ANzAr Colloquium : Agroecology in North Africa

The agroecological transition of agricultural production systems is often seen as the pathway forward to develop sustainable food systems. There however still exist numerous cognitive and technical lock-ins of different orders in order to achieve this, in particular in the Southern Mediterranean. To strengthen agroecology, Wezel et al. (2018) recommend key actions that include knowledge exchange, strengthening communication, alliances and skills.

The objective of this project is to organize a multi-actor colloquium on agroecology in Tunisia in 2022, pertaining to “Responsible Production in Irrigated Agriculture in North Africa”. The aims of the encounter are first to build a network at a regional scale of actors interested in alternative forms of irrigated agriculture; second - on a more cognitive basis – evaluate how such an encounter can impact stakeholders’ perceptions of agroecology, networks and praxis. The Forum will offer multiple activities based on co-learning processes that will favor active participation, and small group exchanges to allow network constitutions, through collective diagnoses of main stakes and issues within a “world café” workshop, sharing upon practical and accomplished transitions of farms through narratives, co-designing cropping and farming systems using serious games, and by presenting sets of innovations by stakeholders, in the field or through videos or experimentations.

To achieve this, the Forum will bring together, for a three day encounter, approximately 50 stakeholders, including farmers, NGOs and local associations’ leaders, local administration, students, researchers and post-production chain value actors from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The project is led by a team of researchers from RU Geau and Innovation, in partnership with CREAD (Algeria) and INAT (Tunisia), and is built upon a set of research projects already undertaken on this theme. Total cost is approximately 50k€, and additional funding will be further sought. Expected impacts of this a multi-stakeholder and participatory Forum engaged in innovative, inter-sectoral and cross-disciplinary co-learning are numerous, including enhancing mutual learning on locally adapted on adapted agroecological practices, student training in monitoring and evaluation methods, and dissemination of knowledge and experience acquired during the Forum to a larger community of both scientists, developers and practitioners.