About the LEARNing project

LEARNing is an interdisciplinary project based on interactive approaches and stakeholders' participation. It aims at building a research agenda for social sciences on R&D in European agriculture.
The main emphasis is to engage stakeholders in a new way of learning in order to tackle new issues like multifunctionality, food safety, rural development, environment.
LEARNing involves eight European countries (Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, United Kingdom) and Australia.

What is at stake?

•The role of agricultures in European countries
•The problems agriculture has to deal with
•The changes in public policies
•The diversity of agricultural models and histories
•The models of agricultural development
•The role of science and technology in building up these models
•The increase in participative approaches
•A dynamic knowledge based society

       Mirecourt INRA station (Christophe MAITRE-INRA) 

The multifunctionality of agriculture depends
on the quality of the relationships among stakeholders
and the organisation of R&D. The need to change
these relationships leads us to propose new modes
of collaborative, adaptative management
among farmers, scientists, consumers
and of the stakeholders in the rural world.

What is needed to improve the relationships among stakeholders?

•New skills
•Methods and tools for participative approaches
•Organisational change
•Expand stakeholders' capacity-building and learning

The aims of LEARNing

•Analyse learning situations and ground pragmatically the relationships among researchers and practitioners.
•Allow exchanges of information among researchers and various stakeholders involved in situations of change
•Expand stakeholder' participation in the development of a social sciences R&D agenda in European Agriculture.
•Revitalise reflection about R&D in agriculture within the framework of the European integration agenda.
•Involve social scientists more directly in the constitution of a "dynamic knowledge-based economy" with greater social cohesion.

Who are the LEARNing group?

•Researchers in our group aim to analyse the relationships between technology and society within the agricultural sector.
• They produce concepts, facilitation processes and tools that support participation mechanisms for collective action at different levels.
• Our aim is to allow new development strategies fostering better economic and social cohesion towards sustainable development.
• LEARNing group members began to share experiences in creating spaces for learning, capacity and action building in various agricultural contexts during the 1990s.
• Their research to date has been exciting as well as opening new challenges in terms of collaboration between agricultural sciences and social research.

LEARNing activities

•Start with a participative bottom-up and comparative procedure at national level.
•Allow stakeholders to participate in the building of a research agenda, firstly confronting the different stakeholders' points of view and secondly discussing their analysis in regard to researchers' views.
•Organise a European conference in summer 2004 to promote exchanges between R&D practitioners and policy makers and allow the emergence of a European agenda for the issues to be addressed by social scientists about R&D in agriculture.