Agroecology research in Europe funded by European and transnational programmes: current status and perspectives

Background: Redesigning the agri-food system through agroecology represents a common ambition among practitioners, activists and scholars to achieve environmental and socio-economic sustainability. Research can have a main role to support this path. Although it seems that there is a gradual increasing body of agroecology research, it clearly lacks good knowledge about this. The main objective of this study was therefore to map research projects related to agroecology in Europe with the aim to characterize European research in terms of implementation of agroecology elements, identify needs for future cross collaboration between countries and networks, and support the setting up of appropriate research agendas fostering agroecology research in Europe. Methods: A desktop research with different databases related to European and transnational funding programmes was carried out to identify funded research projects involved in agroecology. The obtained projects were used to perform a social network analysis. Furthermore, two surveys were conducted, one with coordinators of identified projects and a second one for researchers engaged in agroecology. Results: Our study highlighted a predominant trajectory of agroecology research prone to the transformation of the agri-food system. France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and United Kingdom were the most active countries engaged in agroecology research. In all surveys, issues related to efficiency improvement, synergies strengthening, local economy development, and co-creation and sharing of knowledge were the most implemented to support agri-food transformation. Transdisciplinary approaches were mainly addressed by European projects. Surveys reported a limited participation of value chain actors, while researchers, farmers, and their associations were the most involved. Survey respondents suggested to increase project duration and introduce flexibility methods to modulate research actions according to dynamic of the contexts. Conclusion: On the basis of the results, some policy recommendations were provided to fostering agroecology research in Europe and its contribution for transformation of agri-foods systems.