant for interventions in an actors oriented approach. A compared analysis of dynamics of transitions in rural areas for different innovation environments could result from the cases to be studied in the WG6 AGURB2015, to motivate research on the subject, in other non-EU countries and regions.

ABSTRACT. The re-connection of agriculture and urban society includes the challenge of re-connecting diverse stakeholder communities. A Dutch research project developed a framework, based on different transition and network theories, to reflect and intervene on this process. This is especially useful for partners, like research and consultancy, who are involved in innovation processes as a project manager or process facilitator. The framework is built on the communication systems theory of Luhmann, after van Assche et al (2012). This theory describes society as a collection of interacting social systems. Additionally, the concept of boundary work (Clark et al, 2011) describes the process between such distinct networks or stakeholder communities towards collective action. This also links to stakeholder management theory (Freeman et al, 2011) and Ties theory (Granovetter, 1973), that reflect on the composition of the stakeholder network and the interests of the stakeholders. The multi-level perspective (Geels, 2011) and strategic niche management (Schot, 2008) concepts analyse the wider context from a transition perspective and help to analyse individual initiatives as a niche. The framework was applied on several case studies from biobased economy, urban agriculture and sustainable food chains, in which collective action of various stakeholders was developed. The role of research in this process was a specific point for reflection in these case studies, but also in interactive sessions with researchers involved in similar projects.

ABSTRACT. The main goal of our investigation is to analyze the behavior of the agricultural entrepreneur organizations toward the free trade agreements (FTA) signed since 1990 in Chile. In order to do this we will, firstly, select all the FTA that include import and export of agriculture commodities. Secondly, we will elaborate a data set of the main top leaders that control the 4 most important organizations: Sociedad Nacional de Agricultura (SNA), Consorcio Agrícola del Sur (CAS), Asociación Agrícola Central and Sociedad Agrícola del Norte. Thirdly, we will report the most important stands of those board of directors previous the adoption of the FTA by the government and Congress.

In the past history of the country, those organizations such as SNA and CAS had a protagonic rol implementing the agrarian reform (1964 – 1973) and decades after they also have and important role implementing the liberalization of the economy during the Pinochet years (1975 – 1982). In both occasions, the impact that those organization had was a consequence of their boards coming together. After 1990 these organizations have had also the ability to influence on the decision making process regarding agricultural issues and on the content of the FTA but the result had not been even for all entrepreneurs. As part of the explanation for this is that the relationship between the main organizations has varied over time depending on who are the losers and winners of specific policies. Sometimes they have been able to act together –mobilizing resources- but sometimes they have not.

In sum, based on recent literature on interest groups we assume that the closeness and estrangement between the organizations has been the consequence of changes on their leadership. This relationship can explain why sometimes each organization fight for their particular interest and why sometimes they have been able to gather together and fight for collective goals.

ABSTRACT. In both Korea and Japan, short food supply chains such as farmers’ markets, CSAs, and local food shops have been attracting strong public attention in recent years. Health & price concerned consumers and economically difficult farmers consider the short food supply chains as an alternative to the existing food channel dominated by large supermarkets. Yet, East Asian local food experiments seem to lack active initiative and participation by the actors of consumers and farmers. That is, the central government and local governments have been playing an active role in promoting local food while consumers and farmers remain passive and interested in financial gains. For example, there are more than 50 local food shops supported by the government in Korea. In Japan, local governments and semi-statal agricultural coops are arranging local food shops. In both cases, grass root engagement by social actors, i.e., farmers and consumers, is thin. We analyze the key common features of local food systems in Korea and Japan by locating them in the historical context of social and agricultural development in each country. We argue that in order to make a genuine local food system, they need to be embeded in social values such as solidarity, participation, and democracy.

ABSTRACT. There is a scarcity of studies around the Brazilian Collaborative Purchasing Systems (CSA) that may help to understand the contributions that these initiatives can generate to social change. Very few studies were developed, although there register of more than 45 initiatives in the country, such as networks, groups, collectives, associations that somehow has established direct relations between producers and consumers for marketing local food products. Only a small number of those initiatives consider themselves as “CSA” systems, having since 2013 a national CSA Network to articulate and disseminate them. There is also a “Network of Responsible Consumption Groups”, a denomination that is more accepted in the country and which articulates a wider range of initiatives. This article aims to present a characterization of Brazilian scenario, using data collected on a survey carried on 2014 among different groups, which are complemented with literature review and in deep research in some cases. The analyses includes a basic profile of the groups, a location map, functioning dynamics, number of consumers and producers involved, as well as considerations on the impact that engaging in those initiatives have towards actors social practices. We also introduce a dialogue between convergences and disparities comparing Brazilian case to the North-American and European local food movements, contributing to the debate of how these experiences can feed the whole movement. We are considering Collaborative Purchasing Systems as a cultural response to global forces, in which the notion of globality and modernity as a homogenizing process is challenged to consider how actors create agendas for action. Then, the analysis is framed by the ‘counter movements’ notion; this approach take into consideration the heterogeneity of actors and practices involved, where different social constructions are made on issues such as ecology, locality, region, quality parameters and consumption cultures, in a context where producers and consumers no longer have a passive role in absorbing and following the precepts of the hegemonic food system; and through their agency can seek to incorporate practices and arrangements more consistent with social construction of new agendas for food local realities.

ABSTRACT. Urbanizing processes have deep impact on rural entrepreneurship and stimulate strategies of both qualification and diversification of farming activity. Moreover, relocalization of food consumption emphasise the relevance of reconnection perspective through the development of alternative food networks. Therefore, two perspective of “rural” may impact on rural entrepreneurship and on rural innovation: 1. Rural as space of production, with the progressive transition from the productivist paradigm toward multifunctional paradigm. Here, different entrepreneurial opportunities are at stake: a. Individual entrepreneurship carried out through the development of alternative food networks and through the qualification of agricultural niche products; b. Collective entrepreneurship carried out through valorization of collective marks, like geographical indications. 2. Rural as space of consumption, rural areas becoming attractive, in account of the supply of a basket of goods and services, within integrated projects of rural development. Consequently, diversification strategies involves farming activities, with the purpose to provide consumers with a diversified set of agricultural and not agricultural goods.

Against this background, entrepreneurial skills of farmers need to be updated, in order to fulfil learning gaps linked to the development of new activities. May a single innovative farm develop innovative models of rural entrepreneurship along each one of these trajectories? The paper fits in this context and aims at analysing entrepreneurial paths in rural areas and the needs for skills in order to second various strategies. The analysis is based on a case-study of a rural family business (CasaLawrence in region Lazio), which has promoted an innovative model of rural entrepreneurship focused on the valorization of endogenous rural resources and on the full employment of family works. The evolution of entrepreneurial skill in the farm and the needs for further updated skill will be investigated through the support of questionnaires to the family members and to other actors in the territory. The results of our analysis should shed light on how family entrepreneurship in a rural area has played a fundamental role in stimulating innovation along paths of differentiation and diversification of agricultural production. Finally, policy implication at the beginning of the new programming period for rural development (2014-2020) will be discussed.

ABSTRACT. Europe is at an economic and social crossroads and nowhere more so than in rural areas. The continent faces the challenge of creating smart, inclusive and sustainable growth while several demographic and economic changes threaten to leave rural regions behind, and put pressure on the security and growth of the European economy. There is an urgent need to extend the growth agenda beyond the current focus on smarter cities to include Europe’s rural regions that account for 77% of the continent.

Farms, and agri-businesses in general, are called to address a growing innovation demand requiring the transformation of the sector’s production system. Within this model, the agricultural sector integrates functions from the service industry, thus resulting in more complex, differentiate and higher-value production of goods and services (as in the case of agro-tourisms, didactical farms, orthotherapy practices, etc.). From these innovative processes arises the need to pass from a productivist paradigm to a new rural paradigm integrating multifunctionality in agriculture and thus contributing to transform the role and the profession of farmers, who become agricultural/ farm entrepreneurs. Several studies in the field of multifunctional agriculture (actor oriented approaches) highlight the different strategies allowing the integration of the productive activities with societal and cultural activities impacting the local development.

Considering Apulia Region as illustrative for the innovation gap that separates urban areas and the surrounding rural areas, the paper presents the LEADER Community Initiative as a successful example to strengthen and organize rural-urban partnerships. The European regulatory system explicitly considers the promotion of agricultural innovation among its objectives, identifying different tools for achieving this objective. Among these instruments, the role of lifelong learning and knowledge sharing is crucial in order to develop skills and knowledge within the sector’s stakeholders, thus contributing to the development of human capital. To this extent, the paper presents a set of local and transnational initiative that, particularly through the involvement of local actors and the use of ICT solutions, foster rural entrepreneurship within the new rural paradigm thus highlighting the factors arising as key components for a successful strategy to integrate LEADER approach and actors in a comprehensive rural-urban strategy.

ABSTRACT. Member states of European Union had the opportunity to implement a new system of innovation through the application of Regulation (CE) n. 1698/2005 during the 2007-2013 programming period. Referring to the content of Art. 29 policy-makers have built a tool that can aggregate the offer and establish contacts between entrepreneurs and public research institutions. The most suitable tool to connect farmers, consultants, researchers, enterprises and others was found to be that of "partnership" created using a bottom-up approach, that is demand-driven. The result was the Measure 1.2.4 of Rural Development Programme (RDP) that has used the vehicle of the public-private partnership in which the approach of networking, knowledge, co-creation and collaboration between different partners» (Hermans et al., 2012; p. 9) was strengthened. The present study analyzes the relationships between regional innovation systems and dynamic entrepreneurial eco-systems in an Italian Region, Umbria, where 137 projects of innovation are been funded. The analysis has been carried out by measuring the innovation capacity expressed by the dynamic entrepreneurial eco-system through the equivalence of the 137 projects with the action plan, the ability to create partnership, the ability to involve primary sector, the level of integration whit another measures of RDP and the financial dimension of the project. A statistical analysis has been conducted on the five variables by the principal component analysis and the cluster analysis. The results point out that the ability of the primary sector to be involved in creating partnerships and networking are considered necessary but not sufficient in order the project is largely corresponding with the action plan. Among the sectors involved, livestock farms and no specialized farms have shown a greater ability to be involved in the partnerships. The great involvement depends on the need to facilitate innovations related to the use of by-product, the improvement of environmental performance, the processing and marketing of products, the testing of new products and processes. The wine sector and olive growing farms have shown a low interest in creating partnerships by asking for innovation more closely tied to the new products testing and processes and to the improve of environmental performance. Farms are less interested in partnership where the role of scientific research is predominant (biodiversity, food quality and safety, water management). In this case research institutes, industry and agribusiness are mainly involved.

ABSTRACT. Geographical indications (GIs) may be considered as tools for the development of sustainable food systems, and stakeholders at local and international levels often require economic data relating to the development of GIs, especially in terms of impacts. Unfortunately, little work has been done to collate and generalize them and analysis of the economic impacts of GIs as a whole has not in general resulted in any clear-cut conclusions. In addition, although the economic impacts of GIs have been well documented by various researchers (Moschini et al., 2008; Josling, 2006; Dinopoulos and West, 2005, Colinet et al., 2006; Rangnekar, 2004; Jena and Grote, 2010), empirical demonstration of the net benefits of GIs is relatively sparse, especially in countries where GI procedures are more recent (outside Europe). The objective of this paper is to propose an original methodology to collect data from various GI cases over the world and analyse them in a way to authorize some clear evidence about GI economic impacts. While the study encompass a variety of cases (10 cases with different products, scales and countries), common factors for their establishment have been considered for their selection allowing a common sense of a “ GI actual concept ”: • A good justification : an origin-linked quality or reputation has been well demonstrated and defined in the specifications , • Fruit of an heritage, the GI process is based on collective action (managed by a group of producers) • As an economic tool (differentiation and protection), it is being used on the markets.

The economic impacts are considered at the level of enterprise, value chain and in terms of resilience, considering the following: price, income for producers (and hence redistribution of value down to the first link in the chain) and market access. Another interesting aspect of the methodology relates on the collaborative work between: an international development agency (FAO), researchers and economic experts and Master students from 4 universities: ETH Zurich, Agricultural Economics Group; VetAgroSup, Clermont Ferrand; School of Agricultural Studies of Angers (ESA Group) within the specific framework of the Food Identity MSc; Montpellier SupAgro (MSA). The paper will also highlight the first main results from the 10 cases - Kona coffee (Hawai), Manchego cheese (Spain), Ryukyu Awamori liqueur (Japan), Darjeeling tea (India), Penja pepper (Cameroun), Taliouine saffron (Morocco), Colombia coffee, Tête de moine cheese (Switzerland) Futog cabbage (Serbia), Litoral Norte Gaúcho rice (Brazil).

ABSTRACT. In this paper, we explore the socio-technical mechanism through which Geographical Indications (GIs) can strengthen alternative quality models. Building on transition theory, we analyzed the reconfigurations of the Corsican Clementine basin under a recent Protected Geographical Indication (PGI). Results show that the PGI stimulated 3 processes - the construction of a local norm, the coordination of actor network, and the strengthening of quality - which together contributed to the success of the Corsican Clementine, despite its specific quality and production model were challenging the competition rules of the citrus sector. In the light of transition framework, these findings suggest that the PGI strengthened a prior existing socio-technical niche by regulating tensions with regime.

ABSTRACT. In the current context of reforms in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), in particular with the abolishment of milk quotas, price and storage support, the future of cheese industry in France and Europe represents a challenge for the agricultural sector, agro-food supply chains and public policy makers at regional, national and European levels. Indeed, market liberalization is likely to increase competition, production and farmers’ exposure to price volatility. This paper argues that Localized Agri-Food Systems (LAFS) can substantially attenuate the negative impact of market liberalization, in particular farmers’ exposure to price volatility, since by definition LAFS relies on local resources and depend less on international market. Secondly, because of the differentiation strategy developed by LAFS, they are not competing directly with standard milk products. Finally, even though the quota milk is abolished at the community level, farmers involved in quality differentiation strategies are allowed to control production to achieve a better balance supply and demand on the markets (EU regulation n° 2081/92 and CAP 2015). To illustrate, we compare the volatility of price of two contrasted cheese supply chains, PDO Comté and Emmental. PDO Comté is a Localized Agri-Food System with a strong and structured collective action whereas Emmental is an industrial cheese supply chain. As a preliminary step, we present basic measurements of price volatility (coefficient of variation, standard deviation, range-based volatility) for both supply chains. We go further and use econometric models (ARCH, GARCH) to estimate price volatility of Comté and Emmental cheeses. Using monthly data through 1996 to 2009, we found that PDO Comté price is trend stationary whereas Emmental price is difference stationary. This result suggests that any shock has a temporary effect on Comté price whereas shocks have permanent effects on Emmental price. Turning to price volatility, we found that Emmental price is 10-15% more volatile than Comté price, according to different measurements. Thus, we conclude that PDO Comté is more resilient to shocks and price volatility than Emmental.

ABSTRACT. The denomination Gruyère was a subject of debates between Switzerland and France since the end of the 19th century and even nowadays. Recalling that long history, through the legal frameworks and the development of justifications, allows us to analyse the spread of cheese-making know-hows, the social and economic evolution of close but politically divided regions, as well as the changes that occurred during the last decades in relation to the national and international recognition and protection of geographical indications (GIs). The cross-border and disputed case of Gruyère can bring an interesting light on the value of a denomination for origin products, not only the economic value but also the social one. A complex process of collective organization, definition of the product standard and construction of an image took place for both the Swiss and the French Gruyère. The recent result was a new situation of legal sharing of the denomination between Switzerland and France, for two cheeses with different characteristics. Hence it is worth to compare the Swiss and French initiatives to get a protection for Gruyère, as their differences are much higher than one would expect for a shared denomination. Also considering other examples like Mont-d’Or and Pisco, we assess whether the existence of homonymous and/or trans-border denominations favours conflicts or indifference rather than close cooperation. Assuming that geographical indications should not necessarily be designed according to administrative borders, the differentiating effects of a national border have to be integrated to the very concept of GI.

ABSTRACT. Climate change has become an issue of great concern in political and scientific fields at both global and national levels. Therefore, new policies and programs have been formulated that seek to mitigate the negative effects of this phenomenon. However, perceptions and views of stakeholders living and intervening in regions affected by climate change and submitted to new policy implementation is not often taken into account. This contrasts the fact that the importance of stakeholder participation is now generally recognised and the development of new governance schemes has become a commonly -used policy instrument. Based on the above, in the period 2012-2015, an EU-financed European-Latin-American research project (titled The Role of Biodiversity in Climate Change Mitigation - ROBIN), with case studies in Bolivia, Braszil and Mexico, was developed with the goal to describe and analyse the role of biodiversity and its importance in mitigating climate change. Among great many activities, it sought to understand the perceptions and opinions of regional, state and federal stakeholders regarding land-use transformation and climate change. In this presentation, we show results from the ROBIN project from the Chamela-Cuitzmala watershed in the south-coast region of Jalisco state in western Mexico. More precisely, we present the results of several workshops that we organized in the region, analysing the testimonies of the main stakeholders involved (farmers, municipal authorities, state and federal civil servants, opinion leaders, etc.). During these workshops, different participatory methods and techniques were applied, such as group discussions, participatory mapping, the Metaplan technique, and Fuzzy Cognitive Maps. From our results, contradictions emerge between different stakeholders coinciding in the same territory. In this sense, clear stakeholder-related perceptions and opinions could be distinguished: views from local stakeholders substantially differ from stakeholders external to the region. Moreover, power relations shape the relationships between the different stakeholders. In this sense, a notable mistrust was identified between regional stakeholders and those from governmental institutions, especially state and federal level. We end this paper with a discussion on stakeholder participation in climate change policies and actions based on our case study from western Mexico.

ABSTRACT. The provision of public goods is at the heart of agriculture’s multifunctionality and have a prominent role in the reform of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Environmental regulation within the CAP is conducted by design a set of environmental instruments, among which the most important are cross-compliance and agri-environmental schemes, respectively under Pillar I and Pillar II. The CAP reform can return a heterogeneous payment in turn at similar greening commitments. This paper aims at assessing the ex-ante impact of alternative designs of the greening measure, with the application of mathematical programming models. The design of the alternative scenarios encompasses the identification high effectively measures taking into account farmers preferences in front of greening commitments. Effectiveness of alternative greening designs, are assessed taking into account set of environmental benefit provided by farmers located in different agricultural areas (rural, urban, peri-urban) that describe potential drivers of HNV or a measure of sustainable management.

ABSTRACT. At European level, territorial complex systems show a high rate of uncertainty both by social and environmental point of view. Within the EU 2020 Strategy, the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) could have played a significant role in addressing environmental challenges in rural areas. This chance seems to be lost. Although the expected role, Rural Development Programmes are not shaped as planning instruments, rather as funding schemes on a voluntary basis. Nor the I Pillar direct payments seem to have any potential in driving decisions on the territories, being the greening an obligatory component which can only be managed at an enterprise scale. In a word, they lack a territorial perspective. Both the I and II Pillar of the CAP seem not able to face critical territorial dynamics like rural soil consumption and fragmentation, mainly due to urban sprawl and infrastructures. Under this point of view, the gap in governing rural areas seems evident between planning and sectorial development policies, to which rural land management seems to be often delegated. Strategic Environmental Assessment, if properly intended as a continuous sustainability integration process, could help filling this gap. It can, and should in any case, prefigure and assess partially predictable environmental and territorial scenarios in order to draw a shared and multilevel territorial frame supporting sectorial and territorial policies and instruments. In this way, it can directly contribute to territorial management and give substance to planning decisions. The paper presents the case study of the Strategic Environmental Assessment of the Rural Development Programme 2014/2020 of the Lombardy Region, in Italy. The environmental assessment was focused on the definition of a territorial based scenario, drafting and assessing all the dynamics acting in different ways on different landscape units of the Region. The territorial point of view led to adopt an assessment approach based on the consideration of vulnerability and resilience potential of different territorial units in responding to policy inputs. Practical information has been provided for the implementation phase, delivering territorialized criteria for funding and for monitoring. The soil consumption and fragmentation has been one of the main concerns of the assessment. Through this approach, environmental assessment aims to drive sectorial policy, bridging it to territorial planning choices and supporting the environmental and territorial effectiveness of the Programme, by stimulating a cooperation approach among local actors and farmers.

ABSTRACT. Many areas in Mediterranean Europe are characterized by an agricultural small scale mosaic, with olive groves combined with pastures, fruit orchards, and vegetable gardens. These small scale farm units have increasingly lost their importance as production units over the last decades, even if farming has been maintained by aging local population. In the last two decades, these parcels became extremely attractive for new comers, who settle in the rural context as lifestyle farmers. Further, local people return to the land, due to the new values and also the economic crisis. Food production is increasing again in multiple complex modes, and new management arrangements. A study in the municipality of Montemor-o-Novo, Southern Portugal, provided substantial data on the amount of vegetables and fruits produced in the small scale units. Besides, findings revealed that keeping a production, in a vegetable garden, orchard and grazing animals, has different meanings and dimensions related to the household economy; the human-nature co-production relations and identity, which ultimately constitute forms of resistance of the lifeworld to the instrumental rationality brought by State regulation and formal market relations, two spheres from which apparently small holders try to keep some degree of autonomy. Our tentative hypothesis is that these small production units are one strategy related to the pluri-activity and pluri-income nature of the Mediterranean rural space. A much novel and resilient form of food production that bring together different types of farmers, and different generations, which nevertheless remains unseen by the agri-food regime and therefore also outside policy targets and innovation support strategies.

ABSTRACT. Because of high elevation and cool weather condition, Tagaytay City, Philippines became a tourist destination and a place for vacation to some. Business flourished in the area like leisure farms, vacation houses and small farms for urban settlers. Overlooking Tagaytay City is the Taal Lake surrounded by municipalities coming from Batangas and Cavite. All of these municipalities underwent transformation on land-use. One of these municipalities is Talisay in Batangas. Farmers who used to raise vegetables on the slopes of the mountains surrounding Taal Lake was transformed into subdivisions. The misplaced farmers went to the lake for fishing and putting up fish cages for some. The municipal government came up with policies on how to manage the lake to be ecologically acceptable, socially viable and economically feasible. Also they provided some livelihood programs for the households. Around 80 farmers were interviewed on how they adjusted to the changes in land-use in their locality. Some mentioned the raising of small backyard for vegetable production and integrating income from fishing to meet their daily needs. Some are engaged in livelihood programs introduced by the local government.

ABSTRACT. In many countries, farmland is converted to other land uses, due to urbanisation and changing societal expectations for agriculture and the countryside. Specifically in peri-urban areas, we see an increasingly complex differentiation of rural land use and conflicting interests among the involved actors. In order to understand the trend of farmland loss, we picture recent farmland loss in Flanders based on a comparison of Flemish LPIS-data between 1998 and 2013. LPIS or the “land parcel identification system” is a database developed to support implementation of the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) (EC, 2013) that contains information on the location of all farmland parcels. Starting from the spatial pattern of farmland loss that is provided by these data, driving factors will be distinguished. Both qualitative data on drivers of farmland conversion and GIS analyses will be used to provide insight in the “farmland’s vulnerability to conversion”. Based on literature and previous research in Flanders, we know that farmland loss is mainly caused by (1) planned conversions for residential areas, industry, harbour expansion, road development, nature development,…. (2) unplanned conversions for hobby farming, horse pastures, gardens, non-agricultural economic activities, … and (3) land abandonment due to marginalisation of agriculture (which is up till now not seen in Flanders, but is reported elsewhere in the world). Driving (or restricting) factors that will be investigated for the case study area are the spatial planning situation, the proximity of cities, soil suitability, private or public ownership, … If possible, analyses are performed for the whole region of Flanders (the Northern part of Belgium). When more detailed research is needed, the city of Ghent will be used as a case. The research results will provide insight in how (spatial) policy approaches are guiding current (farm)land use changes. Furthermore these insights should support for the development of effective policy approaches for farmland preservation at different institutional levels. This is highly relevant as the preservation of farmland is high on both policy and research agendas in relation to food security, climate adaptation, provision of landscape and open space, …

ABSTRACT. The lack of inclusion of urban agriculture in city planning directly affects the success of initiatives in this sector, which subsequently could impede future innovations. The poor representation of urban agriculture in planning can be attributed to a lack of understanding about the benefits of these initiatives from authorities. A better understanding can lead to a greater incorporation of urban agriculture in planning, which in turn would stimulate further innovation. A suitable methodology needs to be created to asses and demonstrate the benefits of these initiatives. A void that the Urban Agriculture Circle will address.

To develop a suitable methodology the authors extracted policy issues from a survey in four major cities in the Netherlands (Rotterdam, Groningen, Tilburg and Almere) during the regional elections of 2010. Next, they condensed these issues to 12 themes, looking specifically at those that could benefit from urban agriculture. These 12 were equally divided over the three identified categories of people, planet and profit, i.e.: 1) inclusiveness (people – ‘Our city’); 2) environmental health (planet – ‘Healthy city’); and 3) productiveness (profit – ‘Economic city’). For a visual effect the themes were merged in a circle diagram. In order to qualify the importance of a specific theme in the aims of an initiative, the authors created weighted rankings. They used a one to five scale ranking of importance, with five being an identification that this theme is an important component of the aim of the initiative and one being an identification that it is insignificant.

The usefulness of the circle was conducted with an analysis of several urban agriculture initiatives in NL. The results from this investigation identify that although initiatives tend to be more weighted in one of the categories of profit, planet and people more than the others, more often than not they cover multiple themes from the spectrum. The circle highlights the multi-functionality that is being seen in many urban agriculture initiatives. By having a better understanding about the multi-functionality and benefits of urban agriculture initiatives, cities can facilitate and stimulate innovations in urban agriculture in a direction that mitigate specific urban issues. More over initiatives could use the circle to show authorities their added value to the urban fabric. The circle makes clear that by formulating the specific urban issues that urban agriculture initiatives can help meeting, will support urban agriculture to gain ground in urban plans.

ABSTRACT. Urban gardening is not a new phenomenon but it has received considerably more practical and academic interest in recent years, both in the Global North and the Global South. There are many studies available on the social and ecological aspects of urban gardening, but rather fewer on the economic aspects. Studies on economic aspects such as crop yields, inputs and outputs of production, productivity, economic margins and the contribution to home-economics in the EU are rare. While home production and subsistence have an important role to play in the Global South, its role and full potential in prosperous cities within the EU for food productivity and home economics is currently under-researched. This research compares crop production data from urban gardening (home gardening, allotments, community gardening) in three EU cities (London, Ljubljana, Milan) with commercial production in the EU and provides a model to assess the economic potential of urban gardening within a city’s local agri-food system (LAS). For the analysis we use data from various sources: a 2014 survey conducted within the framework of the EU ‘Foodmetres’ project, and data from the London Harvest-ometer survey as well as other published data on home gardening and commercial food production. Results from the economic analysis show that home gardening can play an important role for the provisioning of vegetables and fruit in urban areas, especially for those products with a shorter shelf-life, such as soft berry fruits, but also many vegetables and herbs. Although profit is not the main motivation for most urban gardeners, the models show that productivity can be high in urban systems and that gardeners can earn above the minimum wage especially when using organic inputs and outputs i.e. organic food prices in the calculation. We conclude that in the Global North, urban gardening can be made into a serious part-time profession, which can be combined with other part-time jobs and/or used as step towards obtaining a full-time gardening career. In addition to the production economics, food eating and buying patterns, which are considered in this paper, there are also further documented socio-economic benefits from urban gardening, such as improvements in health and wellbeing, community life, skills and environmental sustainability, these may be assessed by e.g. the social return on investment method, however they are not presented in this abstract.

ABSTRACT. The leading development challenges of Bangladesh today include reduction of poverty and environmental management in the context of rapidly growing population, which means that the number of low-income consumer is increasing. Development of urban area has been occurring since couple of decades in Bangladesh without any plan and strategy. Population influx to urban area is very high as people are pushed to the cities because of limited job opportunities in rural areas. Agricultural lands have given way to housing developments and roads in an agriculturally based economy like Bangladesh. Most of the urban poor are concentrated in informal settlements, where there is no infrastructure or services to address environmental problems. Urban agriculture (UA) contributes to food security by increasing the supply of food and by enhancing the quality of perishable foods reaching urban consumers. The exploration of local socio-economic and institutional conditions that might promote and hinder UA is needed to implement policies that effectively integrate agriculture into the urban environment. The demands of city agricultural products can be met through urban and semi-urban agricultural practices. These demands in fact led to development of small-scale urban vegetable, floriculture and horticulture gardening, poultry, fisheries and livestock production. Growing markets have also sprung up in different corners of the city to cater the needs of the city dwellers. It creates a lot of job opportunities for the hither unemployed people and brings money to improve their livelihood. In the near future, urban and semi-urban agriculture will be accepted and implemented as a major intervention in food security and social security programs. It provides food, generates jobs, supports business and maintains the landscape. Already, there is a trend in developing urban agriculture in some cities to maintain and improve the livelihood of the poor people and help the city dwellers with supply of much needed food products. The only need is to organize and develop the urban and semi-urban agriculture in the city in a more planned way. One of the biggest policy challenges today is the inclusion of environmental policy into urban policy. Urban agricultural policy can be an integral part of a set of policies for sustainable urban environmental management.

ABSTRACT. Urban agriculture has triggered great interest among urban consumers, city governments of the Global North in recent years. Scholarly discussions so far have either celebrated urban agriculture´s environmental and socio-economic benefits or elucidated a lack of opposition to the industrial food system. However, urban agriculture also presents a social and cultural phenomenon that involves issues of identity, lifestyle, and political consumerism. In this paper we aim to explore whether urban agriculture shares characteristics of lifestyle movements (LM), in particular processes of identity-work, lifestyle politics and cultural entrepreneurship. In contrast to traditional social movements, lifestyle movements popularize the fostering of a coherent and personally gratifying lifestyle as a collective tactic for social change. Thus, participation is relatively individualized and private; the focus is on the transformation of cultural and economic practices and codes. Moreover, the structure of lifestyle movements is often dispersed and emerges around informal networks and cultural entrepreneurs. The study builds on 28 problem-centered interviews with urban farmers from 12 different urban agriculture projects in New York City. Findings show that urban agriculture allows its adherents to indulge in a shared ethos of re-engagement with nature, meaningful work, and authenticity. Moreover, processes of identity-work and lifestyle politics share characteristics with other lifestyle movements such as locavorism and green living. While not engaging in conventional protests or political processes, advocates are assured that by reorienting their everyday consumption practices and engaging in local food cultivation, they contribute to socio-ecological transformations. For the participants, urban food growing is part of a reflexive lifestyle that re-negotiates cultural codes, not only related to food but also to work, health and city life. The paper provides empirical insights into the recent popularity of urban food growing and reflects on the role and potential of small-scale niche innovations in the transformation to more sustainable food systems.

ABSTRACT. Short food supply chains (SFSCs) can be a way to reconnect food production and consumption, supporting small farmers which would have difficult access to mainstream market channels. In urban and peri-urban areas they can also contribute to enhance market channels diversification, widening the range of consumption choices and strengthening urban food systems resilience.

SFSCS can be based on grassroots initiatives, as well as small scale businesses committed to social and ecological goals (small farmers survival, green production methods, consumers' awareness and involvement). These goals do not necessarily limit profitability: on the contrary they can be a base upon which a successful short chain business can be established.

The contribution presents an analysis of six SFSC initiatives established in two metropolitan areas (three in Rome, three in Zurich). They are promoted and managed by different SFSCs actors (farmers, retailers, consumers), and range from farms direct selling to box schemes to CSA. Some are more business-oriented, some others present typical characters of non-profit grassroots initiatives.

The research was aimed at: • identifying factors supporting and/or hampering the development of such initiatives and their potential scaling-up in terms of both company's size and possible replication of a successful model; • analyzing the relations of competitiveness and/or complementarity between different typologies of initiatives and the contribution they can give to meet urban consumers demand and farmers needs; • analyzing the interactions between farmers and specialized retailers in the SFSCs. The initiatives have been studied in a comparative approach with regard to various characters: aims and goals, type of actors involved, size and geographical scope, organizational and logistic models.

Main outcomes are summarized as follows: • urban context can be relevant for the presence of a critical mass of consumers willing to support SFSCs, through their consumption choices and also through their direct involvement but restrictive regulation and missing long-term commitments of local policy are often hampering factors for small scale initiatives and businesses; • different SFSCs typologies respond to different needs expressed by the various chain actors. In this sense complementarity can be seen between different typologies, whereas competitiveness can be present within them. Business initiatives can fill the gaps left by grassroots initiatives and vice-versa; • direct selling is often the first choice for small farmers settled in urban and peri-urban contexts; specialized retailers are considered an opportunity for market diversification but only rarely farmers rely exclusively on one market channel.

ABSTRACT. In this paper we analyse the evolution,multiplicity and synergies of functions provided by an SME involved in developing a highly successful urban farmers’ market and becoming a facilitator of the development of a whole web of other functions – cultural, educational, community-building, self-expression, place-making, etc. Based on the example of Kalnciema Quarter (KQ) farmers market in Riga we address the research question how the complex interplay and synergies of various functions emerge and develop around connecting urban food initiatives with other development activities and functions. We reference to theories of bricolage, multifunctionality, transition and social innovation. We argue that synergies of functions around urban food develop as bricolage defined as the process of gradual building on what is at hand. In contrast to transition, bricolage not necessarily purposefully creates niches or challenges an existing institutional regime; it is rather making things happen by ad hoc doing, however its outcomes influence the ways how food is distributed and consumed in the city and how the public and politicians perceive food provision and food practices in a wider set of urban development activities. In the paper we argue that bricolage connects distant fields, interests, spheres of activity and social groups making food embedded in sustainable urban development process and stimulating formation of specific urban food policies. We identify three trajectories of bricolage: i) one that creates functional synergies between food and other social and cultural activities through social innovation, networking and skills development; ii) one that enhances business professionalism and new business models through entrepreneurial innovation; and iii) one that ‘opens’ policies and institutions through policy networking and policy innovation. We find that evolution of bricolage is related to story-telling. In case of KQ the self-representation of the SME evolved from a small architectural conservationist company to a global social media and web network “Markethopper” that connects farmers markets and consumers across the world. Persistency of grass-root bricolage is a driver for policy bricolage and incorporating various bottom-up urban food initiatives in city policies. Bricolage happens as dissolution of boundaries; it is multilingual and requires a dialogue. Introducing new functions and values around food in the city means overcoming linguistic boundaries and introducing new words, language, vocabulary and expressions (e.g. ‘urban vitality’, ‘open space’) that are shared by various parties. Bricolage introduces new meanings.

ABSTRACT. In the face of increasing relevance of enhancing urban resilience against a variety of global driving forces, food production in urban areas has gain increasing attention among the academic and planning community. This is particularly relevant in the context of the fast urbanising societies in transition countries, where strong rural rooting, community and family orientation as well as the prevalence of dietary traditions is confronted with a high pace of urban growth, changing lifestyles and nutrition security of the urban poor. Between these poles traditional forms of urban agriculture remained in housing environments, backyards and kitchen gardens are complemented by urban lifestyle-oriented micro-scale gardening in and on top of buildings. However, actual cultivation practices and the related provision of food and other ecosystem services are strongly depending on internal and external factors and drivers, such as the built environment, but also on individual characteristics and capabilities. Therefore a survey (N=120) has been carried out in the city of Pune, Maharashtra, Western India to (i) investigate prevailing cultivation practices of food production and (ii) to analyse the influence of external framework conditions and socio-economic situation, motivation, knowledge and networking of the individual gardening household. The survey revealed that with 60% of the cases conducting food production longer than 10 years and 31% even more than 20 years, urban agriculture looks back on a rather long tradition. Results show that there is a dichotomised typology of urban agriculture, strongly depending on the given urban environment, housing type and available space. Mainly (i) backyard cultivation in detached housing situations and (ii) small kitchen gardens attached to buildings in densified urban areas are found. Despite being small in area size, urban agriculture provides a large variety of commodities with >70 vegetable and >30 fruit types. In the large majority of cases organic production principles are coupled with organic waste management. A relevant share (25-39%) applies specific cropping arrangement and rotation practices, indicating a high degree of professionalisation. Moreover, strong network ties were found within (the female and individual family dominated) gardening community, through which knowledge, products and inputs are distributed. Particularly gardeners’ clubs play an important role as knowledge brokers within the community. Concluding, urban agriculture represent a continuous and stable source of fresh vegetable food, contributes to social capital and community building as well as knowledge transfer not only for food production, but also for healthy lifestyle more holistically.

ABSTRACT. Sustainable production of healthy food for the expected 9 billion people without further harming the environment is one of the society’s grand global challenges. Current trends predict that nearly one billion hectares of new agricultural land would be needed by 2050 to feed the growing world population, while productive cropland area is declining due to rapid urbanization and salinization of croplands. Urban agriculture, defined as the growing and consumption of food in and around cities, has been identified to have the potential to enhance individual and community health and wellness, increase local and global food security, strengthen city economies, reduce human impact on the environment, and promote a sense of community and self-determination. In this paper, we explore the role of modern urban agriculture including building-integrated agriculture and vertical farming, play in enhancing local and global food security. We find that urban and periurban agriculture provides as much as 90 percent of leafy vegetables and 60 percent of milk sold in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania as well as 76 percent of vegetables in Shanghai and 85 percent in Beijing. In the United States, households met 40 percent of the nation’s fresh vegetable demand during World War II. We assessed the potential for local self-reliance in food for a typical post-industrial North American city, Cleveland, Ohio that has over 18,000 vacant lots amounting to 3000 acres of land. We developed three scenarios to estimate the level of food self-reliance for the city using the existing land and other resources. Scenario I, which utilized 80% of every vacant lot, could generate between 22 and 48% of Cleveland’s demand for fresh produce (vegetables and fruits) depending on the vegetable production practice used (conventional gardening, intensive gardening, or hydroponics), 25% of both poultry and shell eggs, and 100% of honey. Scenario II, used 80% of every vacant lot and 9% of every occupied residential lot, could generate between 31 and 68% of the needed fresh produce, 94% of both poultry and shell eggs, and 100% of honey. Scenario III, which added 62% of every industrial and commercial rooftop in addition to the land area used in scenario II, could meet between 46 to 100% of Cleveland’s fresh produce need, and 94% of poultry and shell eggs and 100% of honey. The analysis revealed that the enhanced food self-reliance would result in $29M to $115M being retained in Cleveland annually depending upon the scenario employed.

ABSTRACT. Many publications about societal benefits and multifunctionality of agriculture in general, but also of urban agriculture in particular exist. Nonetheless, most of them are focusing on local case studies or on specific functions or benefits, while overarching qualitative and quantitative analyses are missing. Social and ecological functions and benefits of urban agriculture are dominating publications and the public discussions, while only little attention is raised to economic contributions and values. The conducted empiric work aims to tackle this knowledge gap of economic benefits of urban agriculture on a European level including good-practices from different countries. For providing an overarching view on societal benefits also social, landscape and cultural heritage added values of urban agriculture are included in this work. The Europe-wide investigation is based on case studies, which were conducted as an important contribution to EU COST-Action “Urban Agriculture Europe”. About 80 deeply analyzed case studies, which were collected in 2013 and 2014, from ten countries distributed across Europe, are building the backbone of this work. The indicators highlighting the added values of urban agriculture are production value, paid jobs, volunteers involved, social and educational services, managed open space, agro-biodiversity as well as cultural and natural heritage issues. Specific indicators are valuable to focus on economic, social, cultural or landscape aspects, which are in a summarizing way emphasizing multifunctionality. As mentioned before most publications address the non-economic added values of urban agriculture. Thus, this contribution’s major aim is the economic perspective on the farm and local economy level. Urban agriculture is not a rural leftover, but part of the urban economy. Production values on the farm level generate values up- and downstream in the value added chain. Furthermore, urban agriculture is offering jobs inside the farms and also in the sectors connected to agricultural production, processing, marketing and provision of farm services. The EU-wide empiric work based on case studies exposes, that urban agriculture is a noteworthy business and contributing to the urban economy, while simultaneously offering various social, cultural, landscape, and environmental functions and benefits for cities and agglomerations.

ABSTRACT. The number of people living in urban areas is increasing dramatically. 50 per cent of the world population lived in urban areas in 2008, first time in the world history. This increased to 54 per cent in 2015. As urbanization proceeds, food insecurity issues in the cities are sure to increase. Megacities are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity, as they rely on lengthy supply chains to meet their consumption needs. Urban agriculture could mitigate some of these food supply risks. Urban agriculture produces 15 to 20 per cent of the world’s food supply and could play a major role in achieving global food security. Urban agriculture refers to the production of both food and non-food products in urban, peri-urban and rurban areas. The growth of urban agriculture is a result of a global increase in migration to rural (from rural to urban) areas. Urban populations are more vulnerable to food insecurity, as they rely on external sources for their food needs and are thus exposed to greater supply risks. Some commentators suggest, however, that urban agriculture may provide the solution to food security issues in cities. The potential contribution of urban agriculture to food security differs between developed and developing countries. In cities in developed countries, urban agriculture is limited by a lack of space and the absence of economic incentives; however, in the developing world, urban agriculture has considerable potential to improve food security. Key issues, such as urban sprawl, contamination threats and legality, must be addressed for urban farming to have a sustainable future. The role that urban agriculture plays in food security is much greater in developing countries. It is practiced widely in developing countries such as India, Vietnam, China, Cuba, Ghana, Uganda and Kenya. In many of these areas, produce from urban agriculture constitutes a large percentage of total crop production. In some Asian cities, as much as 80 per cent of the population is involved in urban agriculture; in African countries, approximately 40 per cent of the urban population is involved. Urban agriculture is experiencing burgeoning popularity, with gardens springing up in many cities in Australia, Canada, the United States, England, France and New Zealand. Land plots to grow crops are diverse, including rooftops, basements, walls, recreational grounds and roadsides. These gardens mostly operate as community gardens. Despite its growing popularity, urban agriculture feeds only a very small percentage of the population in these cities.

ABSTRACT. This paper seeks to contribute to the discussion on alternative food production and urban agriculture as means to cities resilience and self-sufficiency. Allotment gardens played an important role in urban food systems in the past. However, this kind of urban gardening is mostly being omitted in the current debate, as it is less common in Western Europe and North America, where most of the scientific work originates. Contrarily, in the Czech Republic as well as other Central and Eastern European countries, allotment gardens are still widespread even in big cities. Growing fruits and vegetables in urban settlements brings the environmental benefits of localized food production (especially lowering the need for produce transportation), together with strengthening gardeners’ relationship to place, food and natural environment. Allotment gardening is nevertheless often burdened with rather negative connotations from the socialist era when it was related to market shortage and limited options of leisure activities. For this reason, new local food initiatives and urban gardening trends inspired by Western examples commonly fail to connect with the long tradition of Czech gardeners and policy makers generally perceive allotments as obsolete relics of the past. Based on research from three allotment gardens in Brno, a city of 400 000, this paper investigates the socio-economic and environmental facets of self-provisioning of fruits and vegetables within this specific context and its relation to current trends in alternative food production. I examine gardeners’ motivations and attitudes, different ways of use of the allotments and the functions and needs they fulfil. Using the method of consumer diaries, I furthermore try to quantify the amount of fruits and vegetables produced in the allotments and the level of self-sufficiency of respondents’ households. From these data I extrapolate the potential of Brno allotment gardens for the city’s food self-sufficiency. I conclude that allotment gardens are connected to specific meanings which differentiate them from other examples of alternative food networks. Nevertheless, they constitute a living practice complying with the ideas of sustainable food production, and they present a relevant feature for future development of resilient cities.

ABSTRACT. Social Farming (SF) is a longstanding phenomenon in Europe, emerging mainly in the rural and periurban setting. In Catalonia, it has become especially evident within the last 10 years, due to the 2008 economic crisis. There are direct benefits from SF in terms of employment, education, training and therapeutic approaches at risk of social exclusion. It is important to assess the social return on public and private investments in this activity and evaluate its impact in areas such as local development and social cohesion. The present research is analysing the economic viability and social impact of a sample of SF projects, using two distinct methodologies: the CANVAS business model and social return on investment (SROI). The first attempts to provide guidelines for promoters of an SF initiative, from the emergence of the project idea to the creation of the enterprise. The second measures and quantifies the concept of value, incorporating costs and social, environmental and economic benefits. The study attempts to demonstrate how SF can be a profitable economic activity with an important social impact, while also contributing to better use of public resources and a more efficient system of social welfare.

ABSTRACT. Institutionally-run farms were integral to health and social care services in Ireland and Northern Ireland throughout the 20th century. Such services relied heavily on religious congregations whose institutional farms and gardens delivered occupational rehabilitation and care services. In recent times the decline in numbers of religious providing these services has meant a loss in the benefits of farming or horticulture while at the same time the demand for services has increased. Public policy for health and care services has shifted in emphasis from institutionalised services of the past to community-based services that support people within their communities.

Drawing on the experience of social farming in EU states such as Netherlands, Belgium and Italy the EU-INTERREG project entitled Social Farming Across Borders (SoFAB) aimed to reconnect socially excluded people and farming on family farms. The SOFAB project piloted social farming services on 20 family farms in Ireland and Northern Ireland for one year beginning May 2013. Service users for the pilot period were 37 adults with intellectual disabilities who were availing of day care services and 29 adults who were using mental health services. They expressed an interest in ‘trying out the farming experience’ and each spent a day per week for up to 30 weeks on the farms resulting in over 1,600 person days of social farming experienced and recorded. Farm families who provided the service done so on a voluntary basis with the understanding that they would be best placed to continue delivery of these services on a paid-for basis at the end of the project. These farm households maintained detailed records of time and costs incurred during piloting which enabled a determination of benefits and costs of social farming as delivered through the project.

A remarkably high attendance (81%) rate by service users over the one year period underscored the extent to which people highly valued and enjoyed the experience provided. Benefits to service users were identified through the research in terms of: social inclusion; new skills; personal health and well-being; and personal progression. The farm families identified benefits they derived such as: personal development and enjoyment; job satisfaction and personal achievement; and reconnecting with wider society through new activities. Service delivery was shown to be highly cost-effective when compared to existing public services in both Ireland and Northern Ireland. The farmers who piloted the service have since formed their own organisation to promote and support social farming.

ABSTRACT. Social farming meant as that activity that employs material and immaterial resources to promote and carry out therapeutic actions, social and work inclusion of disadvantaged people, is the expression of the new post-productivist trend that characterizes the agriculture sector and a passage from a logic based on the maximization of quantity of agriculture products to a multifunctional one. In this perspective, social agriculture, offering public services to local populations may represent an element of social, cultural and political innovation of the territory focusing on the development of the social capital by strengthening the relational system and the development of reciprocity networks. The survey was carried out in Sicily, where Social Farming has taken root so much to become a separate scenario compared to the national one. In Sicily this phenomenon has gained special characteristics both from a juridical aspect and the operative and organizational ones, besides the ethics and professionalism of entrepreneurs. In Sicily Social Farming is aggregated under the name of “Social Farm Network” which included agri-social farms and “Associations for social promotion, social cooperatives and family ones”, throughout the territory. In virtue of the fact that building a relationship network in a territory represents a peculiar characteristic of SF, this work’s aim was that of studying the relationship network among the actors involved in Sicilian Social Farming in order to evaluate the network characteristics, strong points and sore ones. The study of the system relationship was carried out by adopting the Social Network Analysis (SNA) that is a system of techniques that measure the social relations deriving from different kind of ties and among different actors. It allows defining some explicative indicators of the relational behavior of these actors. Results provided a “map of the relationships” among all the operators involved into social activities of different kind, and in particular it showed the central role of the “Sicilian Social Farms Network” both within the coordination activities and intermediation ones, to draw relationships with outside-network operators. Finally, in order to widen the SNA analysis with reference to the typology of the relations surveyed and to understand if the network highlighted may represent a possible tool to contribute to the development of this phenomenon and to facilitate the coordination and participation to initiatives and projects for the Social Agriculture, specific qualitative data was acquired by ad hoc interviews of the actors of the network involved in social farming activities.

ABSTRACT. Social/care farming (SCF) is an innovative approach to nature-based activities and services organised at farm level with well-established discourses in Western Europe relating to multifunctionality, rural development, social inclusion, etc. Being a new concept in Hungary, SCF recently attracted fair amount of interest from CSOs and rudimentary acknowledgment of policymakers in Hungary. A new project has been funded by the Norway (EEA) Grants which is about to identify an appropriate socio-economic model of SCF in Hungary (http://szocialisfarm.hu/). Aiming to create a new sector in a novel field, this consensus-seeking initiative necessarily requires a cross-sectoral, cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary approach. In this paper we attempt to identify the emerging actors in this field, record the construction of this new network in Hungary, by analysing the underlying assumptions of participants relating to possible therapeutic, educational, rehabilitation or social inclusion goals. We build on our own participatory observation experiences on the first forum on SCF in Hungary (January 2014) and on three community of practice meetings of experts in 2015. We identify common threads in the complex understandings of this field in the making and also attempt to outline analytical fields to classify social farming practices in Hungary.

ABSTRACT. Strong values and identity of social farming projects In France, social farming projects have been built by non for profit associations, according to strong humanistic values like solidarity, education, inclusion. Social farming is not considered as a business in France. Even for individual farmers who envisage it as diversification.

The public support is a support by default . Social inclusion gardens take benefit from the national un-employment social treatment policy; . Farms with residence capacities get local public support (mostly from counties) because they contribute to alleviate the crucial lack of hosting capacities for disabled people. This makes the activity very dependent from public funding. For inclusion gardens, production and service selling may represent 15 to 25% of the resources. Those initiatives receive strong public support, mostly from municipalities, county and regional authorities. In fact, this feature does not mean that the initiatives escape to competition. The French neo-liberal decentralisation in the recent years meant that State transferred competencies and charges to decentralised authorities (regions, counties and inter-municipality level) with decreasing resources.

The managerial logic is increasingly influent Many of those associative structures are progressively absorbed by umbrella organisations (mostly managed by patients or family organisations)., which are also associations. They lead a concentration process. Those umbrella organisations recruit managers in charge of managing the social farming structures. On behalf of good management of public money, often farming activities in therapeutic hosting organisations are considered as too costly. This managerial pressure threatens the identity of therapeutic hosting projects and values shared by staff and families.

The role of a territorial network A multi-stakeholders network like ASTRA, with deep territorial anchoring, has to be multi-functional: producing knowledge and information for social farming project holders, sharing practices and experiences, defending and disseminating solidarity values, ‘helping’ public authorities to put social farming development on their agenda. Obviously, ASTRA can not escape to the contradictions already mentioned. Which development model ASTRA has to promote vis-a-vis public authorities? Managerial and cost saving or humanistic and non for profit? We simplify the dilemma, for sure. But it is crucial for broadening financial resources. We can see the impacts of financial pressure on the network strategy at local level and its role in opposing to managerial destructive logic.

ABSTRACT. In the UK, we are currently witnessing increasing rates of food poverty, accompanied by obesity and food-related conditions, like diabetes or atherosclerosis. The official/mainstream discourses of food security tend to consolidate a view of food as a commodity, emphasising the issues of quantity and financial access to healthy food, hence poverty and malnutrition remain closely related. Moreover, the recent interventions focus on consumer choice (e.g. “buy organic”) situating the power to shape the food system within the spaces of individualised consumption rather than in the realm of collective action and inclusive governance, as exemplified by the politicised struggles of rural food producers in many parts of the world, such as La Via Campesina. In my work, I argue for the creation of urban food commons as one of the ways to reverse these trends and to become one of the tools for achieving food justice/sovereignty in the context of an increasingly urbanised world. On the theoretical level commons provide a useful analytical framework and a new development paradigm characterised by a language that has a potential to transcend the urban/rural, society/nature, public/private, producer/consumer dichotomies; and in doing so contribute to the knowledge of strategies and spatial opportunities that represent the parameters for implementing (urban) food policies that are rooted in the culture of co-responsibility, co-production and solidarity. If we view commons as a relational quality, food sovereignty/justice needs to be understood as an ongoing process of collective action, education and critical reflection of our values and practices rather than an end state. Methodologically, I am drawing on Participatory Action Research (PAR) approaches with the Back to Front initiative in Leeds – a community development project initiated by the department of Public Health aimed at reducing health inequalities, by encouraging people in the most vulnerable (and ethnically diverse) communities to grow food in their front gardens, while recognising local assets: not only material resources (such as access to land or compost in the urban environments) but also skills and knowledge necessary to address food-related environmental, health and ethical concerns. Secondly, I develop my understanding through engagement with a PAR-guided Public Healing Garden project, which at the time of the writing, is being negotiated with the Leeds’ Parks & Countryside department. Thirdly, I use the qualitative research with fifteen grassroots food-commons initiatives in the UK to offer reflections on the possibilities and barriers for creating, governing, extending and embedding commons practices.

ABSTRACT. Even if healthy food is back on the agenda of a growing number of cities, for far too many people, and especially for those living in low-income neighborhoods, the access to healthy options is simply out of reach. Many of these communities are oversaturated with fast-food chains and other sources of inexpensive and processed food, facing the highest risks of obesity, diabetes, and other preventable health challenges. Unsustainable urban development, market failures and urban planning have mainly led to food deserts, areas without proper access to fresh, healthy and affordable food. These underserved urban spaces have recently received a great deal of attention, seen as the product of poor proximity, means of transportation and shopping options in low income neighborhoods. As cities seek to grow a more sustainable, equitable and livable environment, ensuring that healthy food is accessible to all is crucial. Alternative projects, initiatives and policies have been developed, bringing street food vendors to these unsuccessful parts of cities. Street vending, as an interim use, is a mean to promote a livelier and healthier city, a potential tool that may generate positive community changes, if the agenda used to promote it specifically address existing inequalities. This paper argues for the use of street food vending as an innovative tool to counteract food deserts and to activate the public space of previously dramatic urban areas, improving health and urban outcomes in places that need them most. It focuses on specific north-America street food strategies: New York City, Philadelphia, Seattle and Toronto have devised similar street food strategies with the aim to increase access to healthy food for the most vulnerable people.

ABSTRACT. Periurban and urban agriculture with its multifunctionality, is now on the agenda of most of the metropolitan areas, as a singular symbol of post-industrial era and sustainable urban systems. However, which urban populations are concerned? Whereas initiatives connecting local small-scale producers are part of daily routine of the well-educated and wealthy urban populations, there is indeed a growing disjunction between some disadvantaged urban areas and agricultural areas. This questions the everyone's access to local agri-resources (now almost synonyms of quality, in the common sense) and lets also emerge new patterns of metropolitan inequalities. Putting the emphasis back on food and social issues in research related to urban agriculture leads to reconsider the food justice framework. Indeed, the notion underlines what is denied in the current food system and emphasizes the fair distribution of food resources within a given area, both in farming systems and in the supply chain. However, there is a lack of analysis concerning the abilities of local agriculture to reduce or enhance inequalities in metropolitan areas. We propose thus a dynamic and innovative definition of food justice, not based on the fair or unfair distribution of local agricultural resources, but on the exploration of connections or disconnections between them and disadvantaged urban areas. How do we explain such linkage (or lack of linkage) and what kind of local geography does it design? Why does it contribute to create or improve food security and safety? Our communication builds on the comparison of four similar-size metropolitan areas, incorporated into different contexts: Lyon-Saint- Etienne, Malmö, Rabat and Curitiba. It points out three main results. First, taking account the producer/poor consumer’s perceptions of each other better explains the fragmented geography of short supply chains; therefore, initiatives focused on awareness could promote the (re)connections. Second, although the Western model of sustainable city and its consequences on local agriculture do create common patterns on urban food systems, each deprived area also generates its proper strategie with agri-food resources, able to create alternative models for enhancing food security. Third, the relationship between poor populations, food security and urban agriculture relies on the local governance, but also on the political definition of “healthy” food in a context of urban pressures. Multidimensionality of linkage between urban consumers and their nearby agriculture deserves therefore to be re-habilitated into the metropolitan theoretical and operational frameworks, to ensure sustainability and above all to foster social, spatial and food justice.

ABSTRACT. Le secteur informel de l’alimentation de rue prospère dans toute l’Afrique Sub-Saharienne en raison du rythme accru de l’urbanisation (37% de la population vit en ville), du manque d’opportunités d’emplois formel ainsi que de l’introduction de la journée continuée de travail. Là où 47% de la population total est estimée comme pauvre, les services de restauration «for-mels» n’ont pas la capacité de répondre à la croissante demande d’aliments, à bon prix, ce qui constitue une opportunité pour le secteur de l’alimentation de rue pour prospérer. La présente étude vise à comprendre le contexte et les spécificités de l’alimentation de rue à N’Djamena et identifier des possibles points d’entrée afin d’améliorer la sécurité alimentaire de la population urbaine au Tchad.

ABSTRACT. The pollution challenges leading to exposure to food contaminants in the Lake Victoria Basin are a dilemma. Pollutants find their way into ecosystems and resource bases that are frequented by the urban dwellers, mainly women in their quest to sustain households. The situation is worsened by the lack of knowledge and gender insensitive environmental policies, yet this would have helped to inculcate a pollution prevention culture amongst the stakeholders. Where these policies remotely exist, they have remained disharmonious at best. As a result, initiatives that would have addressed pollution related effects on household health and the quality of ecosystem derived products are stifled. Efforts that seek to re-enforce poverty reduction strategies must now address themselves to the institutionalization of cross sectional action policies, backed by complete involvement of key stakeholders. It is here that gender advocates, environmental professionals, politicians, development partners and researchers, could dissolve the walls that have demeaned multidisciplinary efforts towards improving the quality of life for a common man.

Research was undertaken in Jinja, the second biggest town and industrial place in Uganda. A survey, interviews, and focus group discussion were conducted with urban dwellers and policy makers. Data was analyzed and indicated a strong relationship between patterns of resource use, modes of exposure to contaminants in polluted environments and gender. For example, it is men who do the fishing while women look after homes and carry out most of the domestic activities. Unfortunately, people performing these activities in polluted environments are at greater risks of exposure to contaminants, either directly when they come into contact with the contaminants or indirectly through the food chain. The factors that were observed to predispose the poor urban dwellers to contaminant exposure can be classified according to people’s activity lifestyle as follows: water contact practices, proximity of gardens to chemical and microbiological contaminated sites, close range of residential areas to chemical contaminated sites and vector breeding sites, lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities, and filthy homesteads and over-crowding in homesteads. In conclusions, it was realized that policy address is necessary and key to improving livelihoods of people in urban areas and urban agriculture is the survival strategy for poor women and men living in polluted areas.

ABSTRACT. Nowadays the structural changes in Europe require a transition from the old re-distributive welfare to a new kind of welfare, called productive welfare, where the user cooperates to produce the new services. Firstly we have the citizen as passive user of services (around the ’50 and the ’60), or he/her appears as simple consumer (in the ’80 and the’90) and in the last period he/her becomes a co-producer: this is the effect of the co-production process. Generally speaking the co-production process is seen as a new way to guarantee some services towards the person: the ideation, the implementation and the evaluation of the service has to come from the co-operation between user and producer.. Following this trend in 2003 Coldiretti Torino tested lots of new experiences in the area of Social Farming, as nursery school or playground in the farm or working to enhance people in social emergency. Coldiretti Torino has been cooperating with the University of Pisa to promote a strategic plan to build a new model of Social Farming as well as the local development. At the beginning the aim was to make new paths for social innovation, to build a network of farms, farmers, stakeholders and actors of social public services where everyone had a connection with the others. Here we have the results of our work: 70 farmers and 23 social cooperatives involved, 13 cities, 1 association of cities, 1 GAL, 3 ASL and 10 consortia services.8 new enterprises,a new methodology to create value, the number of person involved and new services users and customers for the enterprises involved. Coldiretti Torino and the Province of Torino promoted an institutional path involving Agricultural Department, Training Department and Work Departments. Coldiretti organized a different type of meeting(e.g. World Cafè. EASW, Open Space) in order to cooperate in this network. Thanks to this meeting were born lots of important alliances on the rural area around Turin, as the relevant cooperation with the Diaconia Valdese. Firstly we worked together to create and to support an innovative startup of social agriculture and now we are working for the second experience. As a great result we have a permanent table were the actors involved have been working to create social innovation for the local development.

ABSTRACT. Urban gardens can play an important role for the well- being of citizens, for improved nutrition and health, towards environmental awareness and conservation of natural resources. They may have educational, cultural and simultaneously social purposes, facilitating work and income for disadvantaged social groups, reducing poverty and fostering development, particularly among the elderly, unemployed or homeless. In a context of high unemployment and low educational and professional qualifications, the Portuguese Red Cross - Braga Delegation, through its Community Center in Vila de Prado (CCVP), proposed the creation of a community garden as a way to contribute to the social integration of low income and socially stigmatized families. The site, with a huge landscape potential along the river Cávado, was abandoned and useless. The purpose of this study was to develop the design of this community garden, based on the characteristics and expectations of the beneficiary families, including : (i) the technical project of the organic horticultural production; (ii) the operation of the community garden, its promotion, dissemination and resources; (iii) an education/training plan to promote knowledge and potential professional integration; (iv) a plan of activities directed to the community to promote the project integration; (v) the evaluation of the impact of the project on the beneficiary families, particularly in terms of improving social relations and their social integration. The methodology developed throughout 2013, included the analysis of the characteristics and perspectives of the beneficiary families, by monitoring the application process; the study of the agronomic characteristics and potential of the site; the understanding of the interconnections with the community through contacts and collaborations with neighbors and local institutions; the evaluation of other social and community urban garden projects. For assessing the social impact on the beneficiary families, three technicians of the CCVP (social workers and psychologist) were interviewed. The project was called “Garden of Knowledge” (Horta do Saber) and included plots for 16 families (200 m²/plot) and a training course on organic farming (200 h). The impact could be described by a great motivation, commitment and willingness to participate, an opportunity for social integration and a significant contribute to increase families self-esteem, well-being and better health through improved food quality. Now, the site is a smart, multifunctional and inclusive park, as it promotes sustainability, food security, biodiversity, intercultural and environmental education. By bringing together several synergies it led to a better community's quality of life and a better environment.

ABSTRACT. La Nuova Arca (LNA; in English: The New Ark) was born in 2007 in pursue of the common good through the establishment of a small community of families, which aims to the social inclusion of vulnerable groups of population: single mothers and children in need, migrants, refugees. Hospitality to mothers and children in needs was the starting point of this experience that rapidly evolved to include the experimentation of new forms of housing and new models of production and social relationships.

Agricultural activity is a central part of this project. His most important point of innovation is the experimentation of an economic model that accords centrality to the construction of networks of social relationships. The farm started in 2012, involving since the outset some Solidarity Purchasing Groups (GAS). It has quickly strengthen its activity, in direct relationship with the GAS, which in 12 months grew rapidly in number, from 5 to 30, allowing the consolidation of the farm and the involvement in the work of mothers living in the community, some immigrants and other workers. Skills related to agricultural production processes and activities of distribution and packaging grew rapidly.

The New Ark quickly became a reference and an aggregation point for the other farms operating in the same territory, as well as a reference for a large number of GAS, especially in the coordination and management of the orders of non-local products, such as citrus fruits and detergents. One of the most original projects is Deterspilliamo, which consists in the on-tap dispensing of eco-friendly detergents produced by a firm originated from the experience of the Ethical Purchasing Group of Rimini, in the North of Italy. Re-use of packages is encouraged, while mothers of the family home are also involved in the project.

Common initiatives with other farms of the IX Municipality of Rome have also led to the mobilization of local actors for the defence of the territory, threatened by the opening of a landfill at Falcognana, after the closing of Malagrotta. Collective action, supported by the IX Municipality of Rome, was also directed to the creation of a municipal brand (DOM: municipal designation of origin), aimed at promoting local products and local farms that produce with sustainable practices.

Finally, agriculture activity has become an important part of the social and economic life of the community and an important link for the construction of solidarity and cooperative social relationships.

ABSTRACT. Farm multifunctionality represents nowadays one of the pivotal factors to add value to crop productions and enhance the development of agricultural sector in the urbanizing regions. Projects aim to make customers move closer to food production areas and didactical, recreational and social activities are interesting ways to diversify the services provided by farms. Innovative enhancement activities were developed in a farm in Ancona (Italy) on a surface (1500 m^2) cultivated as vegetable garden, throughout pilot projects implementation and experimental social paths. A self-service vegetable garden was designed and established in 2011 and equipped with a glasshouse for visitor’s reception. The project intended to allow citizens to hand-pick their own fresh vegetables, meeting the increasing need to rediscover the countryside and reduce the distance between food production and consumption. Further, the glasshouse was used as crucial center to implement several didactical, recreational and social natural themed activities dedicated to children and families. In the same area, a pedagogic project, called “Summer in the countryside”, was activated since the summer 2012. During the school vacation, weekly educational and play modules in the agricultural environment were offered for 4-11 years old children. During the activities, the vegetable garden was used as an open classroom and the natural environment served as source of materials to be used by children to experiment, learn and amuse, modeling toys with their own hands. Further, social farming activities were proposed and activated. Among these, the project “Active longevity in rural areas” was established in 2015, aiming to evaluate the clinical and therapeutic benefits of motor and cognitive activities held in the countryside in over-65-year-old seniors. The elderly were involved in practical activities, related to the care and maintenance of a dedicated vegetable garden, and in exercises for the mind to improve the mnesic performances and promote the recall of emotionally pleasant experiences, with the cooperation of specialized medical staff. The provided activities allowed the farm to diversify the range of offered services and to improve visibility among customers. The number of participants to educational activities increased over time. The “vegetable garden” environment proved to be an effective location to host didactical, educational, recreational and therapeutic activities and to fulfill the multifunction objectives.

ABSTRACT. Barikamà is a cooperative born in 2011 to facilitate the social integration of migrants from Subsaharian Africa. In 2010 Suleman, Aboubakar, Sidiki, Modibo, Ismael, Moussa participated to the riots in Rosarno against racism and the exploitation conditions of farm workers in the citrus production. Escaping from such conditions, they arrived in Rome, were they met the Solidarity Purchasing Groups (GAS): from this encounter Barikamà was born. Barikama’ means ‘resistance’ in Bambara language, spoken in Mali, Senegal and Burkina Faso.

The cooperative is, indeed, the result of solidarity action aiming to integrate migrants and disadvantaged people through the production and sale to GAS of organic yogurt and vegetables. In the new relation people extended their capabilities. They learnt Italian and new work skills, and in such a way they were able to gain a small income, on which to base their autonomy in the new society in which they were living.

Under the advice and with the support of a group of people linked to the GAS movement (both consumers and farms), they learnt to produce organic yogurt with milk bought from an organic local farm. Yogurt is produced in a cheese factory near Rome, then is distributed directly to GAS, farmers’ markets and individual families.

Today the Cooperative produces about 6000 litres of yogurt and gives work to eight people, among whom two persons suffering with Asperger syndrome. Facilitating the insertion into local social relations, the Cooperative has also facilitated the stable insertion in the labour market of some of his members.

The relation with the local community is such that when, in 2014, the Co-operative needed to make some productive investments (buy bicycles, an electric scooter, fridges and better equipments for production), they felt quite confident to launch on Internet and through the GAS movement a request of 20,000 euro: in few months 26,000 thousand euro were raised.

In 2014 in collaboration with the Casale di Martignano (where they produce their yogurt) they also started the production of vegetables.

Barikamà allows its member to gain confidence and satisfaction in a working experience, creates a network of social relations, new opportunities for all people, Italians and Africans involved, to know and interact with different cultures. Its critical point is mainly the low income it can still guarantee. The experience needs to consolidate through the support of a favourable institutional context.

ABSTRACT. In the current relocation process of food systems, more and more cities are experimenting new local food procurement policies. These experiences are quite different with the previous initiatives of support of agriculture that was conceived and reasoned from a rural area in oder to reveal specificities to ensure better integration in the markets and contributed to the development and recognition of what is called the agriculture of terroir or geographical indications.

The approach of SYstems Localized Food and Agriculture (LAS) is in this perspective and brings, since the late 90s, original contributions to the analysis of rural development by providing a central place to resources, territory and local food cultures [Muchnik et al (2008)]. The originality of the work on SYAL was thus to propose a method of analysis with attention to the enhancement of regional specificities, declined in several dimensions: specificity of men, their histories and institutions, specific ecosystems and landscapes; specificity of the products and related qualification process; specificity of consumers and their food crops that can be used as food resources development [Muchnik et al (2008)].

Public procurement projects networks and programs for school canteens cities refocus the debate on the need to take account of the logic of small businesses and their possible cooperation within a territory and interacting with urban developers of these programs.

the paper discuss here on the capacity and the relevance of the SYAL approach to meet the food safety requirements and to support local procurement policies of cities and especially school canteens.

To develop our proposal, we will rely on the communications of the International Congress on SYAL in 2013 that address recent school lunch programs (especially in Brazil). We first present the policies and programs specificities and limitations. We will then discuss possible contributions of SYAL approach to the analysis of these new agricultural and rural dynamics in those territories where the city becomes a key player.

ABSTRACT. This paper will argue that “infrastructure of the middle” is a key concept that must be highlighted in order to understand how sustainability transition theory can be applied to food system transformation. It presents evidence from an analysis of university food procurement initiatives in Canada and England, based on detailed interviews with practitioners. The author herself was a practitioner (as the former leader of a Canadian NGO which promoted university procurement of sustainable local food), and thus brings a perspective informed by praxis, as well as academic theory. “Infrastructure of the middle” is a term I adapted from Kirschenmann et al.’s concept of “agriculture of the middle”, which describes the mid-size farms and ranches most under threat from an increasingly globalized food system. I coined the term “infrastructure of the middle” to include all the hard and soft infrastructure from roads, warehouses and processing plants to individual champions, non-profit actors and institutional habits that create a new “nexus of practice” for sustainable local food. This nexus of practice has the potential to connect small and mid-size farmers to public institutions that place high-volume orders, a market from which they have been largely excluded. In effect, “infrastructure of the middle” encompasses the moving parts of a socio-technical system required for food system transformation. This paper acknowledges the contribution of sustainability transition theory, which combines both social and technical innovation, and offers a process that includes both social and economic goals. My approach extends the traditional range of sustainability transition theory to public sector procurement of food, a key tool of the sustainability transition. This paper argues that the concept of “infrastructure of the middle” is crucial because it embeds public sector food procurement in local society, nature, and economies. I will argue that “infrastructure of the middle” is the operationalization of embeddedness in socio-technical systems for sustainable food transitions.

ABSTRACT. The “From Seed to Table (FStT)” project sponsored by RUAF Foundation, was deployed in Brazil only at Belo Horizonte city, Minas Gerais State, in the 2010-2011 period. His goal was to make possible the generation of income groups "self managed" consisting of low-income families from the sale of healthy food produced in Urban Agriculture projects called "Productive Gardens". The project worked in two complementary dimensions of urban agriculture in the city: (i) creating basic conditions for low-income families linked to community gardens located in public areas so they make economically viable activity with a focus on self-management and (ii) providing elements for the public managers to structure programs to generate income, occupation of urban spaces and the promotion of food and nutrition security. The methodological strategy was guided by the action research focusing workshops so-called Field Schools, which addressed organizational, technical and marketing aspects. One of the results of the intervention was the sale of production for the national school feeding program, which aims to increase the consumption of vegetables among public school students. This ensured the supply chain strengthening by flowing the production and marketing of healthier food to students in these schools. Some farmers have signed up as individual entrepreneurs, have come to the National Register of Legal Entities (CNPJ), have got current bank account and contribute to Social Security. In April 2011 the Productive Garden, in an area of 3500m2, with seven farming families, was providing healthy food for four schools and two Municipal Child Education Units benefiting approximately 4,800 public school students and enabling the generation of an average income of U$ 367.57/ month/farmer family. This experience was certified as a Social Technology by ABank of Brazil Foundation in 2011. So, the goal of this work is show the result of this institutional sale experience constructing a timeline in the period of 2010 until 2015.

ABSTRACT. Ecuador is going through a nutritional transition with increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity in the population, especially among children and young people, although undernutrition rates in the country are still very high. The country has great ethnic, cultural and food diversity, however, the introduction of ultraprocessed ​​food in the Ecuadorian diet has provided changes in habits and nutritional profile of the population. Among the existing government programs whose purpose is to reduce malnutrition among children and youth is the School Feeding Program – Programa de Alimentación Escolar - PAE. The objective of this study was to reflect on the possible influences of the School Feeding Program - PAE - these changes the nutritional profile and its future possibilities. 24 hours Food Recall surveys were analyzed of a sample of mothers of children receiving food at school, in order to check the diet and compare with the menu offered by PAE. Were also analyzed data from focus groups to obtain information about the acceptance of food of the governmental program. It was observed that household food habit is still linked to the culture of local foods, with plenty of fruit and vegetables regional and linked to existing ethnic groups in the country. On the other hand, the Ecuadorian PAE offers a total of five products to be combined during the week spread throughout the country, and with great industrial processing. Children, in turn, partially accept products, and rejection is more recurrent in regions where indigenous or rural culture is predominant, as in the rural Amazon region. The products offered by PAE do not reflect the culturally established eating habits, and could be replaced by locally produced food that is regular used in the population. This condition could contribute - together with other policies to promote healthy eating – for the stagnation of nutritional transition and appreciation of local agricultural production.

ABSTRACT. Throughout most of the Global North, a food movement took shape during the 21st century that was largely the result of a "triple revolution" of sorts. Young people fell in love with food and the city at the very moment when food and cities were going through unprecedented transformations, and at the very moment when social movement politics were undergoing deep-going transformations.Some of the energy from the triple revolution found an outlet in food policy councils which spread across North America and into Europe. The keynote is based largely on first-hand observation of the challenges faced by the most developed of these food councils, the Toronto Food Policy Council, which provide insights on international trends worthy of investigation by sociologists.

ABSTRACT. A journey across the many challenges that the concept of food sustainability and its application faces nowadays, vis-à-vis current production and consumption trends. It is widely upheld that one of the main contributors to anthropogenic climate change is the food system. Food production affects the environment through emission of greenhouse gases (GHG), by stressing the global nitrogen cycle, affecting biodiversity due to deforestation and monoculture practices, and also by leaching of toxic substances into water resources through the use of pesticides. The paradoxes affecting the food systems are mainly three. First, the coexistence of malnutrition and overweight problems. Second, nearly one third of all crop production is dedicated to animal feed or biofuels, despite persistent widespread hunger and malnutrition. Thirdly, the global community wastes on a yearly basis one third of global food production.

How can these problems be tackled? The lecture will highlight the importance of engaging all the different stakeholders as well as the need for developing integrate action across different spheres.

Sustainability has become a strategic factor in competition and the private sector has to take up this challenge. Consumers need to change their consumption habits away from GHG intensive diets toward more sustainable low-carbon foods. Responsible marketing, consumer education and awareness raising initiatives, as well as healthy lifestyles promotion are among the strategies that have the potential to trigger healthier and more sustainable food consumption.

Finally, the lecture will highlights the dilemmas that make the pathway towards sustainability challenging, also from a policy point of view.

ABSTRACT. This research deals with the topic of urban agriculture in Vienna and its social construction of space. It has to be mentioned that the urban agricultural movement is a young one which makes it very interesting for research because it’s an unexplored field. This particular situation is intended to be examined in relation to the demonstration garden Karls Garten. Its goal is to introduce the concept of urban agriculture to the Viennese people and to spread its idea. The project developed out of the wish to transform a meadow in the center of the city into a multifunctional place. So people should get the possibility to learn about food and agriculture as well as perceive Karls Garten as a leisure area. To combine this functions furniture out of recycled wood was created. Therefore the association Karls Garten was founded which consists of four members whom already had experience in urban agriculture. It is important to point out that the project highly depends on sponsors because the city of Vienna didn’t fund the project. The city of Vienna even could be seen as an obstacle for the implication of the project. The biggest challenge is the many laws of the city which shouldn’t be violated by Karls Garten. However, it was very hard to get all information about these laws which resulted in a loss of time because for instance there was a long discussion if the project area has to be surrounded by a fence.

The theoretic focus of the research is given by the social space theory of Lefèbvre. It is based on the assumption that all space is socially constructed. The construction of space becomes visible through Karls Garten because the beginning of the research is the beginning of the demonstration garden too. Since urban agriculture is a counter-concept to capitalist agriculture, the research using Lefèbvre’s theory questions, to what extent Karls Garten is a non-capitalist space. Further the capitalist agriculture is seen as the cause of many global problems like climate change. This perspective is also represented by the theoretical concepts of food sovereignty. However, food sovereignty goes even further and questions the perception of the country side as food producer. In practice this means that visitors of Karls Garten should start questioning the dominant capitalistic agro-system and engaging in alternative possibilities of a new agro-system.

ABSTRACT. The agri-food system is increasingly under pressure due to demographic, economic and environmental changes. Moreover, internal trends such as consolidation and private standards also affect the system. As a result, the agri-food system is urged to make a transition towards sustainability. Many sustainability experiments arise to respond to these trends. An important aspect to facilitate this transformation is to gain insight in these experiments. We define them as action labs as they are practice-oriented and in an experimental phase. The aim of this paper is to explore the process of collaboration within these action labs and with the mainstream agri-food system. We analyse four case studies to analyse how action labs could contribute to the sustainability challenges of the mainstream agri-food system. The results highlight 13 key factors of collaboration and link the performance of the experimental initiatives with the structure of the actor network and interaction to the agri-food system. Our research contributes to enhancing scientific knowledge on the role of collaboration in the transformation of agri-food systems.

ABSTRACT. This paper reports on the testing and evaluation of an operational approach that brings together different stakeholder groups to jointly develop strategies for the future implementation of regional innovations. The approach was designed and first tested by Schwerdtner et al. (2015), who called it Regional Open Innovation Roadmapping (ROIR). It integrates “open innovation” elements in technology roadmapping (TRM) in the context of sustainable regional development.

We adapted the method and applied it to the case of introducing innovative types of building- related urban agriculture (UA) to the City of Berlin. Those possible innovative types might include the installation of rooftop gardens, rooftop greenhouses, edible green walls as well as such innovative forms as indoor farms or vertical greenhouses. The term ‘‘Zero-acreage farming’’ (ZFarming) describes all those types of UA, being characterized by the non-use of farmland or open space (Specht et al. 2014). In order to define sustainable options for ZFarming, the ROIR approach was applied between 2011 and 2013. The aim was to find possible ZFarming-models for the metropolitan area of Berlin and to identify the options available for their sustainable implementation. During the participatory process, the participants (activists, representatives from lobby groups, planning and construction, research, sales and distribution, policy and administration), established a stakeholder network (of around 50 participants) called “ZFarm- Urban agriculture of the future”, and a roadmap was jointly defined to enable administration, politicians, citizens and practitioners to deal with ZFarming in the future.

An evaluation of the participatory process revealed, that the chosen approach could contribute to increase the potential for ZFarming in different ways. Similar to what has been described by Schwerdtner et al. (2015) for the previous application of the ROIR approach, the approach was highly appreciated by the participating stakeholders, because it allowed them to reflect and decide on different development options. Moreover, the process stimulated the establishment of new networks and alliances, contributed to knowledge generation and created a common understanding for the future implementation of ZFarming among the stakeholders.

Schwerdtner, Wim, Rosemarie Siebert, Maria Busse, Ulf Freisinger. 2015. „Regional Open Innovation Roadmapping: A New Framework for Innovation-Based Regional Development“. Sustainability 7 (3): 2301–21.

Specht, Kathrin, Rosemarie Siebert, Ina Hartmann, Ulf B. Freisinger, Magdalena Sawicka, Armin Werner, Susanne Thomaier, Dietrich Henckel, Heike Walk, Axel Dierich. 2014. „Urban agriculture of the future: an overview of sustainability aspects of food production in and on buildings“. Agriculture and Human Values 31 (1): 33–51.

ABSTRACT. Should we go organic or retain the conventional farming on producing cereals? For short term commitments, we cannot leave the conventional farming to be able to feed the nation. However, by gradually mixing organic and inorganic system of farming, the possibility of raising organic cereals would be possible. In 2012, about 44 rice farmers were interviewed and mapped the location of their farms. Majority of them are practicing both organic and inorganic. Reasons are, they would like to prove the knowledge they got on organic farming. Others followed what their neighbors are doing. About 32 percent are practicing pure organic system of raising cereal. After three years, only nine percent are practicing pure organic and very few on mixed farming. The sustainability of the transition process failed for reasons that low production was attained in organic farming. Even if, organic rice commanded higher price, very few are in pure organic rice growing. The organic rice are being sold outside of the community. The sustainability of the transition process can be attained only after a long time. After the soil was able to recover and all the nutrients gotten have been returned. To reach the end of the long term process, transition approaches must be in place. These are provision of other livelihood that would support the still low production and analyzing the value chain specifically the cost of inputs and the social effect of the output.

ABSTRACT. In recent years food networks have evolved towards a more participated model of food provisioning and distribution in urban areas of Italy. Consumers have organized themselves in solidarity purchases groups (GAS) to support as much as possible local producers and enhance local economy. This study presents the results of consumers choices, motivations and commitment of members of a GAS settled in a city of the central region of Marche. The paper shows that food quality and direct relationship with producers, as well as solidarity approach to consumption, are core factors for new sustainable economic paradigms.

ABSTRACT. Alternative agri-food networks are constantly growing in Ireland. The last few years have seen a development in farmers’ markets, allotments, community gardens and generic “grow-it-yourself” initiatives. This is all happening against the backdrop of a highly specialized and factory-oriented agri-food industry, which is dominated by beef and dairy production and promoted by the Department of Agriculture (Food Harvest 2020, the governmental agri-food policy, generally emphasize conventional agriculture and export). But this approach has recently seen more questioning from the general public after alarming food scares. The aim of this paper is to describe the first urban CSA group in Ireland, founded by an international group of citizens based in and around Dublin city centre, with a shared goal towards community-building initiatives and sourcing quality food locally. The paper will explore its relationship with the Irish agri-food industry and with other alternative, rural-oriented initiatives. These include box schemes currently active in the city but with little community involvement, rural and peri-urban CSAs (like the Cloughjordan Ecovillage experience) already creating a valuable contribution to the establishment of regenerative food systems and, finally, urban community gardens, seen both as community practical and learning initiatives and as a hub for debate and ideas exchange around food security and sustainable food production. This successful CSA initiative is described from the community building aspect - which differentiates it from a box-scheme or from a mere “buy-local” mind-set – as well as from the group strengthening-techniques, the application of conflict resolution skills and the “consensus method” approach which all contribute to making this a viable model. The effectiveness of an urban CSA comes not only from its focus on reducing food miles, but also - especially because it is in a urban context - from its ability to attract the right target of people and from its capacity to address questions from an unsatisfied generation (see Kate Soper’s ‘disillusioned seduced’), who seek a real alternative to massified consumption and to distant and “industrial-scale” food production. The paper will conclude with a description of the way forward for the Dublin CSA group and how the continuous evolution of the group is contributing to the members’ self development. It will also outline some recommendations and “lessons learned” from this experience which could be beneficial to enhance this current initiative and export this model, with a view to replicating it in Ireland and in Europe.

ABSTRACT. The unconventional model of agriculture Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is expected to contribute to a more sustainable food supply and a sustainable landscape; the development of rural areas; a stronger relationship between producer and consumer, and a healthier diet. However, the question still remains; who is benefitting from CSA? According to Forbes and Harmon (2008) the concept require a certain amount of commitment to the philosophical ideas of the concept. A study regarding the origin and current development of CSA in Sweden (Sjöblom, 2015) also confirms that the model might only apply to idealists. In other words, it is not the conventional farmer who adopts the model. In the same study producers raised the dilemma of working with a concept completely new for both producers and consumers, which seems to be the case in Sweden. Many believed the greatest challenge was to find customers nearby. What seemed crucial for the development of CSA in Sweden seemed to be to make the concept more widely known in Sweden, for both producers and consumers as well as find out who the potential customers could be.

In this paper the results from studies on the motives behind producers and consumers attending Farmers Markets in Sweden (Nilsson, 2009; Nilsson and Mont, 2010) are compared with the results in the above mentioned study about the origin and current development of CSA in Sweden (Sjöblom, 2015) and other studies about CSA in Sweden. The motives behind producers and consumers attending Farmers Markets in Sweden has been compared with the motives behind CSA-producers and CSA consumers. Conclusion can be drawn that the producers selling at Farmers Markets as well as consumer attending these markets could be a potential target group for CSA.

In Sweden where the notion of CSA is still in its infancy and where present producers operating according to CSA seem to think it can be difficult to find consumers as well as producers these results could be of great importance in order to strengthen the development of CSA. Even though results show that consumers at Farmers Market as well as CSA members tend to be more affluent then the general public, reaching towards this target group could be a first step in making the model more widely known. More studies then need to be conducted how the model could reach out to a wider public, not limiting the model to so called ‘idealists’.

ABSTRACT. Introduction in attachment

ABSTRACT. Farming in and around agglomerations has to adjust to specific urban and changing conditions over time. Many urban processes influence agricultural and horticultural enterprises: urban sprawl, industrial power, changing land use patterns, and population development including its societal demands and customer behaviors. 36 urban agricultural business models from Italy and Germany were investigated in this study to detect key strategies and success factors of business models. The German cases are from the most densely populated federal state North Rhine-Westphalia – more specifically from Germany’s largest agglomeration Metropolis Ruhr and Aachen; the Italian cases are primarily from Perugia region, Umbria, and the metropolitan area Rome. Food production for the urban local market is only one of many adjustment strategies to the advantage of huge consumer markets in agglomerations. Further strategies include appropriate leisure time, education, social and health issues as well as new ideas of integrating the emerging and further growing interest of city dwellers in food issues and the emerging urban gardening. These business models have the potential to narrow the gap between food producers on the one side and consumers and society in general on the other side, which is evident in the industrialized world. 14 Italian and 22 German case studies of commercial urban farming have been analyzed by using Canvas Business Model described by Osterwalder, Pigneur and a large group of additional authors. The nine building blocks of this strategic management template are used to identify customers, offer, infrastructure, and financial viability of the individual cases from the two countries compared in this study. By considering these business models, clusters of characteristic commercial urban farming are defined in both countries and compared in terms of trans-national comparisons and similarities. Furthermore, these clusters are investigated regarding cluster-related success factors and problems exemplified by suitable examples of farm businesses. The conducted analysis of Italian and German urban agricultural cases is based on a standardized questionnaire. The study highlights the economic added value of urban agriculture on farm level to be considered a viable part of urban economies. Additionally to the marketable contributions, the individuality and diversity of urban agriculture provides non-marketable added-values for urban societies, environments and landscapes.

ABSTRACT. The Italian food system faces increasing competition and the reduction of the "safety net" provided by the CAP. Briefly, among the factors of weakness we could count: the fragmentation of production that affects the level of production costs and on the visibility of the products; the low degree of vertical and horizontal integration of supply chains that undermines the competitiveness of the offer. Among the strengths that characterize the Italian food system, briefly we could mention: the wide variety of products that depends from environmental variability, the quality of the offer of agricultural products; the key role played by the Italian tradition. The trends of the last two decades, thanks to the role of Community policies, push to the direction of a new model of multifunctional agriculture and economically diversified . The process of modernization and globalization of production systems, markets and trade led to the declination of a multitude of innovative forms of organization of food chains. The farm, once abandoned or decreased the links with traditional distribution, is now faced with new choices on business and sell strategy. This work presents the most significant results of the analysis conducted on a sample of farms in the Province of Alessandria. The focus of the survey was carried out via questionnaire to farmers and stakeholders. The aim of the study is to analyze the farmer's choices in order to intercept requests of consumers. Under this point of view the real focus is to let the consumer understand both the intrinsic quality of the product and the intangible quality perceived by the market. In the other words all the intangible aspects that have to be described and explained in face of a higher level of price. The results obtained for some production sectors (horticulture, viticulture, livestock, beekeeping) highlight the need to evaluate the equity of prices and therefore try to check the production costs in order to stabilize the profits and identify intrinsic elements that could justify the higher value of the product sold in direct way. This is very relevant in the view of the so called “squeezing agriculture” process (Van der Ploeg, 2006), where the agriculture production is compressed between the rising costs of inputs and the decreasing prices of wholesale markets. Family farms, especially affected by this threat, could find in the direct selling a concrete strategy to face this risk and activate an opportunity to increase profits.

ABSTRACT. In recent years a growing number of farmers has implemented alternative marketing strategies, based on the internalisation of value chain segments. Such tendency is driven by the low level of prices paid by retailers, the pressure to diversify marketing strategies to reduce risk exposure and the change of consumer’s preference towards short chain or local products demand. The present paper aims at investigating determinants of adoption of farmers’ direct sell strategy. We investigate Tuscany farmers using data collected during the 2010 census. A double hurdle model allows to estimate adoption of direct selling as a two steps model: firstly identifying the determinant of decision to adopt direct sell strategy (i.e. whether invest or not in direct selling) and then the determinants of the share of farmers’ production sold directly to consumers, among all other commercialisation forms. Preliminary results shows that motivation and skills are main determinants direct sale as well as the closeness to urban areas, confirming demand driven effects.

ABSTRACT. This research explores the role of multifunctional farms in developing and promoting the rural tourism and so farm income; correlatively the focus is on process and actions to support the development and refinement of cultural attributes, traditional values and regional identity. The importance of multifunctional farming activities is remarkably evidenced by the significant changes made to the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) within its rural development policy. Multifunctionality and rural tourism has received a lot of attention over the last decade from scholars and policy-makers. Methodologically, it is a deductive reasoning exploratory research, staring from the analysis of the 25 Local Action Groups (LAGs) which cover the entire Region of Puglia, in Southern Italy. The LAGs are local agencies that process the Local Development Programme (LDP) and manage financial funds by the European Union and by the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund (EAGGF). The aim of this work is to conduct ex-ante analysis of the impact of the new CAP policy instrument of the case Measure 311 (Axes III) action 1, 2 and 3 of the Rural Development Program 2007-2013, also adopted by the Region of Puglia, whose main aim is – in accordance with art. 20(b)(i) of Council Regulation (EC) no. 1698/2005 "Diversification into non-agricultural activities"; in particular, Action 1 is related to Investments for the supply of agri-tourism accommodation in the business context in accordance with applicable regulations; Action 2 provide investments for the supply of educational services and education for the population, with particular reference to the school and students and in synergy with the national education system; Action 3 is related to investments for the supply of health services for the benefit of vulnerable groups. The methodology is based on the cluster analysis, of the data achieved by the Regional Management Authority enables us to observe how 319 firms have actually been admitted to the benefits of the Measure in question, we analyze the differences between group means and their associated procedures.

ABSTRACT. This paper studies cooperation in water use between farmers in one of the irrigated areas of Uzbekistan by using cooperative game theory model. The formation of coalitions between three farmers is analyzed using a cost game (three cooperative communities) for water service costs spent by farmers. We show that the farm cooperation will decrease the costs. The game theory solution concepts are determined by application of Shapley value method. Keywords – cotton, wheat, irrigation system, cooper-ative game theory, water service costs.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this project is to study certain economic, social and cultural initiatives that have emerged in rural areas, particularly over the last decade, as ways of dealing with the current structural crisis affecting small towns and villages and their traditional forms of reproduction. The study of how these emerging initiatives are manifested and the specific forms they take will not only highlight the role of the state and the market, but will also reveal how local populations adapt to or resist them, generating through this process new images and values, and a demand for new services and products.

Our initial hypothesis is that these initiatives arise from the combination of, first, the cultural elements that have traditionally guaranteed the social reproduction which provided meaning and cohesion in rural communities; and, second, factors that are firmly embedded in contemporary conditions of life and globalised society, such as tourism, international migration or environmental awareness. The combination of these two sets of factors, traditional rural and agrarian culture on the one hand, and the ways of life, contemporary sensibilities and scientific culture on the other, has been used by rural communities (stimulated in the last decade by the favourable context offered by European rural development aid) in development projects, some of which are now established and widely known (rural tourism, agricultural transformation organic farming…), and other emerging, pioneering, less familiar and perhaps more domestic projects (small-scale organic initiatives, recovery of biodiversity, agricultural education, etc.) that have helped to overcome the hurdles to the continuation of what is now a more diverse rural way of life, and to bridge the urban-rural gap. All of the above uncovers new, highly specific forms of governmentality and territorialisation in rural areas that warrant analysis.

Exploration of these initiatives, particularly those developed in the last four years in the context of economic crisis affecting Europe, offers a very interesting view of the capacity for resilience in rural areas. The experience of the structural and secular crisis in these areas and the alternatives that emerge when elements of local cultures combine with global conditions can be useful to explore measures that will enable us to learn and understand the extent to which culture can act as a factor of social cohesion today. The study is therefore of great interest from both a theoretical and an applied perspective, essentially addressed to development and management policies in rural areas.

ABSTRACT. This paper reviews the case of wetland farmers in Mpika, Northern Zambia, where market opportunities, first opened up by the tarring of the Great North Road in the early 1970s, have become much stronger after the expansion of the mobile phone network in Zambia, after 2005.

The paper discusses the barriers and opportunities, for the development of an innovative off-season wetland farming technique by groups of farmers supported by a local entrepreneur and innovator to create a major supply of vegetable to the urban markets on the Zambian Copperbelt 400 km away, and into the mining complexes in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. To sustain and develop new forms of production and to coordinate product marketing and selling over such distances farmers have formed two types of community institutions; village natural resource management committees and marketing groups. Growing from some 40 such wetland farmers in 2008 there are now over 200 engaged in this production in three wetlands in the Mpika area.

This paper illustrates the experiences of these farmers by exploring how one innovative entrepreneur has been able to both learn from some farmer groups and on his own develop new techniques which he has shared with several communities. Combined with improved urban market access, these increasingly entrepreneurially aware farmers have developed new social capital – in the form of wetland management and marketing institutions, and have been able to meet both meet their subsistence needs and progress to different scales of production and engagement with the urban markets, local and far away. Specific case studies of two farmers exemplify the nature of this experience and explore the ways knowledge has been developed and disseminated.

ABSTRACT. Globalization has reached even the remotest places in the HKH mountains and encourages migration, so that especially the young productive males leave the farms. Traditionally, women and men, both are majorly involved in agriculture in the Himalayas and respectively shape the way farming is done there. They choose the crops that are planted, the livestock that are kept and also decide on system transformations and innovations. The paper examines how in times of environmental and socioeconomic change, the spaces of opportunities as well as challenges change for women and men. The changes in the farming system and local economy expose women to new tasks of disaster, food risk and farm managers, for which they are often unprepared. The traditional labor division requires men to do important parts of the agricultural work, which they, of course, cannot do, when they are absent. Often remittances are not enough to compensate the lack of labour on the farm. And women do not have the same opportunities as men to access markets, extension services or alternative livelihood options due to restrictions in mobility and cultural constraints. Out-migration of men not only increases the workload of women but also challenges them as farmers and changes regional and national farming systems. The trend of out-migration and feminization of agriculture changes the value that is attached to farming. The society perceives it more and more “socially demeaning occupation” due to the poor education, hard physical labour and a low standard of living of farmers. The examples used here are Nepal and Assam/India, where traditionally men take care of field crops and large ruminants, whereas women are responsible for horticultural crops and poultry, which are now the intensified sectors cultivated on the farms. Furthermore, field research has shown that under stress women particularly push alternative economies, encourage share-cropping, sharing of fowl, handicrafts material and work, bartering etc. However, in many cases women have not gained in regard to power and reductions in labour. Decisions are mostly taken by men and often based on economic considerations only. Hence, the key question of this presentation is how well women and men are able to utilize new opportunities and overcome the challenges and how women farmers can be helped to cope with climate-related environmental changes; for which it is imperative to improve their access to a range of entitlements.

ABSTRACT. The introduction of Information and Communication Technologies which are becoming the signs of urbanization or a modern society did a lot in agricultural extension. Thru ICT, agricultural extension improved rural community through easy access to timely and accurate information. Trainings were provided on the use of computers, tablets and cell phones as gadgets for access and inquiry on solutions to problems. In the past, there is only a very small opportunity for women to gain access to agricultural assets, inputs, services and to rural employment compared to men. The chance for women to develop on their own is less since they cannot utilize the right information and resources. But nowadays, the gap between men and women accessibility became lesser, especially so that trainings from Non Government Organization like the International Rice Research Institute and Government Organizations like the Department of Agriculture, catered not only the needs of men but also of women. Based on attendance sheets generated on IRRI’s training and workshops conducted around the world, women from rural areas are interested to attend. In most of the ICT trainings, men are busy in the field so they instruct their wives to attend the ICT trainings. Also, these kind of trainings need continuity, so the women are the one completely informed. The women’s role in the farm included decision making of financial budget and management of hired labor. They can easily apply the knowledge learned and shared with other farmers. For example, less cost for pesticides if they can increase the population of beneficial insects, and synchronized planting can avoid infestation. Several men and women who went on training were interviewed. Men and women received the same trainings but the growing opportunities for women is flourishing. Trainings gave them the chance to generate knowledge by themselves and the benefits of doing what they learned. The drive to apply the knowledge they learned has a large impact to the decision they make in the farm. As such women are very important in the success of a farm both in terms of productivity and sustainability. Women tend to be more adapted in the learning process and are more efficient in translating learning into functional knowledge and information that can be shared to other people.

ABSTRACT. PDO/PGIs are rapidly entering the Italian market of large retail chains. PDO/PGI products suffer from the low awareness of this labeling scheme among consumers. In this background, the aim of this paper is to analyze how different levels of knowledge of PDO and PGI marks affect consumer behaviour, with particular reference to his buying intention (BI) and willingness to pay (WTP) within large scale di-stribution. The hypotheses of the research framework were identified through the analysis of the results of the scarce existing literature on PDO/PGI consumer be-haviour. The hypotheses have then been tested on a sample of 250 consumers, through a direct survey carried out in 2015 in Central Italy, within two major Italian retailing companies: COOP and Esselunga. The empirical analysis confirms the poor knowledge of consumers of EU PDO/PGIs . The level of information affects consumers’ BI and WTP a premium price for PDO/PGI products, which increases though not significantly when consumers have knowledge of the certification labelling scheme.

ABSTRACT. Olive oil has traditionally been marketed in Spain, and as in many of the producing countries of the Mediterranean Basin, as a commodity good, except for some Italian and French regions where it is recognized by some segments of consumers as a differentiated good. Policies undertaken by abnormally low prices of the mass distribution firms have been used to increase the ability to attract consumers to the business signs. These strategies are based on using olive oil as an appealing product. This work aims at a comparative study of the pricing policy of the Retail distribution with average prices received by producers for the past two seasons, and analyse the effects on the valorisation of olive-oils with protected designations of origin. This retail distribution strategy extends back along the whole olive oil chain and especially to the producers, as the weakest link in the chain, who suffer the worst consequences of this general lack of profitability. As negative side effect, these retail strategies contribute to trivialize the consumer perception of olive oil as an undifferentiated product. This seriously damage the collective strategies based on distinctive signs of differential quality associated with territory, and in particular Protected designation of origin extra-virgin olive-oils.

ABSTRACT. Abstract – Adopting a branding strategy based on GIs could be a viable complementary poverty reduc-tion and environmentally sound policy to commercial and subsistence farming in Least Developed Countries (LDCs).Yet, not all LDCs countries have adopted such policy using GIs. This paper presents concrete evi-dence drawing from two case studies and two differ-ent policies adopted from the respective Govern-ments: (a) The Cambodian pepper from the Kampot region, and (b) the Ethiopian coffee from Dallo Mena. The paper briefly depicts the comparative experiences of these two Governments, donors and their rural communities in promoting a branding of their local products.

ABSTRACT. There is an abundant literature on the effects of the protection of geographical indications, that process being considered as a norm-setting of the product, a collective organization and a marketing strategy. The effects of such initiatives, based on the mandatory code of practice, can be traced in the social, economic and environmental dimensions. This paper focuses on a specific kind of appellations of origin, where the final product is composed of two or three elements or ingredients, therefore potentially involving two or more supply-chains. The mandatory use and the geographical origin of these elements are debated. We analyse the various current situations for some PDOs and the lack of conceptual coherence in this regard

ABSTRACT. The early 21st century will very likely bring with it a further change in the urban model, one in which economic and environmental vectors will be the main factors in town planning and management. Making the best use of resources and delivering good services to citizens will be fundamental goals. In this framework, it will be hard to apply the adjective ‘smart’ and ‘slow’ to a city, town or metropolitan area without what is known as ‘food planning’. In this respect, farmland preservation and enhancement and food systems planning will continue to be key factors in terms of food supplies but also of energy and waste flows. All this means that the city of the 21st century cannot be planned without taking into account its agricultural space (intra- and/or peri-urban) and the reconnection between towns and their nearest food-producing regions.

The aim of this working group is to analyze how food systems can be integrated in urban and spatial planning in a more efficient way. To this end, we proposed some questions for the debate:

1. Why ‘local food’ is hidden behind the city’s boundaries? How could we trigger and improve local food systems and their efficiency? Can smart cities integrate the ‘food vector’ in urban and spatial planning? Can the city design support a smart food system which integrates ‘local food logistics networks’, embracing consumers, producers, retailers and collection and distribution centers?

2. Which organizational and partnership tools for urban-rural joint policies and projects (e.g agricultural parks, river agreements) could we apply, with the aim at preserving prime farmland and empowering farmers in participative planning processes and choices

The papers presented in this working group explore new planning tools promoting integration between spatial planning and local food production, distribution and consumption. A first bundle of papers analyses European urban agriculture typologies and governance initiatives enabling synergies between farmland preservation and local food promotion. This understanding is complemented by other works about methodologies and models to characterize peri-urban agriculture and potential for local food distribution and consumption systems (public food procurement, market places). Finally, the last part of the working group focuses on successful experiences dealing with spatial and urban planning and local food systems, ranging from urban to peri-urban agriculture and from vegetables production to cereals, forage and livestock production.

ABSTRACT. Over the next few years the global population will continue to rise. The number of people living in urban areas has surpassed the number living in rural areas and such, the world has become more urban than rural. This change thus implies the need to further develop urban food production systems and a need for increased sustainability of urban development. Urban agriculture has thus become an integral part of urban planning and design for the future development and sustainability of our cities. The Amsterdam Metropolitan Area (MRA) is one of Europe’s most stable and successful regions. By 2040 the population of Amsterdam is expected to grow by half a million; meaning that an improved infrastructure will be needed to accommodate hundreds of thousands of new homes, including facilities needed for their sustenance. This inevitably increases the need for green spaces ensuring access to, and improvement of food distribution systems. Efficient planning and implementation of food distribution strategies will thus be important contributions to the development of the greater MRA. It's landscape, aside from agricultural concerns, should also include resources for leisure and recreation. The inherent challenges are thus to explore and expand the existing landscape, without hindering the growth and function of the metropolis. The incentive for the MRA, over the next few years, is to come up with a plan for sustainable development including incorporation of local food resources, especially since metropolitan dependency on international food sources is expected to increase. This is clearly an incentive for Amsterdam to try and reduce the impacts pertaining to food importation and to work towards more sustainable and local food sources. The Sustainable Productive Landscape project studies the overall impact food resources and urban design have on a city, and analyzes the potential development of new architectural and landscape strategies to facilitate urban development integrating both city/urban life and food production systems. The objective of this research is to analyze and compare several urban design strategies and projects regarding the integration of food production, processing, distribution and consumption into the MRA. This paper explores many typologies of urban agriculture in different scales (within the city, a metropolitan park, and urban district development), spatial forms and land use management with reference to alternative strategies together with taking into consideration open and public spaces - making the long term sustenance of the city a measure of priority for the future.

ABSTRACT. Recent research has shown that the average productivity of food within the city limits is low. In the Netherlands 0,0018% of the total consumption comes currently from inside the city. This places Urban Agriculture for a serious dilemma: does Urban Agriculture include a serious component of food production, or is urban Agriculture a cover-up for social processes of an urban population? Without neglecting the benefits of Urban Agriculture for social cohesion, the environment and education, the production of substantial amounts of food must also be part of Urban Agriculture. The space required for this is in the city however a serious problem. Current urban planning practice often focuses on the compact city and high density neighbourhoods or the creation of integrated large scale malls or urban centres. In this practice is often limited space available for public green, let alone the growth of food. Hence there are new planning and design concepts required to accommodate the demand for more urban food production. The city should, in some respect, be redesigned with the major question being asked: where do we find the space for growing food. In this paper the spatial capacity of the city will therefore be linked with a spatial typology derived from a combination of literature and design projects. Where large spaces are available, bigger Urban Agriculture types are possible. Depending on the urban environment a typical urban agriculture system can be designed. Several concrete examples of these designs will be discussed.

ABSTRACT. Urban growth is encroaching onto farmland. City seems indeed influence most peri-urban farms, at least on farmers’ lifestyle. Urban concentration of consumers and customers for food and other activities generates new and promising opportunities of specialization rather than anticipation and short-term positions. Farms strategy is in most cases the result of spontaneous decisions depending on farmer’s own situation, UE agriculture policies, commercialization options, labor availability and farmer expertise. We are looking forward to set up a framework considering all the stakes specific to periurban agriculture and practices for supporting spatial management decisions and planning. Scholars have broadly analyzed periurban farming in monographic studies, either regional case studies (par example, the French revue Cahiers Agricultures vol. 22, n°6 of 2013) or practices oriented studies (par example, the dossier n.158 of the revue Espaces et Sociétés dealing with “Agriculture and City”, edited in 2014). But attempts of characterizing periurban farming are scarce. Notably operational definitions involving both urban and agricultural issues for supporting planning are lacking. For this purpose, we have drawn up a methodology to characterize periurban productive agriculture, in order to construct agri-urban landscape pieces involving cropping systems and structures as well as urban morphology. These landscape pieces are homogenous at the scale of little regions, and are defined combining quantitative and qualitative variables from the following fields: geography, agronomy, socio-demography, economy and political organization. Founded in literature review, remote-sensing interpretation, field surveys, statistical analysis and on-site landscape lecture, this methodology is simple to manage and conceived to be applied in planning praxis at municipal or regional level to any study case. In this sense, planning suggestions are proposed specifically to every agri-urban landscape piece looking to integrate agriculture management in urban planning. I will present the results of applying this methodology to characterize the spaces of periurban farming on two Mediterranean case studies: one in Madrid metropolitan area (Spain) and one in Avignon. These cases are interesting to test the accuracy of the proposed generic methodology car, despite the great urban pressure existing in both regions, they are quite different: in one hand, Madrid is a metropolis with a compact and dense development, and in the other hand, Avignon study case is a low-density dispersed urban area.

ABSTRACT. The Agglomeration of Budapest with its 80 suburban settlements is a highly divided but interdependent area. Due to its uniqueness in Hungarian spatial structure, it requires especially coordinated planning and development. Though its area is only 2.7 % of Hungary’s, the 25% of Hungarian population, 541 thousands people live here. A coherent periurban ring has been developed around Budapest; here the population growth was 30% during the last ten years.

Szentendre Island is a highly significant area in the Agglomeration of Budapest. Its area is 56 sq. km; its population is 10,000 people. In the Island there are four independent local governments working. Nearly 50% of the total area is agricultural territory. The most important role of the Island is the fact that it provides one of the most important drinking water bases for this rapidly urbanizing area. Consequently, strict environmental (protection of water resources, nature protection) regulations are available on the Island. Though the Island is centrally situated, its accessibility and infrastructure suit to these regulations. Hence, there is a real need for alternative logistical and power supply solutions.

In 2014, the concept of ’Szentendre ECO Island’ was created in order to coordinate the alternative development programs. The aim of writing the concept was to determinate those integrated developmental objectives whose realization was important for local governments and entrepreneurs, and also fulfilled the strict environmental requirements. The concept contains objectives aiming the development of organic farming, tourism and infrastructure. Organic farming is an adequate strategy in order to satisfy the strict environmental requirements and the market demands of this urbanizing area. Organic farming helps to supply local institutions with local products. The development of tourism means the import of consumers. Due to strict regulation there is a chance for service supply besides product supply. These developments and the supply of population require infrastructural development as well.

In the article we briefly present this concept and its main elements. We describe in more details the proposals for agricultural development and we also evaluate the already realized agricultural and environmental practices. The concept ’Szentendre ECO Island’ is a good example to show how it is possible to strengthen the ‘ecological’ identity of the Island by ‘pure, adaptive technologies’. We show proposals that can also facilitate the conservation of environmental and cultural values of Szentendre Island, and can also enhance the living conditions of the local population.

ABSTRACT. The topic of urban food is a hybrid one. There is no clear policy to address it, not the one legislation to regulate or only one administrative body to feel responsible for it. Urban food strategies and food policy councils have often been cited as spaces in which this hybrid nature is addressed and different views of food can be integrated through creating communicative spaces, involving the full range of stakeholders with their various views on food. This paper aims to better understand the different frames of food that are present in the various institutions relevant to urban food (policy) in Switzerland, using the case study of the city of Basel. Five political/strategic documents from the city level (coinciding with the cantonal level in this case) and seven from the federal level are analysed to identify the discursive frames of food in policies of agriculture, health, environment, planning, and others. The results show that food is not a major topic in most of the potentially relevant policy documents; in particular it is hardly mentioned at all in the planning documents of the canton. In addition, there are not many cross-references between the different policy documents; the policy fields remain focused on their core (institutional) interest. Food is largely assigned to agricultural policy, which explains that we find more mentioning of it in documents from the federal level (responsible for agricultural policy) than at cantonal level. Accordingly, food is widely mentioned in the context of food production; in particular health policies add a focus on consumption; but the processes of processing, transport and distribution are lacking. Overall, the dominant frame of food is an economic one, with the addition of an environmental frame. A socio-cultural framing of food could not be found. Furthermore, food is nowhere framed as a policy connected to cities or municipal policies. Thus, we can conclude that there is no urban food policy in Switzerland. The potential of food as a vehicle to integrate various policy fields and societal challenges is not reflected in Swiss policies.

ABSTRACT. The focus of the paper is the link between urban food strategies and policies at regional/national level. Related to the UFS, it means consider the importance of their integrative governance structure as the way that can ensures a balance between top-down and bottom-up elements. This can increase the resilience against short-term political changes and slowing-down of civil engagement. Comparing some European food strategies (i.e. Brighton and Hove, Bristol, Pisa) and other experiences still in progress (i.e. Milan) the aim is valuate how an holistic approach and an integrative governance can increase the sustainability of the local food system in a regional food system. Their governance structures include city officials from different departments, producer and consumer organizations, processing companies, retail and science partners. On another hand, integrated urban agriculture projects, as well as integrated food community self-supply experiences are actually designing urban transformations on a significant scale. One of the main instruments that city administrations have to support urban agriculture and changes of food system is the territorial/spatial planning/zoning. Cities can facilitate local food production by designating land for urban and peri-urban agriculture and gardening. Spatial planning can support short food supply chains and diversity of food retail by planning for areas for independent food retailers or farmers’ markets. Particularly important in this process is the connection of local or city strategies to their rural hinterlands, in terms of policy development but also in terms of reconnecting and integrating the food system. A sustainable approach to land uses and a way to rethink urban agriculture in a smart perspective.

ABSTRACT. In the context of growing awareness of the need for a transition to more sustainable food systems, the definition and implementation of a new food governance system appear crucial. The complexity of the processes underlying a significant change of the production and consumption models has made the definition of more integrated and advanced forms of management of food-related issues increasingly urgent. At the same time, the emerging willingness and demand by civil society to play an active role in practices and decision-making around food show the need for a more democratic approach, that is able to give voice to the new visions and interests. This thus leads to the necessity to redefine governance in terms of interests represented, modes of interaction amongst actors/fields involved, and operational and decision-making mechanisms. These exigencies appear particularly evident in the urban and metropolitan contexts, where the problems related to food provisioning and consumption find greater expression, but also new solutions can be more easily implemented. In effect these contexts are increasingly appearing as potential spaces for system and governance innovation around food related issues. The urban food strategies developed in a number of Western Countries are expression of this potential. As evident is, nevertheless, that the implementation of new food governance systems is not without difficulties. This paper analyses an experience in Italy (in Tuscany, in the territory of Pisa province), in which since 2010 public and private actors are interacting around the creation of an integrated urban food strategy. This experience is significant in the Italian context, in which it is representing a helpful pilot for the other initiatives that have been recently promoted in other regions. While exploring the dynamics developing over the process of definition and implementation of the various institutional tools, the paper critically analyses the challenges that the establishment of an effective governance system has to face. The problems related to the participation and interaction of the various public and private stakeholders and to the implementation of an institutional environment enabling the exercise of food democracy are amongst the main issues analysed.

ABSTRACT. The presentation follows an on going research about urban agriculture in different contexts of Lisbon region – one of the most emblematic Portuguese case of non legal urbanization sprawl. It intends to focus on two main points: clarifying the existing conflicts among a wide diversity of urban rationalities related to forms and opportunities of access to resources like water, seeds, land, knowledge and infrastructures; reviewing the social and political context related to the regulation drafting process on peri-urban gardens. In the last ten years, the issue of urban agriculture has grown in Lisbon region, despite the marginal role of public policies in assessing and fostering its development. Today, only in the city of Lisbon (letting aside the neighbouring municipalities) there are almost 78 hectares which have been cultivated in public and private vacant land, by different social groups, for at least 40 years. The majority of those who have promoted this re-use of vacant land belong to (im)migrant communities from Cape Verde, or come from rural areas of Portugal, and they are cultivating urban areas out of the rules provided by official urban planning. These activities have been challenging the dominant land-use and urban-planning, to the point that their growing visibility became a development factor which couldn’t be ignored anymore by authorities. In recent years the phenomenon started to be monitored by the Public Administrations: initially as part of a misapplication of planning and building guidelines and regulations, later on as an opportunity to renovate the same development policies. Different have been the behaviors of the several municipalities in the region, some of them mixing policies of eviction and promotion of new urban agricultural settlement, others trying to “learn” from the outcome of this spontaneous but massive expansion of allotment gardens. Meanwhile, interesting collective action took place, which strengthened this possibility of innovation of public policies. The recent emergency of urban gardens policies set by local governments mainly tried to answer to an existing informal phenomenon. But is it possible to legalize it without loosing its virtues?

ABSTRACT. The Community Garden (CG) movement makes up part of an ‘alternative’, and ideally more sustainable, food system. Universities are striving to encourage sustainability through their campus food systems, such as through community gardens, and taking advantage of opportunities to link these endeavours to the formal curriculum. Sustainability leadership in Higher Education can arguably contribute to transformative change in the larger food system by “[reshaping] relations between food and place,” and making institutional commitments to sustainable procurement (Bartlett, 2011, p. 101, 111). By conducting an empirical systematic literature review of the existing literature on university community gardens and exploring its relationship with the existing literature about urban community gardens (Guitart et al., 2012), I identified a number of unique features of university community gardens. These are ‘participant transience’, agency possessed by student activists, and malleability of participants’ lifestyles/habits. In this paper, I discuss the implications of these findings and argue that while they are only a small part of the CG movement, university CGs are important for (1) understanding the management of volunteer-led food initiatives, (2) engaging activists that have the agency to shift action towards key issues, and (3) encouraging young people to develop sustainable food habits.

I will first discuss how university CGs can teach us about managing challenges associated with ‘participant transience’. For example, knowledge management is important for contributing to organisational learning and is inhibited by a lack of formal job descriptions and financial stability, and therefore of strategic planning (Ragsdell, 2013). Participant transience can also lead to neglect of work by local groups on similar projects, creating tensions between non-students and students, and depriving student projects of knowledge/mentors. I will then discuss how participants in university CGs are unique because student activists have the agency to choose what issue they address. Well-intentioned non-profits can remove the focus from grassroots movements in order to appease funders or the public, but student food activists aren’t bound by this and have, arguably, the obligation to shift action towards issues that are most important (Adrangi, 2013). Finally, I will discuss how university CGs’ participants are likely to develop many habits they will carry on throughout their lives because of their stage in their lifecourse. Because of this, students’ skills, knowledge, and perceptions on their ability to contribute to positive changes developed throughout their university experience may have longer-lasting effect than those experiences of participants in other types of CGs.

ABSTRACT. The aspiration of launching urban community gardens is spreading in Central Europe. There are numerous definitions and interpretations of urban community gardening. One of the reasons for that is the variant purpose of these gardens. The joy of common work and creation and the meaningful time in well-designed gardens could bridge the gap between community members and with this approach a common understanding and social responsibility can be established as well. The quality of life in cities can be affected positively by creating public gardens in urban areas. This paper is aiming to collect the different types of existing practices of urban gardening in the CEE region and investigate the opportunities and the limitations of them. The authors compared five capital cities (Budapest, Bratislava, Prague, Warsaw and Zagreb) with a predefined qualitative and quantitative indicator system. The indicator system includes the following measures: How many community gardens exist in the city? What are the purposes of these community gardens (community building, educational and drug prevention programs, therapeutic garden, local food supply, greening the environment)? How is the cooperation of the community gardens with the local actors and social network (municipalities, NGOs, schools, nursing home, hospital, ambulances)? What is the usage of the grown produce (local school, market, restaurants, charity)?

ABSTRACT. The paper follows a diversity of urban agriculture collective initiatives in Brazil considering the relations between governments authorities and grass root initiatives; civil society organizations and social movements. Different experiences guide the presentation; community gardens, school gardens, health centers and community management of organic waste, as the case of Revolution Buckets Project (https: //cepagroagroecologia.wordpress.com/agricultura-urbana/revolucao-dos-baldinhos/). Also analyses the role of the participatory institutional spaces around the construction of the urban agriculture national public policy, as the National Food and Nutrition Security Concil – CONSEA. The proposal discussion focus on three main questions; (1) In what way, and to what extent is the collective initiatives of the urban agriculture responding to the social, legal and political constraints imposed to the grass root initiatives and community gardens by some public policies rationalities? (2) Will policies become more flexible and permeable to absorb proposals originating in grass root initiatives and community gardens civil society organizations? (3) What are the implications arising from constratints and imperatives imposed by outside of the collectives initiatives?

The ongoing complexification of the relation between the social movements, local and national authorities and the topic of (peri) urban agriculture shows the need to articulate a slightly different questions, to better catch and analyze dimensions of the object which are growingly considered important to monitor and explain the centrality that it is acquiring in family life, education, health, urban planning, as well as in a large range of public policies construction.

ABSTRACT. People in Eastern Europe would live in garden environment, even in towns. In towns, cities and suburbs garden as an optimal place for living used to combine cultivation of ornamental and edible plants – vegetables and fruits as well. Home gardens in cities in the end of XIXth and during the XXth century were a basis of food security of many families, even on the symbolic level of meaning. In the paper will be shown transformation of function and form of allotment gardens and shared community gardens from traditional allotment garden for factory workers family to shared, often temporary pop-up community vegetable beds. Case studies from Poland, Latvia and Ukraine will be presented. The image of the allotment garden in Eastern Europe invariably associated with the cultivation edible plants. In the allotment gardens gardeners grow the same plants as in detached houses and in multifamily building sites. There are species of plants characteristic for the gardens, and not for the greenery in public spaces. At least Since the Middle Ages in the garden in Europe, there is the same set of species of plants, often edible and thanks to them, the image of the garden becomes recognizable in the city landscape. The image of a place with collection of ornamental and edible plants treated individually as objects in space became a signification of inhabited landscape. Thus garden secured not only food, than garden environment, as a substitute of living in the “generous” landscape. XIX-century city, to ensure a sense of “garden security” to their inhabitants, produced allotment garden for factory workers. These types of gardens were mostly vegetable and rectangular shaped. These days traditional allotment garden change into recreational, freehand drawn spaces for leisure. They are removed from centers of cities and moved to suburbs. They are replaced by community gardens, smaller but cultivated vegetables, herbs and ornamental plants. During the economic crisis “hunger gardens” full of traditional, edible, wild plants became popular among singular city inhabitants, NGOs and communities. People are looking for and try to remember traditional edible plants, often still grown in gardens only as ornamental. Providing residents the opportunity to growing their own vegetables and fruits in community shared gardens, or more private allotments we create the minimum conditions to root in the landscape and to manage it in terms of participatory democracy.

ABSTRACT. Also in Brazil, waste is becoming a major concern for municipalities, that increasingly spend money to dispose increasing volumes of residues. At the same time, half this volume is made of organic wastes, which could be transformed in compost to go back to productive soils.

The challenge is to develop a cheap and effective system that could be easily introduced in small towns and periurban neighborhoods of bigger cities, saving money and energy, avoiding pollute nature, and producing a rich fertilizer for domestic and community gardens.

But more difficult than designing a proper system of urban composting is to organize the project, and integrate the main stakeholders, including the local government, community and commercial associations, school teachers and students, in order to motivate the dwellers to join the project and compost their organic waste.

Our project “Reducing Garbage” has started in April 2014, as a pilot-project to be replicated in 30 municipalities that integrate the “Mantiqueira Mountains Federal Environmental Protection Area - EPA” – an international “hot spot” of biodiversity at risk between our three largest cities: Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte.

The EPA’s Chief wrote a letter to 30 mayors inviting them to join our “participative planning group” – through internet – to exchange ideas and develop innovative solutions using the resources already available in their territories and communities, to reduce the waste disposed in the municipal landfills.

Ten out of those 30 mayors replied stating their interest to join our group, and one municipality was then chosen to be our “pilot”, where the best ideas could be implemented.

Since then the project is advancing really faster than the usual speed that prevails in Brazil. So fast that the officers from the municipal Environment Agency and the Mantiqueira’s EPA – who collaborate with us – are amazed by our methods and rhythm, a necessity if you want to make a difference in the real world.

In Brazil, there is a cultural handicap that spoils our producitivity, progressively smaller when compared to the developed countries’s. To overcome this trait, coming from our colonial times but aggravated by the mass media culture, is a main concern, because our success depends on timely actions and living communications.

The paper will include pictures, and explore a practical way to compost kitchen and backyard wastes, and how to make the local government teams to do what they want to do.

ABSTRACT. Observing natural scenes contributes to reduce stress, promotes positive mood states and feelings, and may facilitate recovery from different type of diseases. To our knowledge, little is known about the difference in the perceived restorative power resulting from being surrounded by nature or from working with plants.

The recent develop of the neuro-rehabilitation therapeutic garden “A Garden to Relive” in Venice at the San Camillo Hospital Foundation was an opportunity to evaluate its restorative potential among visitors. We focused on the psychological benefits and on the general well-being associated with the use of the garden. The aim of this project was to explore how the perceived restorative potential of the garden could change in relation to the frequency of the visits and to the activities carried out in the garden by clients, relatives, caregivers and by the staff of the hospital.

Some of these users were regularly engaged in the activities of horticulture and gardening, some of them were regularly walking in the park, and others were not regularly attending the park of the hospital due to their physical state or because of lack of time. All of them were asked to complete a questionnaire, the Italian version of the Perceived Restorativeness Scale (PRS), focusing on their experience in the garden.

The analysis showed that the different use of the garden results in a different restorative potential. Specifically, the restorative potential was significantly higher in people regularly engaged in the activities of horticulture and gardening in comparison to the other two groups.

ABSTRACT. This research focused on determining sustainability and the importance that the practice of urban agriculture has on the lives of the families involved in this activity. Economic, environmental, socio-cultural and technological factors encourage urban dwellers to practice organic agriculture based on agroecological principles. As a consequence of this, agriculture has become a concern for all citizens, both in rural and urban areas. According to the multidisciplinary approach proposed by Sarandon et al. (2006), the sustainability of agroecosystems must be measured through economic, environmental and socio- cultural dimensions. In this research, the technological dimension, with its respective indicators, was added to achieve a more complete analysis. A survey was used to access directly the urban farmers. The same was applied to a selected sample among the members of three organizations that promote urban agriculture within the Metropolitan District of Quito. Once we obtained the indexes in all proposed dimensions, we calculated the General Sustainability Index of every garden and every organization. Although in different levels, all analyzed gardens met the requirements to be considered sustainable, in every dimension and in total. Other independent variables also showed an improvement in the organization and social participation, in particular with regard to women, as well as a balance in the development of local capacities, alluding to the importance of human capital over economic capital in this kind of activity. The most important benefits of urban agriculture found in this research are the fairness in different aspects such as production and food distribution; distribution of opportunities; access to the required resources for food production and access to financial support and focused policies. Urban agriculture in the Metropolitan District of Quito represents a way of life, which protects and supports marginalized social groups that keep interest, ability and hope in this alternative. Since there is a population eager to continue this activity, it is recommended to generate appropriate public policies in order to recognize the families who practice urban agriculture as key actors that must access specific services and support from local governments.

ABSTRACT. A quantitative understanding of relations between ecosystems and human well-being is critical to a range of decisions and to local societies. Satoyama is a term applied to dynamic mosaics of socio-ecological production landscapes maintained through long-term human management, where people support each other to enhance their use of natural resources. Satoyama is found largely in rural and peri-urban areas of Japan. Such landscapes are often characterized by bartering or sharing of provisioning services – such as forest, agricultural and marine products – within and beyond their communities. The objective of this study is to quantify the quantity and varieties of non-market food consumed per household and to discover how food is shared in social relations and how they contribute to human well-being in Japan. The research was conducted in two parts. First, we conducted web-questionnaire survey over 1,500 samples throughout Japan and found that urban households consume smaller varieties and quantities of food grown at home and/or received from others than rural households. Social connections relating to use of natural resources were also weaker in urban area than rural area. Households in rural area primarily have social connections for sharing food within their communities. Among urban households, social connections beyond their communities, especially connections to rural communities, enhanced their food consumption qualitatively and quantitatively. Secondly, in-depth face-to-face interviews in 89 households in three communities with varying socio-geographic attributes were conducted in Noto Peninsula which is one of the five GIAHS (Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems) in Japan. We found that the varieties and quantities correlated positively with the number of sharing partners, indicating that households with more connections to other households consume greater quantities and varieties of food acquired outside market transactions. Our results indicate that non-market provisioning of food enhances human nutrition and social relations. It is known that personal connections through agricultural activity contribute to preserve traditional cultures and knowledge in Japan. However, urbanization and globalization in recent decades have weakened such personal connections and the sharing mechanisms, which may undermine resilience of local societies against external shocks. Our findings of networks connecting rural and urban households for sharing non-market foods might illuminate a system of local sustainable agriculture and balancing market and non-market food provisioning will be key to building localized models of sustainability and resilient societies harmonized with nature.

ABSTRACT. Urban gardens are found in many places around the world and are also very popular in Europe. Although this phenomenon is not new, its practices and impacts are receiving great attention from the media as well as from policy makers and experts from various scientific disciplines. The literature reveals that urban gardening has been receiving much more attention from social sciences than from natural sciences. Existing research on urban gardening in the Global North has shown that this phenomenon is more related to the pursuits of the population to affordable healthy food, recreation, relaxation and socialising than to poverty and food shortages. Currently much less is known about the ecological impacts of urban gardening. In this paper, the phenomenon of urban gardening is observed both from a sociological and an environmental perspective. The analysis focuses on motivations and environmental practices of different groups of urban gardeners: home food gardeners and allotment gardeners in public and private plots. For this purpose a survey was conducted in 2014 within the framework of the EU project Foodmetres. The sample size was 127 gardeners from Ljubljana, 42 from London, and 42 from Milano. Results from the analysis of motivations, practices and impacts of growing own food among various socio-economic groups in all three cities confirm the thesis of the predominantly non-profit, or hobby, nature of gardening. Non-profit motivations are also mirrored through the analysis of environmental practices, especially in the case of allotment gardeners growing their own food on private beds that champion organic production methods in relatively small-scale growing conditions with limited access to water, which is consistent with the thesis of ”quiet sustainability” of food self-provisioning. Further analysis of the differences and common themes found in the three cities will be given in the paper.

ABSTRACT. Ching S. SIA PhD Student Department of Architecture School of Design and Environment National University of Singapore ching.s@u.nus.edu

Hugh TAN T.W. Associate Professor Botany Laboratory Department of Biological Science National University of Singapore dbsttw@nus.edu.sg

Nirmal T. KISHNANI Assistant Dean & Programme Director of MSc Integrated Sustainable Design Department of Architecture National University of Singapore akintk@nus.edu.sg

Abstract

Urbanization, a ballooning world population, and climate change are contemporary problems affecting world food security. With almost 4.9 billion people projected to live in urban areas by 2030 and Asia accounting for 2.7 billion people, countries in the Asia-Pacific region are now tackling the problem of rapid urbanization. In Singapore, the role of agriculture has been on a steady decline the last 50 years. With almost 20 percent of land dedicated to farming in the 1960s, Singapore currently has 704 hectares of farmland, making up only 1 percent of its current land use. Of which, only 247 hectares are dedicated to food production, producing up to 10 percent of its local food. It is evident that food production is not a priority, from how Singapore has been planned, with farmland being converted to other uses to cope with the increase in population. Climate change and food security are critical issues that affect not only food-producing countries but also those that are reliant on food imports. As Singapore imports more than 90% of its food, there is no doubt that it needs to increase local food production and be more self-sufficient to improve its food security.

This paper will explore the history of Singapore’s food production, from the Japanese occupation in the 1940s, to modern-day food production. Singapore food demand will also be detailed to understand how much food is being consumed and produced locally. Traditional farming areas and building-integrated farming will also be explored to understand the potential of these places, as Singapore has limited land resources allocated for food production. High-technology ways of cultivation in urban agriculture such as hydroponics, aeroponics, A-go gro vertical farming system, and LED farming to increase yield and reduce resources for farming will be discussed. Non-traditional farming systems that are uncommon in Singapore such as agroforestry systems and edible landscapes as a way of utilising existing passive greenery for food production will be considered.

ABSTRACT. In rural areas in developing countries numerous global trends concur to the creation of social and economic deprivation and to the impoverishment of local communities. These expose territories and local inhabitants to risk of abandonment and new exploitations. Worldwide inequality also seems to be on the rise (OECD 2011, 2013), especially in rural communities. In this framework, despite of the availability of economic resources, due to their unequal distribution and the lack of services and public expenditure, the risk of marginalization especially for the less empowered in rural areas has been increasing. Therefore, there seems to be a need to redesign concepts and criteria for a sustainable development by tackling in parallel economic goals and the social dimension of sustainability. In the debate on rural sustainable development the provision of innovative and effective social services should be considered as a primary goal to support social inclusion, promote equality and tackle poverty, especially in low income developing countries (LIDCs) (Di Iacovo, 2014, OECD 2008). The paper presents the concept of Social Farming (SF) as a possible approach and practical way to foster sustainable development in LIDCs and as a valuable practice to enact the capacities of rural communities to tackle social needs. SF works mobilising local resources, like agriculture, under the principles of community subsidiarity, co-production of economic and social values, and the promotion of civic economy. SF also resonates with the characteristics of the traditional social safety nets that spontaneously rise in rural communities in order to cope with the lack of public investments. SF is widespread in European Countries and is experiencing growing interest elsewhere in the wake of the crisis of the welfare system. The paper also explores the relation between SF and social protection in rural areas. It discusses how SF might support and complement social protection; to promote livelihoods and enhance human rights, both the social and economic, of the less empowered through skills development and labour based income sources while also promoting social inclusion. Finally, the paper aims to demonstrate that the promotion of SF practices has relevant methodological implication in designing pathways of positive change in local communities.

ABSTRACT. 1. Introduction

Multifunctional Agriculture is a solution for many rural issues. It means to use agri-rural resources for offering services beyond the mere production of food and fibre, while promoting development. Within it, there is the novelty idea of Social Farming (SF), which means to use agricultural resources in order to promote social inclusion, rehabilitation, and more to groups with low-contractual capacity, such as ex-prisoners or disabled people.

However, the SF concept has not been explored in developing countries. Thus, this paper is based on an investigation of the SF paradigm in Côte d'Ivoire through the analysis of the “Projet de réintégration de 2000 agro-pastoraux” (PRAP) project, created to reintegrate ex-combatants in the agro-pastoral field.

2. Problem statement

The problem is to achieve a sustainable socio-economic reintegration of ex-combatants, in a country in which agriculture provides employment to 60 per cent of the labour force, and where the war has left 74.000 ex-combatants.

3. Research questions

1.Which characteristics of the Social Farming paradigm exist or do not in the PRAP project? 2.How well Social Farming practices could be part of ex-combatants reintegration?

4. Methodology

Based on literature review and on the work done by the Social Farming Research Group of the University of Pisa, the conceptual framework: “Social Farming in developing countries: minimum requirements” was built. This was used to create three types of questionnaires for: governmental representatives; service providers; and ex-combatants.

5. Data Used

The qualitative data used was collected using the above-stated questionnaires in four different cities in Cote d’Ivoire: Abidjan, Bouaké, Korhogo and Ferké during the month of June 2014. Quantitative data from official documents and reports was also analysed.

6. Preliminary findings and conclusions

There are common characteristics between the PRAP and SF paradigm. The use of agri-rural resources and activities are at the heart of the PRAP project, to help beneficiaries with low contractual capacity such as ex-combatants, widows and young people in rural settings; also, Civic economy is a strong characteristic of rural customary laws. There are also some differences, such as: PRAP is a top-down created project; payments to communities are involved; and providers and users of services overlap. Some exceptional and wider contextual issues that could promote SF practices were also found.

In any case, SF realities do exist in developing countries. These might have some differences from the well-known definition, but by knowing them, more appropriate SF practices could be promoted.

ABSTRACT. Suriname has great potential for the development of sustainable agriculture: there is enough territory available, the ground is fertile, the water supply sufficient and the climate is overall very favourable. By letting mentally weak or mentally disabled youth participate in this development in Suriname it will enhance this groups social and economic position. This is of great importance because there are very few possibilities for this particular group of youth to develop within the Suriname society. By creating a training programme which will help these young people to learn about agriculture and teach them practical skills they become more independent while also stimulating sustainable agriculture in Suriname.

ABSTRACT. There is growing consensus among food system scholars and practitioners that the industrial mode of agricultural production that grew especially after WWII has had, and continues to have, a number of negative consequences in terms of natural resource degradation, social injustice and ill-health. Not only are producers gradually losing control over the prices they are able to set, but consumers are also losing control over what they eat, and are no longer knowledgeable about where their food comes from, or what’s in it. This has not come without health consequences, with much of the rise in NCDs and obesity attributed to the type of food currently being “made available” by the industrial food system both in developed countries and, increasingly so, in developing countries, as the supermarket model is exported. In order to counter this, local food movements emerged at the beginning of the 1990s especially in the USA and Europe. In supporting local food systems, consumers were keen to express three types of what Dowler calls “interlocking cares”: a care for the environment and the local economy, a care about transparency and integrity in the food system, and a care for health and wholeness (Dowler et al, 2009: 212).

To the extent that food security is not only about quantity, but also about the quality of food that people have access to, the study will focus on one of the “cares” of the above equation, i.e. whether local food systems do indeed increase people’s access to – and consumption of - healthy food, and whether the access is open to all social groups or limited to some. The case study of a box delivery scheme in the City of Rome – Zolle -will be taken to explore the topic. The consumption habits of six families that have been Zolle’s clients for the past 5 years will be analysed to gauge whether any change has occurred in their consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables compared to when they purchased their food from other distribution channels, and if so, what have been the factors of success, and the difficulties that may still exist. Conclusions will be drawn on the impact that different food distribution channels in cities may have on the health of citizens, on which citizens, and on the implications for policy makers - both in developed and developing countries- to ensure the co-existence of different food distribution channels.

ABSTRACT. Recent debates on food and agricultural issues emphasize the significance of the spatialization of food systems and location of agriculture. In this emerging food system geography, urban-rural relationships play a significant role in food value chains, food security and nutrition, which is still poorly understood. The aim of this presentation is to explore these issues based on rural-urban scenarios at 2050. This research combines two approaches: a comprehensive scientific review of urban and rural changes, and a foresight workshop based on an expert group. Our results focus on four main future figures: megacities and rural-urban blurring; role of intermediate urban centres in agri-food networks; household mobilities and multiactivities between urban and rural areas; counter-urbanization and re-agrarianization. These four scenarios help to understand how distinct issues might be articulated, and to better differentiate what is at stake for agriculture and food security in those specific forms of urban-rural relationships.

ABSTRACT. Experiments to search for policies and practices that slope integrated bimodal approach to food: quality and quantity excess or shortage of consumption is in this work as part declined, also bimodal represented by consumption in the family and outside the family context, which characterizes the developed urbanizing areas. The experience conducted from 2011 in Tuscany involved the health department and the direction of economic development, in particular the public health service in its local dial preventive health, business administration of food (restaurants, canteens, etc.). The definition of simple guidelines shared with the local business system , the collection of a significant number of participants in the companies has allowed us to realize a net present throughout the region . The network consists of about 500 companies have signed and used the guidelines . The network is identified by a logo. This logo is promoted in the consuming public by presenting the network as it makes easy food choices through which to gain health

ABSTRACT. It is evident that food is an emerging field within planning with social, economic and environmental dimensions. It sits at the intersection of land use planning, natural resource management, human rights, evolving social and geo-political implications. Poverty, food, insecurity and malnutrition - long thought of as predominantly rural problems - are increasingly becoming also urban concerns. The rate at which urban poverty is increasing -compounded by the rate at which urban populations are growing- indicates that food security and malnutrition are going to be critical problems in urban areas in the 21st century. More recently, especially since the food crisis of 2007/8, many cities have become aware that cities have to plan strategies that aim to eradicate hunger and poverty and improve livelihoods, requiring innovative ways to enhance food security and nutrition of the urban poor and vulnerable households.

Taking into account the Mediterranean region, the challenges of food security assume a major complexity in the current historical period, particularly marked now by food price hikes, difficult access to natural resources, social unrest, and the effects of climate change. In this region, historically characterized by high biodiversity degree and agrarian traditions, communities had established different equilibrium between exploitation and conservation to create a variety of magnificent agroforestry mosaics, ensuring on the one side, a level of adequate food, healthy and sustainable, and on the other side, allowing that human intervention maintained the agrodiversity and biodiversity as guarantee of stability.

In this framework, this contribution will propose a reflection on emerging issues of spatial reconfiguration to offer new perspective to enhance theoretical dimension of food security. The research will present analytical and methodological criteria oriented to a new culture of the territory, which puts the maintenance of good environmental status and sustainable agro-forestry as the core of spatial planning and territorial configurations. Three particular types of linkage will be considered: ecological - in the form of ecosystem services and appropriate land-use planning; socio-economic, including shorter, more direct supply chains; and governance dimension, bringing together urban and rural stakeholders to identify a common governance structures in a democratic and participatory way.

ABSTRACT. This paper analyzes the experience of community management of organic solid waste in the municipality of Florianópolis / SC, southern Brazil, known as "Urban Agriculture (UA) and the Buckets Revolution". The project has been developed for six years in the Chico Mendes Community, Neighborhood of Monte Cristo, as a demand for solutions to environmental problems such as rampant urbanization and the rise of the suburbs in the cities, addressing issues of food safety and waste management. Currently, of the 2000 families living at the Monte Cristo neighborhood, over 200 families and 09 educational units designed its organic waste to a communitarian composting, run by community youth, in partnership with other organizations. About 15 tons of organic waste are collected per month, which are turned into 5 tons (about 33%) of organic fertilizer through thermophilic composting, returning to more than 30 yards and 05 school gardens to be used in foods production, herbs and teas. In total, through the six years of the project, over 800 tons of organic waste were treated. The waste management that values the organic fraction is the focus of this work, because the final product of this recycling is the organic compound, primary input for the practice of UA. Thus, this paper analyzes how community management of organic waste contributes to urban agriculture and food security in communities with socioeconomic and environmental vulnerability. It has characterized the process of municipal organic waste in the municipality of Florianópolis / SC and the process of community management of organic waste, as well as the experience of urban agriculture in the Chico Mendes community; evaluated the potential of the experience on community management to other communities, especially in terms of AU practices and food safety and nutrition. It was found that there are important interfaces between community and municipal solid waste management, but the last one doesn’t use the potentials of community experience, and it requires more support to qualify their results, which already was show very promising. Likewise, the municipality of Florianópolis, as well as others with similar characteristics, could use the waste management model built independently by the community and support organizations, to restructure its management of organic solid waste.

ABSTRACT. The need for a transition to more sustainable food systems has made the definition of more integrated and advanced forms of management of food-related issues increasingly urgent, especially in the urban contexts. As for many other cities around the world, also in the territory of Pisa (Tuscany, Italy), since 2010 a process aimed at developing an integrated food strategy has been promoted (the Food Plan of the province of Pisa). In the context of new reflexivity and mobilization created by the process for the definition and implementation of the Plan, in 2013 a group of citizens, researchers and professionals established the Food-Council of Pisa, an organization aimed at stimulating a reflection on the food-related issues at urban level and at promoting an integrated approach to their management. The Council started to operate identifying some specific areas of action, establishing relationships with the various initiatives carried out bylocal civil society, and trying to interact with public administrations.

ABSTRACT. Il Papavero is a small organic family farm in the nearby of Rome. It produces strawberries and peaches that it sells to Solidarity Purchasing Groups (GAS) and to a firm that distribute organic production to GAS, schools’ canteens and restaurants.

Owners of the farm, Angelo and Fiorella, present their farm as ‘educational farm’: of their seven hectares, three are occupied by woods, dedicated to receiving children of the primary school. To them, they like to show the beauty of biodiversity, through the ‘butterflies laboratory” or the ‘Bees house’ in which children can watch how bees ‘work’. They want children to learn also what is agriculture and have an other project called ‘From seed to seed”, where children plant a seed and follow the plant growing up to the maturing of the fruit and the production of new seed.

Angelo and Fiorella built a strong relation with GAS, so it starts one of the most innovative practice regarding their farm. Every year, in autumn, they had to face some financial difficulties, when setting up the production conditions for the strawberry production. Four years ago they decided to ask GAS for help. The request was launched through word of mouth and on Internet through the Lazio GAS Network: twenty-four groups responded.

The innovative practice started with the definition of a pre-financing contract between the farmer and the GAS involved, at the beginning of the growing season (generally autumn in this case). Following the signing of the contract, GAS proceed to the payment in advance of a quota of the product to be purchased during the year, generally 50%. This allows the farm to starts production without seeking any bank loan. When production is ready to be delivered to GAS, the rest of the amount due and eventually some extra orders are paid. Price are established in the contract and remain stable throughout the year. In case of problems related to the production, a new solution is negotiated among parts (farm and involved GAS).

The initiative is now moving at the maturity stage towards consolidation and mutation to a form of community supported agriculture. Pre-financing was created in order to cope with rising costs for the use of organic and ancient seeds, but also to deal with the uncertainty of the purchase by the customers. The move toward a community supported agriculture model would help to overcome such difficulties.

ABSTRACT. In Mediterranean cities, thanks to a favorable climates and a long historical tradition, an amazing variety of fruit trees is growing in public spaces like parks, gardens, streets. Urban fruit trees create a widespread orchard that is not harvested at all! Every year tons of ripe fruit falls on the ground and rots, creating management and cleaning problems, representing an unacceptable food waste! That the reason why Linaria, the non-profit organization that work about public spaces, create Frutta Urbana, the first project of its kind in Italy, that began in Rome in 2014. Frutta Urbana is a complex project, that offers the community innovative and ecological activities but also the opportunity to acquire knowledge for our common botanical heritage. The aims is to map, pick and donate the fruit that grows in the city’s publics parks, gardens and streets. Frutta Urbana includes activities such as the creation of new urban orchards, as well as public events, courses and workshops. The online public map shows the positions of the trees across the city, becoming an accessible public tool, sharing information with those who are interested in picking fruit and who want to collaborate to identify and locate new trees. Continuously updated, the interactive map is also a free App for smartphones that uses the concept of crowdsourcing for social activism. The fruit harvests are organized with the help of RomAltruista, a non profit association that connect more than 10.000 volunteers and professionals who give us their time and skills. Freshly picked, the fruit is immediately donated to soup kitchens and food banks. The main objective of Frutta Urbana is to stimulate the consumption of fruit, an essential part of a healthy diet, to inform about food security and to raise awareness on more sustainable lifestyles. Frutta Urbana educative and training programs involve schools, communities and associations to street-picked fruit and collaborate with us in preparing and cooking a collective fruit jams, candies or fruit teas. Each product is a social experiment with people with disabilities, elders, and immigrants who can learn about the endless possibilities in preserving and processing fruit. Frutta Urbana wants create new orchards that will be productive gardens, botanical collections of old varieties, as well as places to learn, experiment, and share. They will be created in abandoned areas, schools, social centres, new squares, in the centre and in the outskirts. www.fruttaurbana.org

ABSTRACT. The idea came out from the Association Piacecibosano (Piacenza) and developed in collaboration with the Research Center for Sustainable Development in Agriculture of the Catholic University and the Chamber of Commerce of Piacenza. Generally, young people are not fully capable of making independent and informed food choices and end up adapting to trends proposed by society. Therefore it’s a priority to form a critical consciousness that can help young people to develop an autonomous and aware behavior choosing the food. Nevertheless, schools offers a poor number of initiatives about nutrition for students. In addition, the large amount of the projects regarding nutrition lacks a dialogue between the school system, institutions and associations, aimed at creating a shared educational orientation with respect to the theme of healthy and sustainable food. In Aprile 2013 the Association started some actions of education about nutrition. In October 2013, 350 boys from 11 secondary schools of Piacenza were involved in an Open Space Technology dedicated to food. In November 2014, was launched the project "Set an extra place at table" involving 4 secondary schools of Piacenza for a total of 30 students and 5 teachers. Students identified some issues of their interest related to food, organised them into five thematic groups and started a discussion with their teachers. Once defined themes and methods that will constitute the educational food program, it will be distributed among peers. Strengths of the program are the following: participation, nutritional awareness, empowerment, proactivity, peer communication, listening and consideration of the needs and demands of students and teachers, inter-institutional dialogue created between different schools around the subject of food, the connection between school and institutions. The problems found are the following: poor coordination that can affect the communication and management of organizational processes, need to find referee to coordinate each group of students and teachers in the design of interventions. The experience could be replicated in other contexts interested in addressing the theme of sustainable nutrition using a participatory approach with the actors of the education system.

ABSTRACT. The implementation of high tunnels for vegetable production has rapidly expanded in the United States due to various reasons including the expansion of organic and local markets. However, little is known about the effect of high tunnel production systems on postharvest losses or nutritional and physical quality of fresh produce at harvest and during storage. The aim of this work was to determine how high tunnel production affects postharvest losses, quality and shelf life of organically-grown tomatoes and spinach compared to the open-field. Two tomato types (hybrid red cv. BHN 589 and heirloom cv. Cherokee Purple) and cv. Corvair spinach were grown at the Kansas State University Olathe Horticulture Research and Extension Center during 2013-2015. In the high tunnel system, fabric mulch was used for weed control and drip irrigation was utilized. An equivalent open-field plot was planted at the same time using typical commercial open-field production practices. Tomatoes were harvested at the pink maturity stage based on the USDA color/maturity classification map and stored at 12.5οC and 25οC for 21 days. Fruit respiration rate was measured every 24 hours during storage. Additionally, color (CIE L*a*b*) as well as incidence and severity of decay were evaluated daily. Fruit samples were evaluated at days 0, 5 and 10 for physical and nutritional quality. Fully mature spinach leaves was harvested and stored at 3οC and 13οC for 6 days. Overall appearance, color and respiration were monitored at day of harvest and through storage. Tomatoes grown in the high tunnel had significantly lower respiration rates compared to open field (6.75 and 7.93 mg CO2 per kg-h, respectively). Furthermore, high tunnel tomatoes showed reduced incidence and severity of postharvest disease, and the mean values of the area under the disease progress curve (AUDPC) were significantly lower (P<0.05) for the fruit grown in the high tunnel. Fruit grown in the high tunnel fruit remained marketable (severity rating <3) for the entire 14-day time period while fruit grown in the open-field were not marketable after 10 days in storage. The tomatoes grown in the open-field had significantly higher total antioxidant activity than tomatoes grown under high tunnel conditions throughout storage. The utilization of high tunnels for vegetable production by local growers could lead to the reduction of food losses by extension of postharvest shelf life.

ABSTRACT. Minor horticultural crops, which were fading out of the food supply chain, are now being re-considered due to their high nutritional properties and emerging consumer interest. Minimal processing and modified atmosphere packaging present techniques to add value to these crops for enhanced transport, distribution and consumption; hence the competitiveness of local growers. This was revealed through an evaluation on zucchini male flowers, fennel, broccoli raab and purslane leaves stored at 5^oC. In zucchini flowers, a comparison of four different atmospheres (3%O₂+97%N_2, 3%O₂+10%CO₂ in nitrogen, 10%CO₂ in air and air) showed that an atmosphere condition of 3%O₂ preserved all quality and marketable characteristics even after 9 days. Similarly, modified atmosphere storage of 5%O₂+10%CO₂  with 0.5% ethanol treatment provided the best anti-browning effect on cut surface of fennels. Optimum sensorial and flavor scores were attained in broccoli raab, stored in polypropylene/polyamide micro-perforated bags with 5g of CO₂ absorbers for 8 days. Regarding purslane leaves, physiological assessment of the presence of ethylene showed that leaves were marketable after 10 days and even 13days at 0^oC . This work adds to the efforts towards developing strategies to enhance the utilisation and consumption of fresh minor crops.

ABSTRACT. The numerous alimentary scandals of the last decades, the social inequalities among players in the global food market as well as the strong environmental concerns of a significant percentage of citizens result in the emergence of alternative supply chains worldwide. In this frame, several social movements like short food supply chains, community supported agriculture (CSA), fair trade etc aim not only to moderate consumers concerns about food safety but also to smooth economic and social inequalities. In developed countries local food supply chains are present as an alternative to the conventional food systems mainly because they contribute to food and nutrition security in urban centers as well as to the overall growth of city-region economies.

While in Europe and in the USA alternative forms of organization of food chain were developed for at least two decades, in Greece only recently have emerged such organizational systems. However, their development is rapid due to the severe economic crisis. In this frame, it is very interesting to investigate the role of agricultural cooperatives in these new forms of supply chain.

A characteristic and innovative form of local food supply chain in Greece is the distribution of fresh cow milk via automatic sale machines in northern Greece. The idea belongs to a newly established agricultural cooperative (in 2010) of local pasteurized cow milk which consists of 102 dairy cattle farmers. The pilot installation of small number of sales-machines in 2014 caused the vivid interest of consumers resulting in rapid proliferation of the number of automatic instruments in several urban centers of northern Greece.

The main aim of this work is the investigation of the phenomenon. The research was realized with the help of a structured questionnaire in a large number of consumers during the 2015 and focused on the profile of consumers as well as the economic and social motives for cooperative products. There are also examined the consumers’ opinions about whether this distribution channel contributes to the food safety as well as the benefits of the existence of competitive short supply chains.

ABSTRACT. Uzbekistan has very conducive and very fertile land for growing fruits and vegetables which makes it one the main producers in CIS countries by creating an easy access to the growing Central Asian and Russian consumer markets. Since its independence, there have been a number of agricultural policies implemented aimed at development of agricultural sector such as institutional and structural reforms; agricultural policy has been focused on cotton and wheat production, and less attention was paid to fruits and vegetables subsector. On the other hand, recently policy in agriculture of Uzbekistan is weighing more on diversification of agricultural production, which in turn is resulting on increasing of high-value agricultural products such as fruits and vegetables. Several legislative bases therefore have been recently issued by the government in order to increase production of fruits and vegetables throughout the country. However, some estimates suggest that in Uzbekistan about 30–40% of fruit and vegetables are lost or abandoned after leaving the farm gate. Main findings from review of postharvest state in Uzbekistan suggest that combination of interventions and innovations such as: capacity building to farmers and other stakeholders through training and extension services; expansion of public investment in infrastructural development; promotion of private sector participation in infrastructural development; and expansion of R&D for the generation of appropriate postharvest technologies and quality assurance system; are required. In this paper, study reports, empirical analysis and theories have been explored and multidimensional analysis methodology has been implemented to review postharvest aspects of fruits and vegetables subsector of Uzbekistan.