Governing an agroecological transformation of the Tunisian food system? Institutional analysis of sustainable land management in Tunisia

Land degradation resulting from various human-induced processes, including agricultural practices, is putting a major threat to countries worldwide, including Tunisia. To combat land degradation, agroecology, understood as a way to transform food systems to achieve ecological, economic and social sustainability (Gliessman, 2016), is seen as an important pathway. Agroecology is a holistic approach which does not only involve the adoption of more sustainable farming practices, but also includes social, economic and political dimensions, and a shift in power away from elites and corporations to producers and consumers. Being high on the international policy agenda, agroecology has recently also been introduced in environmental and agricultural policies in Tunisia to address challenges of the agricultural system in general, and land degradation in particular. However, little is known about the current status of agroecology in Tunisia at various levels, how prepared the country is to move towards agroecology and what challenges actors face. We therefore first aim to understand institutional, economic, personal and environmental factors that support as well as hinder farmers of rainfed agriculture to apply agroecological principles at the local level. In a second step, we aim to analyze to what extend national agricultural, environmental, and land-use policies address these factors, and thereby prepare an institutional context in which an agroecological transformation of a sustainable food system is facilitated. Conceptually, this paper builds on Gliessman’s (2016) five levels of food system change, combining it with the six domains of agroecology transformation by Anderson et al. (2021). We undertake a multi-level analysis, with a particular focus on three local case studies in Siliana, Kairouan and Kef that are embedded in the multi-level governance system. The analysis builds upon data collected through interviews with public and private actors involved in land management at the national, regional, and local levels, as well as stakeholder workshops conducted in Tunis. Our empirical findings show that at the local level, many traditional farming practices are in line with principles of agroecology. However, farmers are confronted with several social, economic, and political challenges which hinder advancing agroecology, such as land fragmentation and inequality in land holdings, limited human and financial resources, lack of political support and marginalization. At the policy level, we find that several policies promote agroecological farming practices, involvement of farmers in decision-making, and valuing local know-how. We argue that although these measures could prepare for an institutional context required for transforming the food system, important barriers remain. These are, among others, the strong focus of the Ministry of Agriculture on developing large-scale irrigated agriculture as well as focusing on export-oriented agriculture, thereby posing barriers to a real agroecological transformation of the food system.