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Organic Farming as Social Innovation

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Agriculture".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2022) | Viewed by 443

Special Issue Editors

Division of Organic Farming, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), 1180 Vienna, Austria
Interests: organic farming
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Department of Community Sustainability, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
Interests: policies, markets and societal discourses in organic farming
Research Center for Environmental policies, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Interests: transformation of agricultural and food systems; sustainable urban food systems; alternative agriculture; food movements; resilience; organic agriculture

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Because they focus on ethical values and direct consumer-farmer relationships, organic food systems are often seen as social innovations. Although the term social innovation is controversial, it can be seen as both an innovation at the farm level, as well as a societal change like a new form of food sovereignty that affects society. Social innovations are related to social, economic or technological developments in multiple ways.

Social innovations span a wide range of activities. They can occur in parts of organic food systems, or through the food system as a whole. More specifically, the organic approach might be a frontrunner in strengthening the role of women and in being sensitive to a range of social values. Other social innovations include, but are not limited to, grassroot movements driven by values of participatory decision making or shared economies and fair trade. In addition, locally based participatory guarantee systems, implemented to assure organic product authenticity strengthen farmers' empowerment, illustrate forms of social innovation, as do solidarity purchasing groups, seed or food networks. Social agriculture also includes several types of nature related farming, including that designed for older or disabled people, or those who simply want to be in nature are integrated on farms in multiple ways or food processing and preparation to feed local food coops, i.e., food networks, is further social innovation framework. Social innovation might also include nature based / i.e., edible city solutions.

Exploring the multiple interrelationships between the concept of social innovation and organic farming can suggest insights into the social role of organic farming and its potential contribution to the transformation toward a more sustainable food system. The concept of social innovation can also help us to better understand the meaning of social innovation in agri-food systems and also can help us to refine and improve the concept of innovations more broadly, including that of the spread and up scaling of technical innovations.

Therefore, this special issue invites scholars to offer their theoretical and empirical contributions to better understand the social innovativeness of organic farming. In particular, we are looking for (i) contributions that present the state of the art and recent developments of social innovations in (organic) agriculture and food science, (ii) contributions to theoretical frameworks to better understand the social innovativeness of different forms of organic agriculture, (iii) and empirical case studies that showcase social impacts of organic agriculture.

Overall structure of the SI:

Block 1: Review papers

Block 2: Theories and reflection papers

Block 3: Empirical cases

Block 4: Synthesis

Prof. Dr. Bernhard Freyer
Prof. Dr. Jim Bingen
Dr. Valentin Fiala
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • social innovation
  • societal discourse in organic farming
  • sustainable food system
  • alternative agriculture
  • food movements

Published Papers

There is no accepted submissions to this special issue at this moment.
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