Configuring more responsible knowledge-based bio-economies: the case of alternative agro-food networks

ABSTRACT

The ‘knowledge-based bio-economy’ (KBBE) constitutes a prominent research and innovation policy narrative underlining the centrality of knowledge and innovation as important products and resources driving contemporary economies and societies. However, a narrow understanding of the KBBE prevails, resulting in the exclusion of a wider diversity of stakeholders and knowledges that could lead to the production of more responsible research and innovation (RRI). This paper aims to contribute to configuring more responsible knowledge-based bio-economies, by exploring the potential of other economic developments, such as this of alternative agro-food networks (AAFNs) to constitute knowledge-based bio-economies. Drawing on research conducted in the Northwest England, this paper unpacks the diversity of knowledges and knowledge production processes within AAFNs, arguing for their potential to constitute an alternative, more responsible KBBE. In doing so, it encourages consideration of the centrality of knowledge inclusion and reflexivity in configuring more responsible research and innovation processes for agriculture and food.

KEYWORDS:

• Knowledge-based bio-economy (KBBE)
• alternative agro-food networks (AAFNs)
• responsible research and innovation (RRI)
• knowledge
• agriculture
• food

Introduction

The concepts of the ‘knowledge economy’ and the ‘knowledge-based bio-economy’ have become central in the emergence of divergent innovation-driven ‘post-industrial’ economic visions and policy narratives for sustainability (Marsden and Farioli 2015). However, within them, a narrow approach to innovation prevails (Birch, Levidow, and Papaioannou 2010), which limits processes of knowledge inclusion that could otherwise lead to more responsible research and innovation (RRI) (Stilgoe, Ower, and Macnaghten 2013). The agrifood sector constitutes an interesting economic space of cohabitation and contestation¹ between different knowledge bio-economic visions for agrifood research and innovation (see Levidow et al. 2012a; Birch, Levidow, and Papaioannou 2010). In this context, as observed within academic and policy advocacy circles, within dominant KBBE narratives, agriculture and food are subject to bio-techno-scientific innovation developments, such as agricultural biotechnology or precision agriculture (see GeneWatch 2010; Levidow et al. 2012a; Marsden and Farioli 2015). This has led academic and civil society organisations to advocate for the possibility of alternative agro-food networks and practices, such as this of agro-ecology, to configure KBBEs in ways that can go beyond a prioritisation of techno-scientific knowledge over other knowledges² (see Levidow, Birch, and Papaioannou 2012a; 2012b; Pimbert and Moeller 2018; Biovision 2019; GeneWatch 2010).

Drawing on this matter of academic and practitioner concern, this article aims to contribute to configuring more responsible knowledge-based bio-economies, by exploring the potential of Alternative Agro-Food Networks (AAFNs) to constitute a knowledge-based bio-economy that can be based on the principles of knowledge inclusion, reflexivity and pluralism. Taking AAFNs as its conceptual and empirical point of departure, the article focuses on the diversity of knowledges and knowledge production processes that can help re-think agrifood innovation in more inclusive, responsive and reflexive ways (Stilgoe, Ower, and Macnaghten 2013).

AAFN research has unpacked the alternative character of such networks (Renting, Marsden, and Banks 2003; Ilbery and Maye 2005) as well as the knowledges embedded and enacted through their practices (Fonte 2008; Tovey 2008). However, little attention has been paid to configuring their alternative character and knowledge production processes in relation to the KBBE. Drawing on research with a diversity of rural and urban alternative agro-food initiatives in the Northwest of England, this paper investigates the different knowledges and knowledge production process that would help approach AAFNs as an alternative KBBE based on the principles of knowledge inclusion, reflexivity and pluralism.

In order to do so, the paper starts with an overview of the KBBE and RRI as two key narratives framing EC research and innovation trajectories for agriculture and food, underlining the centrality of knowledge while raising questions with regards to processes of inclusion. It then focuses on AAFNs as its conceptual and empirical lens. This helps not only understand the centrality of knowledge and alternative arrangements of knowledge in configuring the ‘alternative’ character of such agrifood practices from farm to fork. It also assists realise the potential of AAFNs to configure KBBEs in more responsible ways, by including a broader spectrum of actors and their knowledges in the production of future agrifood innovation.

KBBE and RRI: contending narratives for agrifood innovation?

As early as the 2000s, the emergence of the KBE and KBBE policy narratives signified the centrality of knowledge as both products and resources³ in the pursuit of a new post-industrial’ competitive advantage for the countries of the ‘developed’ North (EC 2000, 2020). This is also clearly indicated in EC Commission reports, stating that the ‘KBBE will play an important role in a global economy where knowledge is the best way to increase productivity and competitiveness and improve our quality of life, while protecting our environment and the social model’ (DG Research 2007). However, within this context, at an EC level, a prioritisation of scientific and technological knowledge for the KBBE prevailed, with life sciences and biotechnology being portrayed as the ‘solutions’ (EC 2002, 14), ‘offer[ing] opportunities to address many of the global needs relating to health, ageing, food and the environment, and to sustainable development’ (EC 2002, 9). This is also in alignment with the 2006 OECD report which also identified that ‘biotechnology and the biosciences more generally have the potential to generate significant economic, social, health and environmental benefits’ (OECD 2006, 3–4).

Such KBBE configurations result in perpetuating not only divides between scientific and other situated knowledges (Haraway 1991), but also dualisms between what Latour has described (1993) as a ‘ready-made’ science of objectivity and a ‘science in the making’ underlining the more ‘messy’ ways in which science is done. In this vein, as existing studies indicate (e.g. Ponte 2009; Birch, Levidow, and Papaioannou 2010), the KBBE ends up being a prescriptive policy narrative: promoting certain bio-economic visions for research and innovation, serving particular political economic interests and actors while marginalising others.

The agrifood sector is an interesting space for understanding the centrality of techno-scientific knowledge in configuring agrifood innovation for the KBBE. As evident in OECD’s 2006 report and the 2002 Life Sciences Strategy, biotechnologies have been promoted as the dominant agrifood innovation trajectory capable of addressing the socio-environmental limitations and genetic deficits of prior forms of unsustainable agricultures. This is also clearly stated by the Technology Platforms consortium, claiming that ‘biotechnology and other modern technologies … give new ways to improve productivity, efficiency and robustness’ (Becoteps 2011, 8, 9).

However, as Levidow, Birch, and Papaioannou (2012a; 2012b) observe, such processes lead to the marginalisation of other agrifood innovation trajectories for the KBBE, such as that of agro-ecological engineering. The allocation of research funding for agrifood innovation is indicative of the prioritisation given to life sciences and biotechnology over other agrifood knowledge systems, such as that of agro-ecology (see Pimbert and Moeller 2018; Biovision 2019). For example, as evidenced in a relevant press report (Lean 2007 in GeneWatch 2010), within the UK, in 2007, research investment on GM crops was reaching £18 million a year, when, during the same year, public investment on organic agriculture was about £1.6 million (see GeneWatch 2010). The development of the European Technology Platforms (ETPs) is also indicative of the lack of inclusion in research funding decisions for agrifood innovation. Being set up by multi-national companies, ETPs led not only to the prioritisation of certain agrifood innovation trajectories linked to industry funding, but also to the exclusion of farmers and civil society organisations, their knowledges and voices from opportunities to help shape future research and innovation agendas for agrifood sustainability (Levidow, Birch, and Papaioannou 2012a; 2012b).

Responsible Research and Innovation can be an interesting framework through which agrifood research and innovation policy could overcome narrow exclusionist framings of the KBBE, provided its framing of knowledge can be opened up to include a broader spectrum of agrifood knowledges and actors, and a more reflexive relationship with science and technology. At an EU policy level, RRI first appeared as part of the EC FP7 programme underlining the need for a better integration of ‘science in society’ (Laroche 2011), followed by the EC Horizon 2020 framing by Geoghegan-Quinn calling for a greater and plural involvement of stakeholder groups: ‘we can only find the right answers by involving as many stakeholders as possible in the research and innovation process. Research and innovation must respond to the needs and ambitions of society’ (see Owen, Macnaghten, and Stilgoe 2012).

As also identified by Stilgoe, Ower, and Macnaghten (2013), inclusion, reflexivity and responsiveness are theorised to be important dimensions for creating the conditions for more responsible research and innovation that would embrace and respond to the voices and knowledges of broader spectrum of publics in the area of agriculture and food. In this context, within RRI, knowledge inclusion becomes key for democratising the governance of science, technology and innovation trajectories for agrifood sustainability (Valkenburg et al. 2020) through the empowerment of more plural ways of knowing (Mol 1999). Reflexivity is also important as a principle that raises awareness of the limits of knowledge and of particular framings that may not be universally held (Stilgoe, Ower, and Macnaghten 2013). In their study, Ludwig and Macnaghten (2020) have underlined the need for including Traditional Ecological Knowledge in responsible innovation as a way of integrating and responding to the concerns and priorities of usually ignored communities. Along similar lines, Wakunuma et al. (2021) have underlined the need to reconceptualise RRI to open up to the broader spectrum of innovations that exist in the Global South and go beyond a narrow west-based technology- and science-driven orientations of innovation within RRI. It is in this context that Blok and Lemmens (2015) have therefore argued for a more critical conceptualisation of ‘innovation’ within RRI, in ways that can move beyond narrow associations of innovation with technological innovation and principles of economic growth, but also recognise the power asymmetries between stakeholders involved in problem definition and innovation processes.

Thus, on the one hand, existing academic studies on RRI in the area of agriculture and food underline the absence of RRI as a principle that could otherwise help pluralise existing agrifood innovation pathways (e.g. Bronson 2015; Macnaghten 2016). This is also becoming particularly evident in the most recently observed absence of RRI as a distinct element in Horizon Europe, which has raised scholarly concerns with regards to what counts as responsible innovation in the future (Fisher 2020; Robinson, Simone, and Mazzonetto 2021). On the other hand, echoing above scholarly critiques (e.g. Blok and Lemmens 2015; Wakunuma et al. 2021), in many cases, at an EC research and policy level, RRI appears to be narrowly conceived as a framework for appraising existing dominant technology-driven agrifood innovation paradigms through stakeholder participation, rather than exploring the possibilities for alternative agrifood innovation and knowledge pathways. For example, building on the case of biofuel innovation in India, de Hoop, Pols, and Romijn (2016) indicated the possibility of RI turning into a tool of greenwashing irresponsible innovations, with an ultimate aim to preserve particular companies’ reputation. Regan’s study (2021) on digital agriculture research in Ireland extends this argument by specifically focusing on scientists’ narrow understandings and instrumental use of processes of stakeholder participation for the purposes of justifying pre-determined innovation pathways.

Discourses on stakeholder knowledge deficit are particularly prevalent in existing academic agrifood research articles and projects with references to RRI. For example, in their research article, Bruce and Bruce (2019) highlight the usefulness of RRI as a framework for overcoming public misunderstandings of applications of genome editing in agriculture and food. The EC CropBooster-P project is a KBBE project that associates RRI with the adoption of a multi-actor approach through which plant science innovations can have the society’s support at addressing food insecurity by improving crop productivity (see CropBooster-P 2022). As also stated in their project description:

a doubling of global crop productivity is required to produce enough plant biomass to achieve food and nutrition security, as well as to meet the demands of a future bioeconomy … following a responsible research and innovation (RRI) approach, stakeholders representing all actors of the food system will be involved both in designing the blueprints for the future crops, as well as in the developing of the roadmap to successfully introduce the new crops to the users, and to educate the consumers to new paradigms of sustainable agriculture, based on future proofed crops and more efficient resource use (CropBooster-P 2022)

Therefore, following Blok and Lemmens (2015), the project portrayed a pre-determined framing and ‘solution’ to the problem, with RRI serving the role of educating users about the need of this particular solution.

From the above examples, it becomes evident that a narrow, instrumental conceptualisation of RRI within the KBBE prevails. Therefore, further work needs to be undertaken in order to move towards more responsible KBBE configurations, which can be more reflexive, inclusive and responsive to a diverse spectrum of stakeholders, their knowledges and voices for future agrifood innovation. This paper aims to contribute to such thinking, by specifically focusing on the potential of AAFNs to configure a more responsible KBBE. In their work, Levidow, Birch and colleagues (2012a; 2012b) have underlined the existence of contending agrifood KBBE visions, paying particular attention to the innovation potential of agro-ecology, and outlining a series of characteristics that differentiate as well as relate agro-ecology to the life sciences KBBE vision (see following section). This paper would like to extend the argument of those studies. Building on the broader AAFN literature, it employs alternative agro-food networks as the conceptual and empirical lens for configuring KBBEs in more responsible ways, based on the inclusion of a more diverse spectrum of knowledges, and their more reflexive engagement with science and technology.

Alternative agro-food networks: moving towards a more responsible KBBE?

‘Alternative Agro-Food Networks’ is a concept widely used in academic studies to describe networks of initiatives and actors – producers, retailers and consumers – that, by focusing on food, attempt to embody alternatives to what they describe as ‘conventional’ agro-food systems (Renting, Marsden, and Banks 2003). Within academic thinking, studies on ‘short food supply chains’ (Ilbery and Maye 2005), ‘local food networks/systems’ (Morris and Buller 2003), ‘alternative agro-food movements’ (Hassanein 2003) indicate the diversity of conceptual perspectives attempting to unpack the ‘alternative’ character of such initiatives, in which knowledge also has a prominent place. For example, in her work, Tregear (2011) identified ‘governance or network theories’ as a key theoretical/methodological strand of AAFN literature⁴ which points to the centrality of scientific and other knowledges as a lens for understanding the alternative character of the AAFNs in relation to the conventional agrifood system. Building on this work, this paper particularly focuses on the theoretical/methodological strand within AAFN literature focusing on knowledge, in order to shed light on the complex and more reflexive knowledge production and knowledge inclusion processes that can help us explore the potential of AAFNs to constitute an alternative, more responsible KBBE.

Within this particular strand of AAFN literature focusing on knowledge, the CORASON project signified an important body of academic work underlying the significance of those other, usually marginalised or lost knowledges, diversely described as tacit, local, traditional, lay or situated, that become resurrected within alternative modes of production, distribution and consumption (Fonte and Papadopoulos 2010). Building on traditional concepualisations of the ‘art de la localité’ and ‘savoir-faire paysan’ (Mendras 1970; Van der Ploeg 1993), this work has encouraged a conceptualisation of the AAFN knowledge system as alternative to the knowledge expropriating processes of the agro-industrial food system: a system that aims to tacitly situate agrifood knowledge in its local, natural and cultural environments, and the constant everyday experiences and interactions between people, land, food and soil. However, this work has also helped understand the complex knowledge dynamics between explicit and tacit knowledges, as well as local and science-based experts: the possibilities for co-production but also of co-optation opened up around alternatives (Fonte 2008; Tovey 2008).

Such understandings have also been important in Fonte’s study of organic agriculture (2008), which, while configuring organic agriculture as an alternative agrifood knowledge system, it has acknowledged the co-existence of different knowledges and experts within AAFNs, underlining the need for scientific knowledge to be better ‘integrated, adapted and mediated by those with expertise and trained in specific traditional and artisan modes of food production, and by those who know the “place”’ (Fonte 2008, 213). Moving beyond the production site, Kelemen et al.’s work (2008) encourages us to consider the more diverse knowledges, scientific, local as well as managerial that are part of the AAFNs’ knowledge production processes, but also, following existing agrifood and innovation studies work on learning (Birch 2016; Morgan and Murdoch 2000; OECD 1996), to consider the significance of both formal and informal learning as well as complex communicative interactive processes and sharing through which knowledge is acquired and produced. Therefore, such studies have been important for understanding established agrifood knowledge hierarchies, as well as the more complex knowledge dynamics and diversity of knowledge practices within AAFNs. They have therefore encouraged to think of the possibilities of enacting agrifood innovation in more responsible and inclusive ways, however, without explicitly suggesting that or discussing their relevance to the KBBE.

Levidow, Birch and colleagues (2012a; 2012b) have provided one of the first studies that links agro-ecology to ideas of the KBBE. In their analyses, they identified knowledge as one of the key characteristics that define as well as differentiate agro-ecology’s vision for the KBBE. Based on analysis of policy-relevant secondary resources as well as interviews with policy actors, they underlined the significance of farmers’ collective experiential knowledge (of biological resources, ecological processes and product quality) in supporting an eco-functional intensification model of agrifood innovation. This paper would like to extend Levidow et al.’s work by moving beyond the example of agro-ecology and a macro level of analysis that has focused primarily on debates and discourses taking place at a policy and policy advocacy level. It would therefore like to contribute to this literature by focusing on the knowledge practices and the discursive narratives taking place on-the-ground, and conducting fieldwork with a wider spectrum of on-the-ground agrifood practitioners, such as farmers and citizens, involved in a diversity of alternative agrifood practices of production as well as distribution and consumption.

Researching alternative agro-food networks: enacting more responsible knowledge bio-economies

Methods

My research methodology is driven by the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of my work. Critical Science Studies have long insisted upon the incompleteness of our knowledge about the world. Haraway’s ‘god trick’⁵ has been challenging ideas of objectivity of scientific knowledge, pointing to the plurality, partiality and situatedness of our knowledge, but also the performative potential of our knowledges to enact and shape realities (Haraway 1991; Law 2004). Such ideas have not only shaped my research enquiry into the plurality of knowledge practices and processes of knowledge inclusion in the alternative agro-food sector; they have also directed my research towards a qualitative methodological path that would help reveal the complexity, or as Law (2004) calls it the ‘messiness’ of the phenomenon to be unravelled.

For the purposes of my research, I focused on two particular case studies of alternative agro-food networks in the Northwest of England, a rural and an urban, in order to cover a diversity of initiatives, allowing comparisons between the two as well as between ‘the general’ and ‘the specific’ (Swanborn 2010). I conducted 11 semi-structured interviews with representatives of the initiatives outlined in Table 1, which helped me elicit bottom-up agrifood practitioners’ voices and standpoints (Haraway 1991) about scientific and other knowledges and their role in configuring agrifood innovation trajectories. Most of these interviews took the form of walking interviews, in order to help me develop a more situated, embedded and sensory experience of agrifood knowledge practices (Heyl 2001).

Table 1. List of AAFN initiatives under investigation.

AAFN initiatives in Cumbria	AAFN initiatives in Manchester
An informal network of farmers, growers, processors and retailers, aiming to improve communication, self-help support and technical advice within the Cumbrian organic sector	A citizen-led grassroots initiative, supporting several community food-growing projects across the city
A local farmers’ network, raising the profile of Cumbrian farming and helping farmers regain control over the food chains	A local allotments association, proving support to citizens interested in food growing and horticulture
An organic farmers’ co-operative in Cumbria doing direct sales through collective marketing, facilitating a mutual support network among local producers and closer links with consumers	A mobile greengrocer charitable organisation, providing affordable, fresh produce to areas of Manchester with low levels of social and physical mobility or access to fresh food
A care and social enterprise, engaging mental health service users to growing organic produce sold to local businesses and farm shops	A small organic urban garden, providing fresh, local produce to local small-scale businesses and food co-operatives
A local vegetable box-scheme and farm shop, delivering local and organic produce of theirs and other local organic farmers to local consumers digitally
An organic watermill, running a millshop, a tearoom and a gallery, while working as a supplier to other local businesses

The network

The paper focuses on a diversity of AAFN initiatives that constitute part of a wider alternative agro-food network taking place in the Northwest of England. Considering the more complex systemic character of the agro-food sector, the Northwest of England has been selected as a geography that would help identify as well as focus on a sample of initiatives, both rural and urban, involved in alternative production, distribution and consumption practices in Cumbria and Manchester. My physical proximity to these two locations would also enable a more uninterrupted and embodied interaction between me as the researcher and the initiatives to be researched (Swanborn 2010).

Historically, agriculture has played a secondary role in the region’s economic development that was significantly shaped around processes of industrialisation and the most recent ‘creative industries’. However, the 2001 foot-and-mouth epidemic in Cumbria signalled a shift towards more sustainable methods of production and the development of local farmer self-help support networks (Levidow and Psarikidou 2011). In Manchester, growing socio-economic and health inequalities have configured food as a means for addressing deprivation (Psarikidou and Szerszynski 2012), also manifested in increasing levels of household food insecurity, unequal access to food, unhealthy food diets (Food Futures 2007).

For the purposes of this investigation, I have focused on a selection of examples that is also representative of the diversity of initiatives of production, distribution and consumption that aim to address these multiple challenges appearing in rural and urban Northwest of England. As also indicated in Table 1, in Cumbria, AAFN initiatives under investigation have all constituted part of an interconnected network of organisations, predominantly farmer- and retailer-led, that were interested in alternative forms of production and provision. These included formal and informal farmers networks and co-operatives, social enterprises, farm shops and box schemes supporting local and organic products and farming practices. In Manchester, AAFN initiatives included citizen-led initiatives, co-operatives and urban gardens, charitable and non-profit organisations which were coming together in using or supporting methods of producing, distributing as well as accessing food differently.

Alternative agrifood production: science and beyond

Most alternative agro-food initiatives under investigation have been configuring themselves as ‘alternative’ (member of urban food-growing network) in relation to the science involved in both conventional and alternative agro-food practices. This has been particularly prevalent in the discursive narratives and practices of initiatives involved in alternative farming practices, whose alternative character has been substantially constructed around their understandings of science in agriculture and food. When looking deeper into these narratives, a binary approach to science is evident, in many ways reminiscent of Latour’s worlds of ‘ready-made science’ and ‘science-in-the-making’ (Latour 1993). As I shall attempt to show below, however, this particular hybrid approach has a markedly different character from that seen in more dominant forms of scientific practice. For rather than functioning as an unreconciled and largely unrecognised binary, as is typically found in dominant knowledge practices (Latour 1993), I argue that the hybrid character of the AAFNs I analysed actually point to their more reflexive perceptions of and relations with science.

Thus, on the one hand, representatives of the two AAFN initiatives described their practices as a reaction to the narrow solutionist approaches to science and innovation within the agro-industrial model (see Birch, Levidow, and Papaioannou 2010). As one of the interviewees described:

After the industrial revolution, we created these problems; technology is like a genie in the box … Think how much people have lost, they so much rely on technology. The solution is always a technological solution …  (Representative of Manchester Allotment Organisation)

However, phrases such as ‘sound science’ (Organic network co-ordinator), ‘best science’ (Member of care and social enterprise), and ‘good science’ (Representative of urban garden) also manifest these initiatives’ more reflexive engagement with and plural relationship to science. The examples of organic agriculture and permaculture have been central in approaching alternative farming practices as plural knowledge practices, based on the combination of scientific and other knowledges, and an acknowledgement of their embeddedness in complex socio-natural environments. In many cases, farmers involved in organic agriculture have been reflectively describing it as ‘more scientific’ than conventional agriculture. As one of our farmers explained:

organic farmers have a better understanding of grass land management certainly, they apply certain scientific techniques to make grass grow … Organic farmers … come from a more scientific standpoint than normal farmers do. (Representative of local farmers’ network)

Such claims are also important for understanding the plural and inclusive character of these agricultural practices, in which organic farmers are also configured as experts whose knowledge is important in both informing and configuring science for agrifood innovation. In this context, organic farming is portrayed as a hybrid knowledge system, in which agrifood practitioners are reflexively aware of the complex processes of codification and standardisation through which their tacit knowledges become part of a new science-based system in which ‘boundaries between people’s science and scientists’ science’ are impossible to draw’ (Nygren 1999, 282). This has also been made clear by the owners of an organic box-scheme in Cumbria when reflecting on the ‘common sense’ ground of the science for organics:

You must be a good scientist to understand the systems. If you don’t, it’s very difficult to manage an organic farm … The standards are there to ensure we do things right … I don’t have an issue with farming to those standards. The science behind those standards seems to be common sense (Owner of organic box-scheme)

Such statements are also pivotal in understanding the complex knowledge production processes within alternative agro-food systems, and the more reflexive ways in which AAFN practitioners come to understand and acknowledge the complexity that is embedded within their knowledge systems and practices. In this context, organic farming is understood as a hybrid knowledge system based on a plurality of knowledges, both tacit and explicit, contributing to the resurrection of local, context-dependent knowledges while building on the expertise of both local and science-based experts. Phrases such as ‘work with nature’ (Member of grassroots citizens’ initiative) and a better ‘understanding of the soil’ (Representative of an urban farm) re-affirm the more complex embeddedness of organic science into farmers’ plural situated and embodied knowledges (Haraway 1991), acquired through farmers’ everyday engagement with land and soil.

Such experiential understandings also emerged in discussions with representatives of permaculture growing projects (Member of grassroots citizen initiative), in which food growing has been approached as a knowing process based on personal interactions, observations and experimentations with land and nature. In this context, as described by the Permaculture Association, permaculture is configured as a more plural and inclusive agrifood innovative ‘solution’ that is embedded in people’s knowledges and nature’s patterns.:

permaculture is about creating sustainable human habitats by following nature's patterns. It uses the diversity, stability and resilience of natural ecosystems to provide a framework and guidance for people to develop their own sustainable solutions to the problems facing their world, on a local, national or global scale (Permaculture Association Website, 2014).

A personal visit of a garden in Manchester helped me understand what one of the research participants described as a more inclusive ‘alternative science model’ (Member of urban food-growing network), significantly built on the skills of local citizens. However, such descriptions have also been manifesting those AAFN practitioners’ more reflexive understanding of science, in which food growing was understood as a new on-going learning-by-doing process, based on their regular embodied engagement with urban natural environments, land, and soil.

From their descriptions, it also became evident that community food growing also involved a lot of re-skilling and upskilling acquired through a more intimate connection with each other. People described their food-growing practices as a collective process of knowledge sharing, not only among members of the initiative, but also between younger and older generations. In this context, within the alterative agrifood paradigm, a plurality of knowledges and inclusion of actors prevails, underlining the significance of not only both tacit and explicit, but also of both old and new, traditional and more modern knowledge practices and the way they come together at configuring the innovation potential of such practices, while reinforcing processes of both re-skilling and upskilling within the agrifood sector (Giddens 1990). As one of the interviewees described:

 … it seems ridiculous to me that I am running workshops about food growing when I have only been doing it 3 years. It’s like the blind leading the blind almost, whereas you have this whole load of people that have been doing it for years and got a lot of knowledge but there is no kind of forum for them to be able to teach people about it …  (Member of grassroots citizens’ initiative)

As revealed from this quote, agrifood knowledge is also acquired through processes of informal learning – in the form of more haptic experiential ways of learning – but also formal learning, both individual and collective – in the form of participating in workshops or reading handbooks. This also manifests the complex connections between tacit and explicit forms of knowledge, and the ways AAFN practitioners are more reflexively aware of the complex ways in which farming knowledge becomes codified, communicated and shared between individuals.

Such processes are important for understanding the science embedded in these initiatives’ practices, as well as the AAFN practitioners’ more reflexive understanding of their agrifood knowledge practices as ‘science-in-the-making’ (Latour 1993) based on more inclusive processes of participation in the production of innovation (Macnaghten et al. 2014). AAFN farming knowledge practices are configured as a ‘learning system’ that, as Sillitoe describes (1998), are not contrasted with science, but constitutes a continuum between scientific and everyday rationality, acquired through also more complex socio-natural relations (Antweiler 2004). It is a knowledge system that aims to embed agrifood innovation in more inclusive processes and plural relationships between knowing and learning, scientific and lay knowledges, people and nature.

Knowledge and knowing in alternative distribution and consumption practices

Alternative agrifood distribution and consumption practices are also crucial for understanding as well as configuring agrifood innovation in more responsible, reflexive and inclusive ways, in terms of both knowledges and actors. Cumbria’s hilly topography has been bringing farmers together in forming their own formal or informal networks of support and collaboration, which have also been crucial for further enhancing processes of learning and knowledge sharing for agrifood innovation. Expressions such as ‘break[ing] down the isolation’ (Representative of local farmers’ network) and ‘improv[ing] communication’ (Member of organic farmers’ network) provide clues to the centrality of those other knowledges practiced by local farming communities, including communicative, collaborative, as well as managerial skills – also for facilitating more collective processes of knowing about their own agricultural practices. The example of an organic farmers cooperative in Cumbria is illustrative of such more collective ways of knowing developed around informal processes of collaboration and sharing. As said:

It takes time to get to know people and build up relationships … . It is important to work together. The other day I wouldn’t have got my hay made without being able to ask fellow co-op members to advise and help me (Member of a Cumbrian organic farmers’ co-operative).

Initiatives of co-operatives and box schemes have also been important in appreciating the diverse spectrum of knowledges and expertise involved in alternative agrifood processes. Going back to Davis and Hinshaw’s work (1957), farmers increasingly appeared ‘in business suits’. They were increasingly reflexively aware of the more diverse spectrum of managerial, logistical, marketing and bureaucratic skills they had to be equipped with, but also of the more complex processes of both formal and informal, experiential or peer-to-peer learning through which these could be acquired.

The example of online platforms has also been indicative of this direction. As interviewees described, online channels of communication have been important in not only enhancing the collaborative and networking links between local agrifood practitioners, but also for connecting more directly and broadly with consumers. In this context, not only agrifood practitioners’ but also consumers’ digital skills have been important in supporting this alternative agrifood relocalisation system by creating new markets for those farmers while reconnecting local farmers, retailers and consumers. Here, it is also interesting to note that AAFN practitioners have been reflexively aware and appreciative of the role that supermarket ICT-based marketing and retailing systems could play in up-skilling the consumers in ways that would also open up new possibilities for ICT-based innovative practices within alternative agro-food networks. As explained by the representative of a local organic farm and box scheme:

In some ways Tesco’s home delivery has benefited us in that it has introduced a new way of shopping to people … We have spent ages marketing ourselves as a box scheme and marketing is expensive.. (Owner of an organic box-scheme).

Therefore, the alternative agrifood system is reflexively configured as a hybrid knowledge system, based on both farm and off-farm knowledge practices, including ICT skills, embracing a broader spectrum of technological innovations and scientific knowledges, sometimes also broadly adopted by the conventional food sector. Such configurations help situate agrifood innovation of the alternative agro-food economy within a broader spectrum of technological innovations, and understand those organisations’ more complex, plural and reflexive relationship with and (re)appropriation of science and technology.

However, such configurations are also important for appreciating the significance of knowledge inclusion for the production of agrifood innovation within the alternative agro-food economy. As revealed from the above example of the digital food platforms, not only farmers’ and retailers’, but also consumers’ knowledges and skills supported the configuration and empowerment of an alternative agrifood knowledge economy. In this context, digital platforms have also been opening new possibilities for re-skilling local people around food (Giddens 1990), by making them aware of a diversity of seminars, educational courses, public awareness campaigns, farm walks and visits they could participate (Representative of care and social enterprise; Owner of mill). As explained by one of our interviewees:

 … people don’t know how to cook, they don’t know how to grow food, harvest it store it or anything …  … so it’s trying to affect the population, sort of de-culture them as well …  (Representative of urban food-growing network)

Market spaces for alternatives have been (re)skilling consumers by reconnecting them with farmers, retailers as well as each other. In the case of the workers’ cooperatives and mobile grocers, the market was transformed into a space for informal learning, enabling consumers to exchange knowledge and ideas about different foods, where they come from, what they taste like and how to cook. Similarly, as observed during my visit in the community garden, while growing food, people have been sharing knowledge about growing their veg as well as cooking with them. Such observations help understand alternative agrifood spaces as spaces of collective knowing and learning, involving a diverse spectrum of knowing agents. In doing so, they are also key for broadening the scope of ‘experts’ to include a more diverse spectrum of actors, including consumers, whose knowledge and skills are also important for understanding as well as producing new knowledge and innovation within the alternative agrifood economy.

It is therefore evident that alternative agrifood distribution and consumption practices are also important for configuring the knowledge bio-economy in more responsible, inclusive and reflexive ways. Firstly, by considering the broader spectrum of knowledges as well as processes and agents of knowing involved in the production of agrifood knowledge. Second, by realising the more reflexive ways in which AAFN practitioners come to acknowledge their more complex relationship with science and technology as well as with the conventional agrifood food system, their knowledge practices and strategies.

The above analysis revealed that, similarly to the dominant KBBE, managerial, communicative and collaborative skills are also facilitating processes of knowledge production within AAFNs. It revealed the centrality of ICT and other technological knowledges in the configuration of the AAFNs’ ‘innovative’ character, and therefore their more plural but also more reflexive relationship with science and technology. It affirmed the greater diversity of experts from farm to fork, who need to be included in shaping as well as supporting innovation within the alternative agrifood sector. But, also it pointed to the more reflexive relationships that those experts can develop with science and technology: acknowledging the more collective and on-going character of agrifood knowledge-making, but also underlining the significance of both explicit and tacit forms of knowledge, formal and informal processes of learning and knowledge sharing through which science for agrifood innovation is produced. Such understandings are important for considering the more plural, inclusive and reflexive character of agrifood innovation within the alternative agro-food sector, and therefore, for configuring agrifood knowledge economies in more responsible ways, based on an appreciation of the plurality of knowledges and diversity of experts and the complex relations within them.

Conclusions: AAFNs: moving towards an alternative, more responsible agrifood KBBE?

In this paper, I observed that, within the KBBE innovation and policy narrative, a narrow techno-scientific approach to innovation is prioritised, allowing little space for configuring as well as enacting responsible innovation trajectories based on a greater diversity of actors, their knowledges and voices. Following existing work in this field (see Levidow, Birch, and Papaioannou 2012a; Birch, Levidow, and Papaioannou 2010), I argued that this also becomes particularly evident within the agrifood sector, in which, a techno-scientific approach to addressing complex agri-environmental challenges prevails, marginalising certain communities of practice and their knowledges from future agrifood innovation. Building on scholarly conceptualisations of RRI and emerging critiques (Stilgoe, Ower, and Macnaghten 2013; Owen, Macnaghten, and Stilgoe 2012; de Hoop , Pols, and Romijn 2016; Blok and Lemmens 2015; Regan 2021), I argued for the limitations of the dominant agrifood KBBE narrative to enact more responsible agrifood research and innovation trajectories based on the principles of reflexivity, inclusion and responsiveness.

Building on all above, this article specifically focused on exploring the possibility of configuring as well as enacting more responsible agrifood KBBEs based on the RRI principles of reflexivity, knowledge inclusion and responsiveness (see Stilgoe, Ower, and Macnaghten 2013; Ludwig and Macnaghten 2020). Taking AAFNs as its conceptual and empirical point of departure (e.g. Fonte 2008; Kelemen, Megyesi, and Kalamasz 2008 etc.), it unpacked the diverse agents, practices and processes of agrifood knowing that are included from farm to fork, and it unravelled the more reflexive ways in which the AAFN knowing agents come to understand and appreciate the complexity of agrifood knowledge-making processes and their relationship to science and technology. It therefore argued for the potential of AAFNs to constitute an alternative, more responsible KBBE that can be more inclusive and reflexive of the broader spectrum of knowledges and agents of knowing that are involved in agrifood knowing processes. By doing so, it also opens up the possibility of transforming existing dominant agrifood KBBEs in more reflexive and inclusive ways, beyond existing knowledge hierarchies as well as possible instrumental uses of RRI within dominant agrifood innovation processes.

The analysis suggests the possibility of transforming agrifood knowledge bio-economies in more responsible ways that, by endorsing the RRI principles of inclusion, reflexivity and responsiveness (Stilgoe, Ower, and Macnaghten 2013), can be based on the knowledge and needs of a broader spectrum of actors from farm to fork and their more reflexive relationship with science and technology. From our findings, we learn that AAFNs extend the idea of ‘agrifood experts’ within KBBEs, to include both scientists and farmers, retailers and consumers, old and young people, whose diverse standpoints and knowledges, tacit and explicit, old and new, traditional and modern, situated and local, become equally important for informing as well as configuring agrifood innovation in more plural and inclusive ways. We learn that AAFNs provide space for a more reflexive configuration of existing agrifood KBBE as a hybrid knowledge system, in which agrifood knowing agents can be reflexively aware of the complex interactions and co-production processes between different knowledges and their complex relationship with science and technology. Therefore, AAFNs encourage moving beyond established agrifood knowledge hierarchies within dominant KBBEs, but also appreciating the broader spectrum of off-farm knowledges and skills, such as managerial, communicative as well as ICT skills, and their centrality in configuring agrifood innovation in more inclusive ways. They thus encourage approaching agrifood innovation within KBBE more openly and reflexively, by embedding it in a more complex continuum between scientific and everyday rationality and the more complex socio-material entanglements between people, nature, food and technologies.

It is in this context that understanding AAFNs as a more responsible KBBE can also contribute to strengthening RRI itself by re-embedding it in the principles of inclusion, reflexivity and responsiveness (Stilgoe, Ower, and Macnaghten 2013). As suggested above, current RRI scholarship points to the sometimes narrow and instrumental use of RRI for the justification of pre-determined agrifood innovation pathways and the perpetuation of narrow science- or technology-driven orientations of innovation within RRI (Blok and Lemmens 2015; Regan 2021; de Hoop , Pols, and Romijn 2016). By pointing to the broader spectrum of knowledges and knowing agents within the AAFN KBBE, this study contributes to reconceptualising innovation within RRI in more inclusive ways and appreciate the broader spectrum of innovations and innovators and their more complex relationship with science and technology (see Wakunuma et al. 2021; Blok and Lemmens 2015). By pointing to the diversity of agrifood experts and their reflexive engagement with science and technology, it also contributes to reconceptualising RRI in more reflexive ways that can question potential narrow or instrumental uses of stakeholders and their participation, and therefore of RRI itself as a tool for justifying pre-determined innovation pathways (see Regan 2021). In doing so, following Regan (2021), it can also help rethink the role of RRI as a framework that can encourage a reflexive questioning of not only what is considered as innovation, but also whether innovation is an option.

From this study of AAFNs, we learn that there can be an alternative, more responsible knowledge-based bio-economy, which can be inclusive of a greater diversity of actors and knowledges and a more reflexive engagement with science and technology. AAFNs suggest the possibility of configuring agrifood innovation in more responsible ways, which, following the RRI principles of reflexivity, inclusion and responsiveness, can help move beyond established knowledge hierarchies that prioritise narrow techno-scientific understandings of innovation within current research and innovation agendas for agrifood sustainability. In doing so, they also suggest a re-embedding of RRI in the principles of reflexivity, inclusion and responsiveness, beyond narrow and instrumental uses of RRI for the justification of dominant technology-driven innovation pathways. They therefore provide a framework for understanding as well as enacting future agrifood KBBEs in more inclusive, responsive and reflexive ways: by taking into consideration the knowledges of a broader spectrum of experts, especially those marginalised ones, whose voices, standpoints and more reflexive relationships with science and technology are pivotal for moving towards more responsible agrifood innovation trajectories for all.

Empowering AAFNs is an important but not an easy task. Enabling more equitable distribution of research funding between different agrifood innovation trajectories is an important step towards that. Transforming current dominant KBBEs in more responsible ways in line with the RRI principles of reflexivity, inclusion and responsiveness can be key towards this direction. And, for this to be possible, it is important to ensure that RRI is (re)conceptualised in line with those RRI principles, but also included in the formulation of future research and innovation trajectories (see Fisher 2020). AAFNs help realise that an alternative, more responsible KBBE is possible and also important for not only challenging the role of techno-science through the investigation of the more complex knowledge production processes for innovation, not only challenging which knowledges are important in the production of innovation, but also challenging who can be the knowing agents and how to engage with science and technology more reflexively, in order to contribute to the democratisation of future research and innovation processes in the pursuit of sustainability.

Acknowledgements

This paper is dedicated to the memory of Professor Larry Busch from Michigan State University. The author would also like to thank Dr Helen Wallace from GeneWatch UK, as well as Professors Bron Szerszynski, Brian Wynne and Claire Waterton, Dr Les Levidow and Dr Allison Loconto for their support and very valuable feedback at different stages of her research. She would also like to thank the journal editor and the two anonymous referees for their very helpful and constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by EC FP7: [grant number 217280].

Notes on contributors

Katerina Psarikidou

Katerina Psarikidou is Lecturer in Sustainable Development at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex. She is co-director of SPRU’s ‘Science, Politics and Decision Making’ research group, and Executive Committee member of the UK’s Association for Studies in Innovation, Science and Technology (AsSIST-UK). She has worked as researcher and investigator for a series of interdisciplinary and co-operative EC FP6 and FP7, UKRI GFS, HEFCE and EPSRC research programmes. Her research revolves around the sustainability and innovation potential of alternative agro-food and mobility systems and practices, and is published at a series of international journals (e.g. Ephemera, Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, Applied Mobilities) and books (e.g. Palgrave MacMillan; Bergahn, Routledge).

Notes

1 This idea of an economy as ‘a space of cohabitation and contestation between different economic forms’ (p. xi) builds on the work of the economic geographers (Gibson-Graham 2006). In this context, contestation refers to the relations of antagonism between different types of economies that co-exist within the economic landscape.

2 Science and Technology Studies (STS) have long argued that knowledge hierarchies exist between scientific and other knowledges. They have challenged the dominance of ’modern science’ as the ‘objective’, ‘universal’ form of knowledge (Haraway 1991) and evidenced the existence of a greater diversity of knowledge traditions and knowledges that are embodied and materialised by both human and nonhuman actors (Turnbull 1997; Jasanoff 2004)

3 Such understandings draw on academic thinking underlining the centrality of knowledge in the configuration of post-industrial societies, such as this of Daniel Bell and Manuel Castell. More specifically, as Peter Drucker also put it in his Post-Capitalist Society (1993) “the basic economic resource –‘the means of production’, to use an economist term – is no longer capital, nor natural resources (the economist’s ‘land’), nor ‘labor’. It is and will be knowledge” (ibid:8).

4 Tregear (2011) has also identified two other strands of AAFN work, which fall outside the remits of this paper. These include: (a) ‘the political economy’ conceptualising AAFNs’ struggles against global capitalism; and (b) the ‘rural sociology or development’ perspective, focusing on beliefs, values, motivations as well as notions of trust embeddedness and quality within AAFNs.

5 In her 1991 essay, Donna Haraway (1991) introduces the idea of the ‘god trick’, that is the idea that scientists can view and therefore know about the world from nowhere. By introducing the ‘god trick’, Haraway aims to therefore challenge such ideas of disembodied ways of knowing and therefore claims of objectivity ascribed to scientists and scientific knowledge.