The future of peasant agroecology in Occitania 2050

The objective of the FAPO project is to identify the conditions for the development of peasant agro-ecology in Occitania by 2050 through the implementation of a citizen-based prospective approach. The project responds to the challenge of agroecological transition and its territorial inclusion.
This translates into two research questions: (1) how to characterise the diversity of agroecological models and (2) how to model the conditions of development and transformation paths towards the future of peasant agroecology? FAPO is experimental in nature and will produce methods to mobilise a network of multi-stakeholders in a participatory research process and to evaluate the effects of stakeholder engagement in citizen foresight.
The project involves three partners: the InPACT Occitanie network, which brings together 9 farmers’ associations, the UMR ART-Dev, which will coordinate a network of 15 researchers in the region, and SOLAGRO, which is recognised for its experience in foresight modelling. It will benefit from the support of Trait d’Union, the MSH SUD’s science-society workshop, as a third-party monitor.
In 2022, the project will co-construct a multi-sited participatory research method. This method will be tested to draft a multi-criteria agroecology grid (the agroecology ’compass’) and to identify the main levers and obstacles to the development of agroecology (Lot 1). At the beginning of 2023, the project will carry out an analysis of existing local and regional public policies and will co-construct a first grid for analysing policy change, drawing on the Advocacy Coalition Framework/ACF (Lot 2). These elements will provide the basis for the following steps.
In 2023 and early 2024, the project will then carry out citizen foresight at the scale of the Occitanie region (Lot 4) and in at least one experimental local territory (Lot 3). The experience of the research community involved will enable knowledge to be shared between several foresight exercises carried out in recent years on different scales, while mobilising the questions and results of a range of local projects and experiments in agroecology.
In 2024, the project will use its results to organise multi-stakeholder dialogues on scenarios for the future of peasant agroecology in 2050 in Occitania (Lot 5). This will enable the project to consolidate and compare its results with a view to making proposals on local and regional policies to support agroecology.