Good Practice - Project
ECLAT project – Experimenting collective approaches for agroecology
Promoting agroecology by fostering dialogue between farmer groups and policymakers.
General information
RDP Priority
- P1. Knowledge transfer and innovation
RDP Focus Area
- 1A: Innovation & cooperation
RDP Measure
- M20: Technical assistance
Beneficiary type
- Producer group / cooperative / farmer’s association
Summary
In 2018, the CUMA National Federation (Cooperative for the Use of Agricultural Materials), in partnership with the CIVAM association (Centre for Initiatives that Enhance Agriculture and Rural Areas), developed the ECLAT project to support dialogue between agroecology farmers’ groups and policymakers. Agroecology contributes to the green transition and to local development in rural territories. Building agroecology projects in partnership with policymakers is a way to contribute to local development and to ensure sustainability in farming. The project trialled several methods of dialogue with five farmer groups.
Results
- Five farmer groups, located in different regions of France, experimented with different types of development via different models of partnership.
- The project participants developed a suite of capacity-building tools to support farmer groups in cooperating with local authorities and stakeholders (associations, citizens, etc.).
- The partners organised field visits to Switzerland and the French Basque Country to learn from the experiences of similar initiatives.
- All the resources from the project are available for farmer groups who wish to develop their activities and cooperate better with local authorities.
Promoter
CUMA National Federation
Funding
Total budget: 357 063.47 (EUR)
EAFRD: 67 659.57 (EUR)
National/Regional: 60 000.00 (EUR)
Private/own: 79 322.87 (EUR)
Other: 150 081.03 (EUR)
Resources
Context
Dialogue between farmers and policymakers is a key issue in agroecology. The French policy framework is not adapted to new practices in agriculture and does not support the development of dialogue between farmers and territorial stakeholders. In order to be successful, agroecological projects rely upon a collective approach to addressing local needs.
The ECLAT project was launched by the CUMA National Federation (Cooperative for the Use of Agricultural Materials), in partnership with the CIVAM association (Centre for Initiatives that Enhance Agriculture and Rural Areas). It was a continuation of a previous project that focused on supporting farmer groups in their transition towards agroecology. ECLAT focused on the need to explore new collaborative working methods in order to create links between agriculture and policymakers. Better dialogue and collective action should ensure the design of public policies that address the challenges faced by farmers working in agroecology.
Objectives
The project objectives were to:
- Develop a methodology to support co-design in agroecology policymaking, with a multi-stakeholder ecosystem.
- Ensure that farmer groups have access to tools that help them increase their territorial approach and launch projects that are adapted to their local contexts.
- Support the development and management of agri-environmental resources (between farmers and public authorities).
- Create monitoring and evaluation tools, in order to follow the actions implemented at the local level.
Activities
Project activities included:
- Conducting experiments with pilot farmer groups - ECLAT worked with farmer groups that were selected through a call for proposals on the basis of their capacity to mobilise an ecosystem of stakeholders and deliver agroecological demonstration projects in their territories. These projects served as case studies to gather knowledge about the pitfalls and success factors of initiating dialogue with local policymakers. The groups created tools and methods (such as communication plans, public dialogue programmes, template contracts, etc.) that could be transferred to other territories.
- Organising field visits to learn about good practice examples in Europe - the focus of these visits was to examine how public authorities are successfully supporting agriculture while ensuring environmental compliance.
- Capitalising on the project activities – during the project, the partners published updates and reviews, highlighting the activities of the pilot farmer groups and the project leaders (CUMA, CIVAM).
Main results
- This project enabled five farmer groups, located in different regions of France, to experiment with different types of development via different models of local authority and stakeholder partnership. The partners organised field visits to Switzerland and the French Basque Country to learn from the experiences of similar initiatives.
- The project participants developed a suite of capacity-building tools to support farmer groups to cooperate with local authorities and stakeholders (associations, citizens, etc.) All of these resources are available for farmer groups who wish to develop their activities and to better cooperate with local authorities.
Key lessons
- When the project was designed, one of the objectives was to impact the design of local policies. The project did not succeed in this because of time and resource restraints, but it did at least support farmer groups to develop consultation and communication frameworks that could lead to new forms of policy design in the future.
This project had a lot of benefits because it supported the dialogue between different stakeholders (national organisations, local associations, farmers’ groups, policymakers…) on agroecology. It has also demonstrated that much could be done to increase the support for agroecology through public policies.
Contacts
Lore Blondel
CIVAM association – Partner