Participatory Methodology for Designing an Agroecological Transition at Local Level

The purpose of the TATA-BOX project was to develop a toolbox to support local stakeholders in the design of an agroecological transition at local level. A participatory process based on existing conceptual and methodological frameworks was developed for the design of new configurations of stakeholders and resource systems in the farming systems, supply-chains and natural resources management that were to form a new agroecological territorial system. This process, presented here, was adapted and tested on two adjacent territories in south-western France. It was structured around three main stakeholders’ workshops to support the holistic diagnosis, the design of a normative vision, and the backcasting approach of the transition pathway.The authors describe the participatory methods and the multimodal intermediary tools used to support the collective design of the agroecological transition. It is also presented the main turnkey outcomes of the design process for local stakeholders, including shared diagnosis, vision for an agroecological territorial system in 2025, and a projected action plan for transition from the initial to the desired agriculture and associated governance structures. Finally, it is discussed the limits of the process and the conditions that would enable stakeholders to implement the transition, by reducing remaining uncertainties