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The chapter evaluates how the TATA-BOX process supported the collective design of an agroecological transition. In order to carry out this evaluation, we interviewed a panel of 24 participants about their experience of the process and their opinions on it. In this chapter we set out the results in relation to three questions: How did the workshops go? What characterised the outputs? What effects were identified? On these bases, we discuss some possible improvements in the TATA-BOX process and the ways in which this process supported the design of an agroecological transition. We show in particular that the TATA-BOX process successfully initiated a collective design process as it allowed the participants to establish a common ground, define a range of goals to meet, and identify actionable means that could help to reach these goals. The process will nevertheless have to be continued through actual implementation. Various actors will most likely take responsibility for limited actions, rather than for the territorial agricultural transition project in its entirety. They will select the design solutions they need and might revise them. The TATA-BOX participatory process thus appears to be one step in the process of designing the territory’s transition.

The development of information and communication technologies (ICT) has to meet the needs of farmers and sustainably support the competitiveness of agriculture in a rapidly changing digital world. Under certain conditions of use, digital tools could facilitate the application to agriculture of the historical, methodological and socio-economic principles defining agroecology. This chapter is composed of four sections. In the first section we define a framework to study agricultural IC tools. The second section considers how ICT should be used during the design phase of the territorial agroecological transition – an example of which is the TATA-BOX project –, before its actual implementation. The third section sets out the four types of IC tools that can usefully be applied during this transition, and provides several examples. Finally, the last section shows the various barriers that ICT specialists will have to overcome in order to provide effective support to food systems. It also discusses the contradiction that can exist between high energy-consuming technologies and an agroecological production paradigm in which a drastic reduction of the reliance on fossil energy is essential.

Is TATA-BOX a model worth following, an example or a reference to use in designing other participatory processes or devices? To answer to this question, I went through the book to see if I could find the three main properties of participatory processes: the expression of viewpoints; the justification of reasoning; and the creation of new development models for territories. Three frameworks of analysis collectively guided my viewpoint in this critical analysis: the mechanisms of the construction of a participatory process; the potential of territorial governance; and the connection between collective and territorial actions. The first section discusses representation tools seen as intermediary objects between researchers and actors in co-construction devices. The second section successively considers participation, governance, and collective action as three facets for elucidating the process. The last section answers the crucial question: is TATA-BOX a model worth following? Hybridisation, integration, and inter-territorialisation are conditions for inventing the territories of the future (This is the title of the research project PSDR INVENTER (), which aims at formalising the evolving dynamics of rural and metropolitan territories, drawing and designing the support for food governance changes.) and for managing territorial transitions.

The TATA-BOX model provides a practical and operational set of methods for helping multiple stakeholders design an agroecological transition at the local level. It provides a framework for researchers to study current methods and design future systems based on ecological principles. In contrast to extreme technology-driven agriculture and globalisation of food systems, this strategy returns control to the local level. Location-specific planning provides an imaginative model for sustainable development, building potential to overcome crippling bureaucracy of governments and tyranny of narrowly vested interests that result from a “productionist model” that has prevailed over the past century. The new model based on “post-normal science” is defined in terms of participatory, integrated assessment, involving all stakeholders in local development, working in transdisciplinary teams. The process addresses “wicked”, complex current and future challenges today, problems involving multiple people and incommensurate goals. This requires careful study, reasoned discussion, and thoughtful compromise to reach common ground. Principles include holistic thinking, whole systems focus in the local context, involving multiple stakeholders, local autonomy, linking production with consumption in local food systems, and broad-based governance at the community, landscape, and levels. This can assure participation in decision making, and action, leading to adoption of transformative systems.

This chapter is written by researchers at UMR Innovation (Montpellier) who propose an external critical analysis of the TATA-BOX project. Firstly, we highlight the main contributions of both the project and the book, which cover different stages of a participatory research project, by crossing several disciplinary viewpoints. We note multiple outputs that can strengthen the capacities of farmers and researchers. We then develop three questions that echo our own works on innovations and agroecological transition: (i) How to associate agroecological issues with the diversity of practices and projects in a given area which is not necessary in a transition towards “strong ecological modernization”?; (ii) What are the conditions for disseminating/outscaling the TATA-BOX approach? In particular, can the project be replicated without the support of researchers? (iii) How to best integrate the political dimensions of ecological transition at different scales? We conclude that TATA-BOX could become a “political object” that promotes agroecological transition to local authorities, national policy makers and media, and international networks.