Schedule 9th International Degrowth Conference

Agroecology, as a 'science, practice and movement', and especially as a pillar of the food sovereignty movement, has been gaining attention globally as well as in Turkey. However, despite several local initiatives focusing on supporting agroecology, it is a novel term conceptualized differently by several stakeholders in Turkey. In this study, we aim to identify different narratives of agroecology mobilized by local governments and farmer cooperatives in two district municipalities in Turkey, namely, Seferihisar (Izmir) and Nilüfer (Bursa), by conducting in-depth interviews and surveys with representatives from these local governments, farmers cooperatives, as well as civil society organizations like Farmers Union (Çiftçi-Sen) and academics working on agroecology. These two local governments were chosen on the basis that they support ecological production and farmer cooperatives in their districts while putting differing degrees of emphasis on agroecology in their discourses: While Nilüfer municipality is explicitly using agroecology and food sovereignty concepts as part of a transformative imaginary, Seferihisar municipality relies mostly on narratives such as farmers’ livelihoods, and export opportunities. We would like to test this observation and identify any other emerging narratives by constructing several key statements based on the academic and grey literature and in-depth interviews. Constructed statements will be rated by key stakeholders in a face-to-face survey, where they will rate each statement on a 5-point Likert scale. We will then analyze these results using Principal Component Analysis to understand which narratives emerge and which statements fall specifically under which narratives. The results will enable us to explore the potential for linking agroecology movement with local governments in Turkey as well with broader social movements like degrowth.

Info

Day: 2023-09-01
Start time: 12:30
Duration: 00:15
Room: ZV-8-5
Type: Paper Presentation
Theme: Resilience building through degrowth

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