REVIEW REPORT ON DECENTRALISED & ECOLOGICAL SEEDS & FARMING IN THE EU Authors: Stephan Kampelmann, ULB (DULBEA/IGEAT) Wouter Achten, ULB (IGEAT) Tom Bauler, ULB (IGEAT) Dimitrios Petalios, Independent Researcher Case studies by Stefan Doeblin, Network Economy Brussels, 21 October 2014 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of contents ............................................................................................................................................... 2 Synopsis ............................................................................................................................................................. 3 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................... 5 1.1 Promises and questions ........................................................................................................................ 6 1.2 Objectives, scope and structure of the report ..................................................................................... 6 1.3 Definitions ............................................................................................................................................ 8 1.3.1 Food systems and value chains ................................................................................................... 8 1.3.2 Ecological seeds and farming ....................................................................................................... 9 1.3.3 Centralised/decentralised food systems ..................................................................................... 9 2 Impact assessment .................................................................................................................................. 13 2.1 Socio-economic impact assessment ................................................................................................... 13 2.1.1 Farm stage ................................................................................................................................. 13 2.1.2 Market stage .............................................................................................................................. 18 2.2 Environmental impact assessment ..................................................................................................... 26 2.2.1 Farm stage ................................................................................................................................. 26 2.2.2 Market stage .............................................................................................................................. 27 2.3 Discussion ........................................................................................................................................... 30 3 Existing EU policies related to ecological farming and decentralised food systems ............................... 32 3.1 A brief reminder on the Common Agricultural Policy ........................................................................ 32 3.2 EU support for ecological seeds and farming ..................................................................................... 34 3.3 The potential role of the CAP for the decentralization of food systems ............................................ 36 4 New agriculture, new governance .......................................................................................................... 39 4.1 The governance of systems’ transitions ............................................................................................. 39 4.2 Configurations for a governance of decentralised farming and seeding ........................................... 41 5 Conclusions and recommendations ........................................................................................................ 42 6 References ............................................................................................................................................... 47 Appendix. Case Studies for Decentralised and Ecological Seeds and Farming in Europe........................ 55 2 SYNOPSIS 1. The European agricultural model faces economic and environmental crises. Partly in response to current and future challenges, more ecological forms of agriculture have emerged as a promising strategy towards a more sustainable food system. This report addresses the profound changes that are needed to achieve 30% ecological seeds and farming in Europe until 2030. 2. Our analysis is based on a review of the academic literatures in governance, agricultural economics, environmental impact analysis and policy analysis. In parallel, 6 agrogeographic regions in France, the UK, Switzerland and Germany served as case studies. Draft versions of the report have been submitted to an international support committee including 13 academic experts and practitioners. 3. We define ecological agriculture as the confluence of organic seeds, farming and gardening; production techniques with no use of chemical fertilizers or phytosanitary products (herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, etc.); an approach that ensure the long-term balance of ecosystems (agroecology); and local and open pollinated (GMO-free) seed breeding and mass selection. 4. A transition towards 30% ecological seed breeding and farming constitutes a major socio-technical transition. Viewing changes in the governance of food systems as socio-technical transitions gives credit to the many on-going transitional (local, citizen-based) decentralised initiatives in which innovation is closer to a practice than to the handling of a single technological device. 5. Alternative practices are mostly niche strategies that are impossible to understand without taking into account their embeddedness in societal, political, economic, cultural or scientific dynamics. Existing niches are nurtured by elements of the incumbent system: niches and niche strategies develop and generalize through interactions with the regime. 6. Common to many promising socio-technical innovations in the food system (such as Community Supported Agriculture, the Transition Town movement or food baskets) is their decentralized nature. Decentralization refers not only to geographical, but also to economic, political and organizational aspects. Decentralization can be opposed to centralization, which is a key characteristic of the current agroindustrial paradigm that dominates European food systems. 7. A transformation strategy based on decentralization provides a potential solution to some of the problems associated with up-scaling. The up-scaling of decentralized practices potentially allows expanding the space for the socio-technical transition practices without fundamentally changing the nature, identity and principles of the initial (local, citizen-based) initiatives. 8. In order to have substantial impact on European food systems, decentralized niche practices have to alter their scale. Indeed, more and more actors recognize that “the scaling up of these experiences is the main challenge today” (De Schutter 2010). But translations and generalizations of niche practices are never exact copies of the original niche strategy: up-scaling of experimental, localized, low-tech, alternative… niche strategies alters their very nature: once up-scaled and translated into the regime, the practices cease to be experimental, localized, low-tech, alternative… In many cases they will loose their foundational identity and initial adherents in the process. The absorption of the initially local and activist organic movement by globalized supermarket distribution networks and certification organizations is an example of an up-scaling process that marks a profound transformation (for instance by substituting the sale of organic produce in local trust-based networks with the import of certified organic products from other countries or continents and their sale in multinational supermarket chains). 9. Additional challenges in terms of the governance of decentralised up-scaling are pointing into two distinct directions: niche management and space creating. Relevant forms of space for socio-technological transitions include geographical ‘spatial’ space, ‘interactive’ participatory learning-oriented space and legislative institutional space. In many instances, niche management has been translated into a governance of experimentation. 3 10. Key foci in approaches to the governance of decentralized scaling (up) are based on imitating, multiplying and networking of successful decentralised seeds, farming and food initiatives. This decentralized up-scaling could be strengthened through the involvement of: - Consumers who become producers - Slowing down of consumption patterns - Local communities and networks to support, to educate and to complement each other - Exchange of experiences and lessons across different levels of governance - Research and evaluations adopting holistic approaches to environmental and economic impact analysis. 11. A holistic perspective can be adopted through the value chain approach that spans the farm and the market stage of the food system. An advantage of this approach is that it detects when changes in some part of the system (e.g. the farm stage) have repercussions in other parts (e.g. the market stage). Scale is a crucial characteristic of each phase of the value chain: in many cases scale is directly related to economic and environmental performance. Scale should be seen as a strategy and not as an