Wähler, Torsten

Change in food and agricultural practices at the intersection of urban and rural have implications for social cohesion and biodiversity. The work presents the case study from the Horizon Europe Project DAISY that addresses the question whether and to what extent new forms of commons governance emerging in Germany show transformative potential to strengthen both. It focuses on Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) cooperatives and similar forms of agricultural self-organization and analyzes how the spheres of transformation (personal, political, practical) strengthen place-based social cohesion and creates room for turning intangible values and attitudes associated with nature into tangible action of agrobiodiversity. Activities of new forms of commons governance in Germany can be seen as seed innovations: they support transformations that transcend the traditional urban-rural divide, where urban residents engage in intense social activities, while sensitizing themselves to farm-life and nature through self-organized forms of governance in rural areas. The role of state in both facilitating and restricting such commons practices will be discussed. The work will conceptualize plural perspectives of involved actors in the commonning processes and analyze such transformations from a transdisciplinary perspective that allows synergies between theory, practice, and policy.