EXPERIENCES

The Entretantos Foundation, together with teaching staff from the Business School of the University of the Basque Country, has carried out the first phase of a research project on 'Communication for a leap of scale from Agroecology. Part of the field work has been carried out in member cities of the Cities for Agroecology Network.

The objective of this work has been to analyze communication strategies, especially those that seek to promote leaps of scale in agroecology, and to propose new narratives and specific tools that generate a communication culture and social impact, strengthening the production sector". In the project we have focused on external communication, which is carried out with customers, suppliers, prescribers, distributors, various associations and the population as a whole.

communication can make production and/or distribution projects visible and attractive, the first necessary condition for people to change their purchasing patterns. Secondly, it can activate and sustain an affective relationship of community and trust among the actors involved. These two factors could generate (together with other elements of project management such as adequate product management, price and distribution) a 'virtuous circle' within agroecology. On the one hand, it could increase the number of people who feed themselves through Alternative Agro-Food Systems, which would make the projects more economically viable and in turn have a knock-on effect for new facilities/transitions. This would therefore promote more projects and alternatives, generating greater capacity to reach more people.

In reference to the generation of new public policies and involving the administration, communication must make visible and disseminate the proposals and needs for an agro-ecological transition, as a tool for transformation of and from the institutions. In this way, the administration itself could disseminate local production and consumption alternatives, the values and principles of agroecology, and their implementation through local agri-food policies.

The full publication can be downloaded here: http://www.entretantos.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/EstrategiasComunicacionAgroecologia_r.pdf