6 Vital Conditions for Successful Governance Mechanisms

Why is it so hard for many of the innovative farm-based initiatives we see popping up everywhere to not just survive, but thrive? There are a myriad of examples – farmers who maintain their shared landscape together, cooperatives that produce and market local honey, organic farmers who work together with top chefs – more and more new alliances are popping-up.

However, these initiatives often struggle to organize themselves and to find their way in the multiple policy frameworks and piles of red tape they find themselves embedded in. So what can these initiatives do?

In response, these initiatives develop new organisational forms, come up with new role divisions and cooperate with formerly unknown partners. And they look for innovative governance mechanisms. These mechanisms can orchestrate multi-actor, multi-level and multi-sector rural development pathways, or trajectories. We believe it is essential to understand the governance mechanisms that shape these linkages in order to reconnect agriculture with the wider society.