Governance and Articulation from the Externado de Colombia University with Its Environment: A Look from the Multifunctional and Territorialized Agri-Food Systems

Abstract

Bogota, the capital of Colombia, has recently presented an important expansion of its territory. This has triggered the displacement of rural and peasant areas. However, some neighboring municipalities have managed to stay out of the city’s growth process thanks to their geographical conditions and have also generated important links from their agri-food systems. In these articulation processes, the governance schemes and its actors are key. This analysis seeks to answer what have been the main strategies and coordination mechanisms implemented by the Universidad Externado de Colombia (UEC) to achieve multiple interactions between the actors involved in the multifunctional and territorialized agri-food systems (MTLAFS MTLAFS). For the above, the municipality of Choachi and its relationship with Externado University as an articulator of actions that contribute to the construction of territorial and regional dynamics are taken as an illustrative case. Within the framework of the qualitative methodology, case studies were used, with the concept of governance as the axis of analysis. As part of the results, some recommendations are presented for the work of universities in multifunctional and territorialized short circuits, as well as for the understanding of the actors, mainly the university, in the governance schemes of agri-food systems.