A COMPREHENSIVE AND PARTICIPATORY APPROACH TO THE VALORISATION OF BIODIVERSE PRODUCTS

Preserving agro-biodiversity can contribute to the broader goal of protecting and enhancing biodiversity. Acknowledging and managing the complexity of values connected to agro-biodiversity, translating them in coherent practices, is the key to its conservation and valorisation. These processes may take place at different stages of agro-biodiversity management and interact with other factors, dynamics and processes that intervene in it. This study presents the EU funded DIVERSIFOOD project as an exemplification of the comprehensive approach that is needed to effectively preserve and enhance agro-biodiversity. The main objective of the project is to deepen the factors and processes of various nature that can support the reintroduction of biodiversity in cropping systems, improve its management and promote a social and economic valorisation of final food products. To that end, the project explores the processes underlying the re-shaping of practices according to the objective of agro-biodiversity enhancement in all the stages of the food chain. The need to take into consideration the different perspectives on values and ways of preserving agro-biodiversity, together with the development of new shared knowledge and practices underlies the adoption of participatory, multi-actors approaches to each of these stages. Similarly, an inter-disciplinary approach, aimed at combining natural sciences and social sciences characterises the work of researchers.