Divergent Paradigms of European Agro-Food Innovation

TLDR

The Knowledge‑Based Bio‑Economy (KBBE) has become a key EU agricultural R&D agenda, framing competing visions that pair technoscientific paradigms with quality paradigms—life‑science approaches emphasizing converging technologies and decomposability, and agro‑ecological approaches stressing integral product integrity. The study argues that targeted research policies are essential to build a KBBE that advances societal progress. The KBBE serves as a master narrative that draws rival visions diagnosing unsustainable agriculture, leading stakeholder networks to compete for influence over research policies—particularly within FP7’s Food, Agriculture, Fisheries and Biotechnology programme aimed at promoting the KBBE. The FAFB programme, while favoring life‑science visions, has nonetheless incorporated agro‑ecological approaches, and both paradigms highlight the importance of collective information systems linking producers and users to justify public funding of distinct research priorities.

Abstract

The Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy (KBBE) has gained prominence as an agricultural R&D agenda of the European Union. Specific research policies are justified as necessary to create a KBBE for societal progress. Playing the role of a master narrative, the KBBE attracts rival visions; each favours a different diagnosis of unsustainable agriculture and its remedies in agro-food innovation. Each vision links a technoscientific paradigm with a quality paradigm: the dominant life sciences vision combines converging technologies with decomposability, while a marginal one combines agro-ecology with integral product integrity. From these divergent visions, rival stakeholder networks contend for influence over research policies and priorities, especially within the Framework Programme 7 (FP7) on Food, Agriculture, Fisheries and Biotechnology (FAFB), which has aimed to promote a Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy. Although the FAFB programme has favoured a life sciences vision, agro-ecological approaches have gained a presence, thus overcoming their general lock-out from agricultural research agendas. In their own way, each rival paradigm emphasises the need for collective systems to gather information for linking producers with users, as a rationale for the public sector to fund distinctive research priorities.