Innovations in civic sustainable agriculture through co-creation: a comparative analysis

This article tracks the development of niche innovations in civic sustainable agriculture across eleven initiatives around the world employing co-creation processes. Drawing on the food system transitions literature, the article provides a definition of civic sustainable agricultural innovations to account for the range of sustainable and civic agriculture innovations found across the cases. An inventory of innovative practices are provided and the co-creation governance factors employed in each case to achieve these practices are analyzed. The article concludes with some assertions about the promise and challenges of employing co-creation methods in advancing civic sustainable agricultural niche innovations. Certain co-creation governance practices contributing to niche innovations were found across all cases including the awareness of prevailing biospheric conditions, facilitative leadership, the use of channels for broadening and deepening engagement, and the use of collaborative platforms. However, each case presents contextual variance as evidenced in the leveraging of different combinations of other co-creation governance factors for each case. The limitations of co-creation for establishing frameworks for accountability and trust building are discussed.