The co-production of sustainability by learning networks. The case of reconstruction of knowledge and practices around bread production.

According to transition theories, a full adhesion to sustainability paradigm for agro- food system requires radical changes, addressed to redefine the whole socio-technical system underlying food production and consumption practices. Through them a complex re-organization of systems of knowledge, rules and norms of behaviour, and a re-design of the organisational and material infrastructures involved in production and consumption practices take place. Many grassroots initiatives, developing out of the conventional system and aimed at creating alterna- tives to it, are showing the potentials and also the challenges of this complex process of change. Interaction and learning processes developing within hybrid networks, including all the diverse actors engaged in the change, prove to be crucial to this process of innovation. Within these net- works actors mobilise their knowledge and create new frames of common understanding. This learning process results in shared knowledge which, translated into new attitudes and practices, allows a coherent re-configuration of all the components of the system, from the level of produc- tion to that of consumption. In this paper we aim at adopting this approach to deal with the innovation pathways that are af- fecting one of the agro-food chains which has been most transformed over the modernization of the agro-food system, the production of bread. In response to producers’ and consumers’ needs, in Italy this chain is at the centre of a myriad of local initiatives. Moving on a common trajectory of social innovation, they are committed to redefine genetic materials (through a different ap- proach to research), cultivation techniques and processing technologies (new knowledge and skills and appropriate equipment), organizational models (territorially and socially embedded), value chain (grounded on different shared values), cultural meanings. The learning processes that drive these changes stem from the interaction that develops among a variety of social and institu- tional actors. The analysis develops through a case study on a specific learning network in Tuscany. On the background of the multiple changes involved within the whole chain, an in-depth analysis of the aspects which interest the reorganization of the production phase allows to highlight the chal- lenges to be tackled in order to fully pursue sustainability.