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In accordance with the scientific literature about design, our ambition of co-designing pesticide-free territories with and for the actors of the territories will require that we, in an iterative way: i) develop research to understand design issues in each territory (actors, stakes, particularities, governance, forms of agriculture, etc), ii) develop research to support creativity and design solutions in all their diversity (agronomic, ecological, economic, organizational, etc.), iii) develop research on the evaluation of the ability of innovative systems and territorial configurations to provide ecosystems services, restore biodiversity and increase sustainability of food production in territories.

These three lines of research define our 3 work packages (WP). Each has a specific and original scientific posture: a comprehensive posture with empirical analysis of socio-technical systems in WP1; an accompanying posture in WP2 to support actors in the design of innovations; an evaluative posture in WP3. Hence, each WP allows for the production of original scientific knowledge but each one is enriched by the others: WP1 and WP2 interact, as the diagnosis built in WP1 in the territories highlights possibilities and lock-ins for WP2 and as, in return, the solutions developed in WP2 impact the dynamics of the territories analysed in WP1. WP2 and WP3 interact as the evaluation built in WP3 of the solutions imagined in WP2 helps to feed the actors’ creativity in WP2, which orients the needs of multicriteria evaluation.

To run the project and its WP, we have built an ambitious research set-up to produce and collect data. We will work in 10 case-study territories (CST) with a large diversity of farming systems, spread over the whole of metropolitan France, in which the consortium's researchers are already working with local partners to stop the use of pesticides. The work that will be deployed in these territories will be transversal to the three WPs. Thanks to the outcomes of BE-CREATIVE, we will thus be able to have a large range of impacts: for research by developing ways of doing transformative research and by taking a leadership in agroecology community, for training by providing several agricultural schools with rich educational material and by contributing to the training of numerous agricultural advisory stakeholders, for the actors of the territories and more largely for the French agriculture by providing a proof of concept of pesticide-free territories in a diversity of contexts, which will be shared with other French territories more largely and then in Europe.

Our consortium gathers 15 research teams who belong to INRAE (INRA & IRSTEA), AgroParisTech, AgroSup Dijon, National Muséum of Histoire Naturelle, the Center of Resarch in Design (ENSCI les Ateliers and ENS Paris Saclay) and who cover a large range of scientific disciplines and skills. It includes leading researchers in design sciences, in co-design methodologies and in using research through design to produce scientific knowledge; in territorial approaches; in biotic interactions and ecosystem services and in agronomic innovations.