Investigating Features of Chain-wide Sustainability Initiatives Favouring Sustainable Development in Flemish Agriculture

Sustainable development in agriculture cannot be seen separated from the whole agri-food system, and therefore requires chain-wide sustainability initiatives (CSIs) committing several agri-food actors to joint sustainable development. Such CSIs are still scarce in Flanders (Belgium). To spur agency towards the development of such chain-wide sustainability initiatives, an intervention was set up aiming for inspiration of and reflection on existing CSIs by Flemish agri-food actors. In this paper we expound on the design of our intervention, aiming at understanding the key features of a SCI as conditions that stimulate agency in the development CSIs in Flanders, and trying to relate these key features to sustainable development in agriculture. We designed our intervention based on the theories of social learning, formative interventions and Vygostky’s principle of double stimulation. It enabled us to list specific features (regarding the meaning of sustainability, implementation scale, participation, cooperation and communication) for CSIs that could be linked to CSI goals. The various features mentioned in the workshop show that CSIs can be consisted of very different feature constellations, and thus also have very different outcomes regarding sustainable development in agriculture. Our results can be used as a start for further investigation on the specific feature constellations of CSIs needed for sustainable development in agriculture.