Agro living Labs: Creating innovative, sustainable, resilient and social inclusive food systems

Abstract

In response to climate, biodiversity, environmental, economic and social challenges to rural and peri-urban areas, an emergent type of living labs (LLs) has been developed: the ‘Agro Living Labs (ALLs)’. Various EU initiatives (e.g. the European Green Deal, the New European Bauhaus, the Farm to Fork strategy, the Biodiversity strategy) as well as the UN 2030 Agenda, highlight the need to direct towards agroecology. ALLs is a relatively new but very promising approach in agroecology practices. However, more practice-oriented research is needed to better understand how ALLs can help to effectively implement open and user-oriented innovations, to stimulate collaboration between different stakeholders in the community, to trigger cross-sectoral alliances and to build inclusive societies. This study aims to initiate a discussion around key elements of the ‘living lab way of working’ in agroecological food systems. Several scholars converge that we need to shed light upon particular approaches, methods, techniques, and tools that are used in real-life contexts to understand the opportunities offered by ALLs to peri-urban and rural areas. The authors suggest that ALLs, as Co-creating, Agroecological, Socio-Technical (CAST) systems, can help to address food systems crises, and to promote sustainability, integrity, equity, inclusiveness, resilience, circularity and productivity.