Transitions in agriculture: Three frameworks highlighting coexistence between a new agroecological configuration and an old, organic and conventional configuration of vegetable production in Wallonia (Belgium)

Abstract

The contribution of the multi-level perspective (MLP) to study transition dynamics is widely recognized. MLP involves examining interactions between three socio-technical levels: niche, regime and landscape. Empirical analysis of niche-regime interactions when applying this framework to agricultural transitions to sustainability remains challenging, however. The diversity of historical farming systems within a region can make niches and regimes highly heterogeneous. In addition, agricultural transitions to sustainability may be driven as much by technological changes as by institutional features, including normative rules and cultural cognitive rules that are less adequately addressed by MLP. To tackle these two challenges, we combined MLP with two additional frameworks to describe transition processes: the comparative agriculture framework, drawn from agro-economic, geographic and historical analyses of agricultural crises, and the justification of practices framework, drawn from pragmatic sociology. In this paper, we apply these three frameworks to the fresh vegetable production sector in Wallonia (Belgium) and discuss visions of transition through the lens of the agroecological paradigm. This leads us to predict a situation of coexistence between two socio-technical configurations of production: an old, organic and conventional configuration reoriented toward more commercial autonomy for the producers, and a new configuration oriented toward agroecology. The study contributes to a major debate discussing the extent to which the agroecological paradigm is being co-opted by the regime or remains faithful to its original principles and opens up perspectives for public policy development in the context of increasing governmental attention to the agroecological paradigm.