A farmers' run local food store as living lab for resilient food systems

This contribution presents a practical example for exploring the potential of collective action to build a resilient local food system as response to increasing uncertainties and challenges linked to climate change and biodiversity loss.

Within the framework of the EU-Horizon project PLUSChange (GA Nr. 101081464), the regional nature park Parc Ela (situated in Central Grisons, Switzerland), supports a cooperative of committed farmers and artisans that initiate a shop for local products in the village of Savognin. We thereby conceive of the process of setting up the business model as a living lab of collective action. While supporting the cooperative in all organisational and practical steps, the framework of the transdisciplinary EU research project allows us to simultaneously analyse the processes involved.

First, we developed a vision for the regional nature park, with a particular focus on the food system and developed strategies how to reach the objectives of this vision. This was done in a series of workshops with relevant stakeholders from the whole food system: farmers and foresters, as well as hotel managers, chefs, small manufacturers, local administration and policy makers. Against this background, a group of committed farmers and artisans decided to set up a shop exclusively offering local products, and founded a cooperative to implement the business.

At the WBF we will present initial results and reflections on how this collective undertaking has evolved, what challenges were met and which potential we see in such a living lab to provide a model for food system transformation at a local level. We will look into the negotiation processes over meanings and values of ‘local’, into how community is created and responsibility shared, as well as into the necessary knowledge exchange that is needed between a) producers and end consumers; b) farmers and gastronomy; c) frontrunners and followers; d) practitioners and policy.