Agricultural Systems of the Future: GreenGrass – Innovative Use of Grasslands for a Sustainable Intensification of Farming at Landscape Level, Sub-Project K: Regional Innovation Systems, Living Labs and Reflexive Design
The transdisciplinary cooperation project “GreenGrass” aims to bring ruminants back to pasture. For this purpose, new ways of sustainable, efficient and contemporary pasture farming must be developed. The consortium therefore develops and tests new technologies for grazing systems that help to reduce the need for labour and at the same time improve the manifold ecosystem functions of grasslands.
Work package 5 of the GreenGrass project analyses the innovation systems and actor demands in animal husbandry systems with grazing. In order to optimize their economic, ecological and social resilience, three living labs with participatory stakeholder networks develop design requirements and governance options.
As a cooperation between the Humboldt University of Berlin and the Grassland Centre Northwest Germany, the work package ensures that the GreenGrass innovations are user-oriented, practical, and suited to the manifold demands of grazing systems in a multifunctional agricultural landscape. This is also supposed to enable faster diffusion of the GreenGrass innovations.
The work package adopts a living lab approach. It first analyses the innovation systems which are relevant for GreenGrass and systematically maps the needs of users and other actors, including the animals. Together with the actors, the various demands for the GreenGrass innovation are systematized, weighted and translated into design requirements. The formation and maintenance of participatory actor networks aims to enable the trust relationships and learning processes with and between the local actors that are necessary for innovations. On this basis, requirements and options for an enabling governance structure for the application of the Greengrass innovation at the landscape level are formulated. In parallel to their testing, the Greengrass innovations are refined and their contribution to promoting the economic, ecological and social resilience of animal husbandry systems with grazing are assessed and optimized.
Research questions:
1. What are the needs and perceived solutions of the actors in the regional innovation systems?
2. How can the solutions developed during the GreenGrass project contribute to enhance the trust relationships and learning processes between the actors?
3. How can the GreenGrass solutions be refined in order to improve the economic, ecological and social resilience of the animal husbandry systems with grazing from the perspective of the actors? Which governance structures are needed?
Financer
BMBF
Duration of project
Start date: 03/2019
End date: 08/2024
Research Areas
Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Policy, Agricultural Sociology
Research Areas
Agrar- und Ernährungspolitik
