AGROECOLOGY: Fertilizing Rural-Urban Grids through Agroecology Living Labs to enhance sustainable food system transitions (FRUGALL)

Basic data for this project

Description

The FRUGALL project aims to address interrelated food system challenges by fostering regional agroecological transitions through strengthened rural-urban exchange relations. It promotes trust, transparency, and co-created innovations to support regional food commons and stakeholder needs. The project focuses on six key objectives: (i) mapping regional food systems;(ii) preparing, co-designing and establishing Agroecological Living Labs (ALLs), (iii) piloting agroecological innovations, (iv) assessing policy barriers and (v) sustainability impacts, and (vi) enhancing stakeholder engagement through communication and dissemination. FRUGALL adopts a regional approach, recognizing that agricultural production, supply chains, and policy frameworks intersect crucially at this level. The project responds to critical challenges such as policy lock-ins favoring industrial agriculture, economic disparities for smallholders, climate vulnerabilities, and market access barriers. It employs the notion of rural-urban grids to strengthen local food economies and applies the dynamic socio-ecological systems framework (SES) to analyze transition conditions. Methodologically, FRUGALL integrates GIS-based food system mapping, participatory Living Labs, policy analysis, sustainability assessments, and co-creative outreach strategies. Its ambition is to transform regional food value chains by prioritizing short supply chains, fair pricing, and resilient local economies over globalized food networks. At its very core, FRUGALL’s Agroecological Living Labs function as innovation hubs that accelerate and expand agroecological principles and practices in our study regions by engaging farmers, consumers, policymakers, and businesses to co-create cooperative innovations, build trust, and enhance citizen participation in food system transformation. By emphasizing transnational collaboration, FRUGALL offers added value through multi-stakeholder cooperation, sustainability assessment metrics, and comparative regional analyses, while fostering innovative business models, decentralized food logistics, and farmer-led solutions to drive agroecological transitions across Europe. FRUGALL will deliver substantial impact by translating co-created knowledge into actionable strategies that support agroecological transitions across diverse European regions. Through scientific publications, policy briefs, interactive tools, and capacity-building formats such as MOOCs and toolkits, the project ensures long-term usability and knowledge transfer. Its Living Lab methodology embeds stakeholder co-creation throughout, strengthening democratic innovation processes and anchoring sustainability solutions in practice. By engaging with EU-level platforms, international networks, and local communities, FRUGALL fosters multi-level policy integration and enhances the uptake of project results in research, governance, and societal transformation.