Project results and outputs
The results of AESOP4Food are an interactive open-access course that was piloted three times in 2022, 2023, and 2024. This course will be continued in a modified way in the spring of 2025.
Online seminar resources
All the resources of this course can be found on this wiki:
Teachers' Guidance Report
The project developed a Teachers' Guidance Report for those planning, organising, and developing courses and capacity building for sustainable food planning. The report includes a set of five modules that can be used for curriculum development. The introduction to the report can be found here.
Building blocks for an Agroecological Urbanism
For further developing the building blocks of agroecological urbanism, a set of outputs has been prepared for:
- A new model for agroecological parks, with a chapter on guidance to plan these parks.
- A report in the Dutch language on Gentse Gronden about access to land and using public land as an instrument of leverage.
- A report on the Intensive Programme in Madrid, 2022, Regenerating urban food planning for eco-social transitions.
- An instruction video of the MOST Farm in Warsaw, an example of a bottom-up development of a collaborative farm and a future Food Hub. See the section below.
A French report on land protection, which studies national land regulations and instruments to preserve agricultural land that Terres en Ville composed in collaboration with SAFER, will be published at the beginning of 2025.
Report on a New Model for Agroecological Parks
A guidance report on the planning, development, and organisation of Agroecological Parks is meant for learners and professionals in the spatial planning field who aim to be active in sustainable food planning. The Agroecological park is one of the building blocks of an Agroecological Urbanism that requires new transformative projects that redefine social, spatial, and political relations. The report is the result of a longer discussion of the AESOP4Food partners and the process during an International Workshop in Montpellier by developing a participatory approach for L’Agriparc Les Bouisses, which is the fifth Agricultural Park in the city region of Montpellier. Policymakers and staff of the city and metropole of Montpellier, and researchers of INRAE and Supagro provided valuable insights into how an agricultural park can be developed.
The report has the following chapters: (1) Introduction, (2) A new concept for Agroecological Parks, (3) Typologies of Agricultural Parks, (4) The case of Montpellier, (5) Discussing the scope of the New Agroecologcial Park, (6) A New Agroecological Park Model, (7) Guidance on planning and development.
Gentse Gronden
Gentse Gronden can be translated as Ghent's Lands while it has a connotation with Soils.
The Ghent Public Centre for Social Welfare (OCMW) holds 1,800 hectares of agricultural land around Ghent, a legacy of its 1976 founding. These lands are increasingly seen as crucial to addressing 21st-century urban challenges, sparking debate among farmers, citizens, policymakers, and researchers. In 2024, this dialogue reached a new height through the “Gentse Gronden” exhibition at the Ghent City Museum (STAM), highlighting the historical and contemporary value of these lands. A temporary moratorium on land sales allowed for reflection on their policy significance.
In 2023, the launch of Ghent’s vision for agriculture integrated these lands into the city’s food policy, “Gent en Garde”, signaling a strategic shift. Key players such as the City Academy, the Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Research (ILVO), and STAM facilitated the “Gentse Gronden Sessions,” a platform for discussing the future of these lands. Supported by Ghent University’s social valorisation fund, these sessions fostered an inclusive dialogue through expert workshops and public debates.
Three sessions—“Land is Agriculture,” “Land is Food,” and “Land is Power”—engaged participants in envisioning sustainable uses for the Ghent Lands. Workshops provided a safe space for personal perspectives, while public panels encouraged alternative ideas for land use, drawing up to 100 attendees each.
This booklet in Dutch, supported by the AESOP4Food project, compiles key insights, essays, and visuals. It aims to inspire further initiatives to shape the future of the Ghent public land as a vital asset for urban sustainability and food security.
Regenerating urban food planning for eco-social transitions
This guidance report on “Regenerative urban food planning for eco-social transitions” has been developed, based on the experience of the LTT in Madrid 2022. It presents an innovative pedagogical approach to design alternatives to reduce the food system's vulnerability and ensure accessibility to healthy and sustainable food for everyone, regardless of their purchasing power.
The workshop used extreme scenarios and the report explains how to use them and shows the results that can be achieved, that dig into tackling crisis with short-time and long-time perspective and with an understanding and integration of deep sustainability.
Instruction video of the MOST farm in Warsaw
The film tells the story of an urban farm, created in Warsaw as a kind of park and source of healthy food. Local gardeners share their experiences and share the passion that brings them together in a common project. Each has a unique story and reasons for getting involved, from a concern for the environment to a desire to educate the community. Working on the farm proves to be not only a physical challenge but also a lesson in cooperation and patience. The gardeners talk about their daily tasks, from planting and caring for the plants to managing the crops in a challenging urban environment.
Viewers get a behind-the-scenes look at how they battle adverse weather conditions, limited space, and other challenges they face in a densely built environment. The filmmakers also show how urban agriculture affects the ecology and integrates the local community. The main aim of the film is to use the Warsaw farm as a case study to show how similar initiatives can be developed in other cities and the challenges they face. In the end, viewers can see the results of the hard work - a fresh harvest and happy residents enjoying the fruits of their collective labour.
You can view the version with English subtitles here:
The story in Polish with Polish subtitles can be viewed here: