Daniel

López García

My professional career is hybrid, combining research, consultancy, training and food activism. This diversity of activities, together with my multidisciplinar educational background (ecology, sociology) enables a rich combination of views and experiences useful for the transdisciplinary and pluri-epistemological approach to sustainable food systems and agroecology research, which I currently develop in the hybrid research field of Human Geography. This allows my research to produce both high quality scientific publications and social impact.

My doctoral thesis (2012) was one of the first systematic works in Global North applying participatory social research to territorialized agri-food systems transitions based on agroecology (beyond farm level), and an important input for the methodological approach of Local Agroecological Dynamisation (LAeD). Such an approach has been applied in a large number of research and consultancy projects -both in urban and rural settings- and publications, and is the basis of the post-graduate program with the same name at Autonomous University of Barcelona, which had its first edition in 2014. My work through LAeD has focused since then, mainly through participatory and multi-actor approaches, on understanding the governance of sustainability transitions at food systems’ scale regarding alternative food networks; rural-urban linkages; peri-urban agricultura; urban food policies co-production; food-health nexus and urban food security; and city-region food systems. The innovative character of my research has allowed me to be invited as lecturer in three MsC Spanish programs: “Agroecology, a sustainability approach to rural development”, at UNIA, since 2006; “Organic Farming”, at UB, since 2009; and “Organic Agriculture and Livestock Farming”, at UPO, Sevilla, since 2011. Within these MsC programs I could supervise 27 MsC Theses, and since I am allowed to (2021), a PhD Thesis to be read in 2024.

From 2016 to 2021 my research activity has been combined with consultancy activities as Agroecology Area coordinator at Entretantos Foundation and as Technical Coordinator of the Spanish Red de Municipios por la Agroecología (RMAe, a network of 24 City Councils, mainly big cities including Madrid, Barcelona, València, Valladolid or Córdoba). At Entretantos I could obtain important learnings on the interface between research and policy making, for example by coordinating the participatory drafting processes of the Local Food Strategies of Valladolid (2018), Zaragoza (2019) and Segovia (2020), or as external advisor of Barcelona’s (2022). I have authored the first two compilations of ongoing urban food policies in Spain and published several scientific and dissemination documents on the topic. In dialogue with international scientific discussions, I could set links between local food policies research approaches and political ecology and agroecology, such as gender equity; climate action; health and food security; urban agricultural soil remediation; agro-biodiversity; or city-region food planning. My hybrid approach (as researcher, activist and practitioner) to territorialised food systems and policies has allowed me to participate in 2021 in some global, high impact processes to improve local food policies performance on climate action: I participated in the drafting group of the “Glasgow Declaration on Food and Climate” (presented at COP26), and co-coordinated “The Barcelona Challenge on Good Food and Climate”, promoted by RMAe, C40, The Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP) and Barcelona City Council, and presented in the 7th Global MUFPP Forum (Barcelona 2021).

My agroecological approach to sustainable food systems has generated a new conceptual framework to address some theoretical gaps regarding how to bring agroecological transitions to food systems scale. I have published several papers to justify, define and develop the concept of Agroecology-based Local Agri-food Sys-tems (ALAS). Such a concept sets a conceptual umbrella, based on agroecology, to understand local food systems and policies through a socio-ecological approach, and to guide sustainability transitions. Along the development of the concept I have conducted pioneering research on how integrating in such transitions some subaltern actors in food systems (conventional farmers, traditional food retailers), the construction of plural social subjects to lead such a transition, the need to connect agroecological and alternative food networks with food insecurity networks, and the multi-actor and multi-level arrangements needed to do so. I am currently working on the symbolic elements which compose the context of such sustainability transitions, and preparing some scientific publications on the issue linking the agroecology approach with arts, communication and Participatory Action-Research.