Participatory Research in Organic Farming: Insights from an Agroecology Living Lab in a Mediterranean Area

Agroecology living labs (ALLs) are progressively flourishing in Europe, materializing in newly conceived forms of participatory research open to a variety of actors. The living lab concept and its key implementing pillars are however not yet fully familiar to potential stakeholders, including those already experiencing co-research and co-innovation initiatives. An ALL in Southern Italy, operating at regional scale with organic farming operators, is testing different forms of actor engagement to enrich crop diversification arrangements, co-validate existing practices, experiment with innovative socio-technical approaches and explore their adaptability and scalability to the regional context and beyond. Results show significant potential for the ALL approach as long as the living lab can ensure motivation in participation, responsiveness to needs, flexibility of involvement and concreteness of outcomes. Moreover, as living labs are not necessarily self-propelling entities and may deal with stakeholder fatigue or with lack of expertise to address barriers to development, our experience shows that tailored initiatives have to be deployed in critical moments to either value existing opportunities or mitigate constraints. Success also depends on full deployment of genuine participatory approaches to ensure engagement of actors and to avoid trivializing the key methodological principles.