The Generative Potential of Tensions within Belgian Agroecology

Pierre Stassart,Maarten Crivits,Louis Tessier,Joost Dessein,Julie Hermesse,Julie Van Damme

doi:10.3390/su10062094

Pierre Stassart, Maarten Crivits + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su10062094

Copy DOI

Abstract

Food crises and ecologization have given rise to a Belgian dynamic that does not behave according to the conventional tripod of agroecology: practitioners, social movement, and scientists. Instead of simply recounting the history of Belgian agroecology, the authors trace the history and dynamics in Belgium), a journey along six strands that weave themselves into a Belgian tapestry: Genetically modified crop commandos, a scientific paradigm shift, hybrid expertise opening the Northern route that intersects with a Southern political route, an original non-institutional dynamic in the French-speaking part of Belgium and an institutional initiative that led to a rift in Flanders. In the following section, we identify, emerging from those six strands, four tensions that create a space of innovations, namely, politically differentiated discourses, land access, fair price, and epistemic tensions. We discuss then the generative potential of the 4 tensions and describe the potential of reconfigurations generated by boundaries organizations, food justice and transdisciplinarity. We conclude that the concept of agroecology continues to have transformative potential in Belgium today. However, no one can predict the course of such a largely non-institutional dynamic.

Highlights

As they say in Belgium, ‘old wine in new bottles’? Is the current Belgian landscape significantly different from the one that has emerged around new alternatives, e.g., short supply chains, Community Support Agriculture boxes, farmers’ markets, and quality products and labels in the 1980s and 1990s? [1] Many of these initiatives arose on the regional scale by the boerenmarkten in Flanders and the Agriculture Savoureuse federation in Wallonia at that time
What is the productivity of those tensions? In Section 4, we identify four potential generative tensions that create an emerging space of innovations, namely, politically differentiated discourse, boundary organization, food justice, and transdisciplinarity
The frictional relationship among the six strands generate a potential transformative space for differentiated discourse about agroecology (Section 4.1). What is their transformative potential? To address this question, we start with the failure of the New Food Frontier initiative and we look at the consequences for the de-institutionalised context that was created by the French-speaking actors

Summary

Introduction

As they say in Belgium, ‘old wine in new bottles’? Is the current Belgian landscape significantly different from the one that has emerged around new alternatives, e.g., short supply chains, Community Support Agriculture boxes, farmers’ markets, and quality products and labels in the 1980s and 1990s? [1] Many of these initiatives arose on the regional scale by the boerenmarkten (farmers’ markets) in Flanders and the Agriculture Savoureuse federation in Wallonia at that time. The food crises that swept across Europe at the turn of this century hit Belgium hard These crises took place in the context of further industrialization and globalization of our food markets, where the link between consumption and production was being dissolved by lengthening and increasing the specialization of agrifood value chains. Those crises spurred activities to reconstruct the link between production and consumption. These crises reveal the limits of our food system, especially when it comes to food safety This is the context in which the matter of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) came to the fore

Objectives

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion