Food crises and ecologization have given rise to a Belgian dynamic that does not behave according to the conventional tripod of agroecology: practitioners, social movement, and scientists. Instead of simply recounting the history of Belgian agroecology, the authors trace the history and dynamics in Belgium), a journey along six strands that weave themselves into a Belgian tapestry: Genetically modified crop commandos, a scientific paradigm shift, hybrid expertise opening the Northern route that intersects with a Southern political route, an original non-institutional dynamic in the French-speaking part of Belgium and an institutional initiative that led to a rift in Flanders. In the following section, we identify, emerging from those six strands, four tensions that create a space of innovations, namely, politically differentiated discourses, land access, fair price, and epistemic tensions. We discuss then the generative potential of the 4 tensions and describe the potential of reconfigurations generated by boundaries organizations, food justice and transdisciplinarity. We conclude that the concept of agroecology continues to have transformative potential in Belgium today. However, no one can predict the course of such a largely non-institutional dynamic.

In the face of longstanding social and technological trends, the application of agroecological insights at beef farms in Flanders may at first seem a curious proposition. We found, however, that beef farmers pursue agroecological principles through an impressive diversity of practices in this context. In 37 semi-structured interviews, we asked farmers how they put into practice a set of principles which covers many themes addressed in agroecological literature. Inspired by a grounded theory approach, but also based on literature and consultation of fellow researchers, we conceptualized for each principle distinctive pathways of action to categorize relevant practices. By documenting farmers’ practices, we show that an agronomic interpretation of agroecology as a practice obfuscates the many ways farmers can contribute to the social dimensions of agroecology too, which also problematizes those food systems approaches that undervalue the farmers’ agency in changing their social context themselves. This grounded conceptual framework may be used to further assess how each beef farmer addresses these different principles together in practice. Given these results and perspectives, we contend that empirical inquiries such as these are instrumental in maintaining the connection between agroecological theory and practice, allowing both to move dialectically forward.