Sewing territories through organic. Initiatives in two Italian biodistricts

The spread of agroecological farming in Europe requires a broad transition based on innovation and dissemination of knowledge that solicit the technical-productive as well as the socio-economic and institutional spheres. As part of the agroecological realm and as a prominent alternative farming system in the marketplace, organic agriculture has already embraced such transitionand it is now undertaking new challenges to enlarge its operative domain beyond the farm boundaries. Networking organic farmers and processors, thus strengthening communitarian dynamics, encourages the co-creation and sharing of know-how that accelerate the sectors’ scaling out process in a context where learning-by-doing still remains a common feature. Organic districts (biodistretti, in Italian; biodistricts, in globish), associations aimed at strengthening a multi-stakeholder engagement that involves organic farmers, civil society actors, economic operators and institutions, represent an interesting means to mobilise such transition and scalability processes towards a greater territorial sustainability and an extended citizens consensus. This reaserch on organic biodistricts fosters organic farmers’ technical and organisational capacity within the area of the two organic districts, aiming to induce the overall organic acreage increase, to reduce the pesticides pressure on the territory, to trigger the local ecosystem integrity and to qualify productions both at agronomic and marketing level.