Problems and Purpose

The qualitative desk research that was performed during the planning of the process highlighted a unique set of challenges that are relevant in the case of the Central Transdanubia region. The problems can be separated into three different layers: environmental, economic and societal, but they are all interconnected to each other. The focus point of the environmental problems is water, especially the lack of it during summer and the contamination of lake Balaton. This is the biggest water body of Central Europe and a major tourist destination. However, the scarcity of water and the different usage intentions can create conflicts between the local residents, corporations and tourists. Moreover, there are major economic differences between the settlements on the shore, who have the major of the profit of the tourism industry and have a tertiary economic structure. The settlements in the background whose economy is still focusing on the primary sector and intensive, soil often soil degrading agriculture. Hence, even if Central Transdanubia is the 2nd most touristic region in Hungary, the background rural settlements don’t share the economy of tourism. Additionally, food is an issue for local citizens who can make money from tourism: the farmers have to be pipelined into tourism to improve local economy around local markets. At this time, the distribution of local products is difficult and burdened with many barriers. However, the societal change, that is happening partly due to mass tourism and also partly thanks to deurbanization, effects every settlement. The trust towards participatory processes is low in itself in Hungary, but these societal and economical turbulences worsen the situation in the region. This is especially true because no legally existing administrative unit with real decision-making power in the Central Transdanubia region. Hence it is quite difficult the get the local stakeholders, such as farmers, tourists, citizens and weekend house owners to participate.

Based on the uncovered problems, the next step of the participatory process was the set-up of the Transdanubia Territorial Commission of Co-Design (TCCD). This Commission consisted of selected local famers and entrepreneurs, while its main role in the process was to set the foundations for the later coming Pilot phase. Hence, during the Territorial Commission meetings, the members were set to decide upon the most important challenges of the local, inclusive implementation of the farm to fork (F2F) concept. The second major part of the participatory process was the Pilot phase, which focused more on the possible solutions for the problems addressed in the TCCD phase. The process was planned to generate two key outcomes: a bricolage of the knowledge of the local farmers and the action plan of a seal of quality for participatory agricultural production. By approaching the F2F movement from different perspectives and across different sectors, various stakeholders could engage in a broad discourse within the region. The co-created material could be used in policy making both on a regional and a smaller, micro-regional or settlement scale too. The bricolage could be a stepping stone in creating local short food supply chains or organic production networks with the involvement of the local farmers and consumers. The goal of the process was to address the environmental challenges, such as water scarcity in a broad way, starting from sustainable agricultural activities that can generate a wide range of actions working towards the goals of the European Green Deal (EGD). Organic and sustainable farming does not depend on fertilizers or nitrates that contaminate groundwater, in addition to agricultural management avoiding soil erosion and, therefore, favouring greater water absorption and increased humidity that allows reducing the amount of water needed. A setup of a short food supply chain would also help in negating the negative environmental effects of mass tourism. The process was set to facilitate the integration between different profiles of people, who do not necessarily share objectives, but are attracted by the appeal of a healthier environment and economic situation.

Background History and Context

The Central Transdanubia region is a unique region in Hungary, including the Balaton Uplands, which is the north of the largest freshwater lake in Central Europe, the Balaton. This micro-region provides a very diverse flora and fauna, and the surrounding arable lands, and hills are ideal for agriculture, especially winemaking. However, climate change and extreme weather conditions, such as long droughts and sudden heavy rains are forcing a change from the traditional farming methods to more sustainable and organic ones [1]. The relationship between the indigenous farmers and the new generations coming here from urban areas to perform innovative and sustainable agriculture is often burdened with conflicts and problematic. Hence, a participatory process that aims to involve both groups must make special efforts to successfully achieve its goal. Although, there are small local initiatives, like trade unions or farmer representations, but no official or bigger organization which could be used to jointly mobilize. However, the 2023 European Capital of Culture program in Veszprém and Balaton region set the stepping stone for collecting the manufacturers of the local products around the lake.

Another important phenomenon in the region is the rapidly growing mass tourism, which affects more and more settlements and inhabitants every year. Transdanubia is the second most visited region in the country and has a great claim as a place of interest. Tourism generates growing tension in the region due to the use of resources compared to other economic activities such as agriculture [2]. Together with tourism or associated with it, the region is experiencing a significant increase in the number of residences and weekend houses, which will mean more demand on the complex system of water resources in the region. Tourist uses, urbanization and agricultural uses pose a scenario of increased water resources, at the same time that scientific evidence warns that water availability is gradually decreasing.

The Central Transdanubia region has a good socio-economic situation compared to the country average. However, there are major inequalities between the different micro-regions and population groups regarding financial and societal status [3]. The economic activities of the region are mainly in the services sector (65%), highlighting an important industrial activity (30%). However, agriculture represents almost 5% of GDP, well above the EU values (1.2%) [4]. The population of the rural, agriculture focused micro-regions in Transdanubia can be considered less responsive and resilient to the effects of climate change. These territories’ starting point for ecological transition is way beyond the average EU regions’ possibilities.

The population of settlements in the region has a balanced structure. In addition to the agglomerations around the big cities, urbanization is strong in the coastal areas of Lake Balaton and Lake Velence, as well as along the Danube. Just like in the case of whole Hungary, the population is aging in the region, with about 20% of the population over 65 years of age [5]. The more economically developed Transdanubian counties serve as popular destinations for migration within the country, hence the region as a whole has a positive migratory balance, but the picture is heterogeneous. There is a very complex society in terms of the newly relocated population, the weekend house owner population, and the original inhabitants of the region. There are fault lines between these groups, for instance in terms of income and willingness to change. Despite the conjuncture of the last decade, the social differences did not vanish.

In Hungary there are some roots of civil society, however the whole country, especially the rural areas lack a strong participatory tradition. The Transdanubia region never experimented a public debate, so it represents an opportunity and a challenge at the same time. However, within the region, there are already initiatives of farmers working around organic agriculture. The Central Transdanubian Bioculture Association promotes organic farming and has organized several National Biodays, National Bioculture Meetings and have held regular meetings in various environmental protection circles [6]. Central Transdanubia and the Balaton Uplands have strong legal protection as one of the most important touristic, yet ecological cores and corridors of Hungary. The long lasting protection and the individual legal protection are a heritage and a merit, which can be thought of as a resource. However, the way to an ecological transition towards the farm to fork concept is complicated and far from being implemented. The concentrated estate and legislative system of the region are both barriers for agriculture focused participatory processes, especially the fact, that the Transdanubia region as a whole does not have a decision maker legal entity.

Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities

The main organizer of this process was the University of Szeged, which is a consortium partner in the PHOENIX Horizon 2020 project. The researchers of the university’s Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, Human Geography Department were the ones who planned, organized and facilitated the participatory process. Being part of an EU wide project helped the organizers gather the knowledge necessary to plan and organize the initiative, by for example providing inputs to select the adequate recruiting and debating methodology. Additionally, the project provided funding for the researchers and covered any other expenses in relation of the organisation. The PHOENIX Horizon 2020 project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101037328.

One of the unique features of this process was that due to the purely administrative natures of the EU NUTS 2 regions in Hungary, the Central Transdanubia region lacks any legal entity or authority that could have been contacted to serve as a partner of the project. Additionally, because of the recent centralisations, in the whole administrative system of Hungary, outside of the government and the local municipalities of the settlements, no authorities have major decision-making powers. Hence there was no obvious partner to choose as a supporting authority on regional level. Although the Balaton region has its own Special Tourism Region according to the Act XXI of 1996 on Regional development and Regional Planning, the council related to this territorial entity, called Balaton Development Council, mostly serves regional development purposes and lacks any legal power. As a result of this, the organizers choose a different local partner at the beginning of the project, called Central Transdanubian Regional Innovation Agency, to help in coordinating the participatory process. The Agency had two main duties, firstly to help in adjusting the initiative to fit the local context and needs, secondly to help reaching the local farmers during the recruiting phase.

The organizers had the help of another consortium partner, OneSource, in creating the online platform for debate. The IT company prepared and run the website of the platform based on the requests of the organizers.

Participant Recruitment and Selection

The main focus population of the initiative were recognized or emerging local farmers and agriculture or tourism related service providers from the Central Transdanubia region. In June 2024, the organisers reached out to 110 of them asking them to participate in the process. Regarding the selection of who to invite, the two main criteria were to be located in the Central Transdanubia region and to work in the agricultural or tourism industry, which are heavily linked around the Balaton. The main focus were on sole employers and small- or medium enterprises (SME) and a special emphasis was put on to achieve diversity from a geographical, a business sectoral and a gender background. The farmers were contacted in multiple ways and numerous times via telephone, email and even facebook messages. As a result, 19 of them responded and agreed to join to the Territorial Commission.

The first TCCD meeting had three facilitators from the University of Szeged and five participants, who were all middle aged. Three of them were female and two male, hence the gender balance was ideal. One of the participants was the local partner from the Central Transdanubian Regional Innovation Agency, the others represented the diverse background of the local entrepreneurs, such as farmers, winemakers or bakers. The second Territorial Commission session had five participants as well, who represented four different SME-s. Three of them were middle aged while two others were elderly farmers. The gender balance looked similarly with three men and two women. Just like in the first Commission session, the participants had a diverse background in bakery, wine making or oil manufacturing. The third online debate had three male participants; two middle aged and one from the younger generations. However, their background was just as diverse as in the previous debates, with one representative of bakers, winemakers and restaurateurs. The planned fourth TCCD session had to be cancelled last minute due to the participants' other urgent obligations connected to their companies, but later all three of them submitted their opinion via emails or phone calls. There were two males and one female amongst them, and they were all middle aged, with a diverse background such as a winemaking, marmalade manufacturing or cattle farming. The fifth and final TCCD meeting had three participants; two females and one male. Just like in most of the previous sessions, all of the entrepreneurs were middle aged and had a diverse background in schnapps making, diary manufacturing or guesthouse managing.

In total, apart from the three facilitators, 16 individuals participated in the four focus group discussions, representing 14 local businesses. Additionally, three more entrepreneurs shared their opinions in writing or over the phone, hence 19 people’s opinion got discussed in the online debate. The total gender balance without the facilitators was 11 males and 8 females. Regarding the age structure of all the participants, a heavy dominance of middle-aged people can be observed. Looking at the background of the participants, one of them was the representative of the Central Transdanubian Regional Innovation Agency and the rest of them were entrepreneurs. The later consisted of four winemakers, four bakers, two marmalade manufacturers, two oil manufacturers, one cattle farmer, one diary manufacturer, one restaurateur, one guesthouse manager, one schnapps producer and one general farmer.

Throughout the pilot phase in the November of 2024, only one middle aged woman with a background in pastry contributed actively and commented on the platform. There is no information available about how many people actually registered to the created platform, but there were 10 Territorial Commission participants who answered to the invitation of the organisers with the promise that they are going to register and comment.

During the research conducted in the pilot stage, 28 people were asked for interviews, seven of them responded and accepted the invitation. They can be categorised into three main groups: local researchers working in connecting fields (3 people), local LEADER group representatives (2 people), and implementers of successful Hungarian short food supply chain projects (2 people). Since the most important selection aspect was the expertise and knowledge of the interview partners, the gender and age diversity were far from ideal, with only one female and one younger participant. All the others were middle aged and males. It is important to highlight that one of the interview partners, who is a researcher of the local short food supply chains, was also a member of the Territorial Commission as he is also a restaurant manager in practice.

All in all, during the whole span of the initiative, 137 local farmers or service providers were reached out to and 25 of them participated in at least one phase of the project. Regarding their aggregated gender balance, 16 males and 9 females participated, with most of them being middle-aged. Considering the background of the farmers, the two most prominent group were winemakers (5 people all in all) and bakers (4 people all in all).

Methods and Tools Used

The main tool of the process during the most significant phase, the TCCD sessions was an online version of public debates (PD) which was tailored to fit the local circumstances. Using pre-existing tools in new ways and territories helps the participatory processes to be more successful, while also creating valuable feedback regarding the effectiveness of the method. Public Debate has become a common method of enriching public engagement and multistakeholder consultation and is also required by some governments on large public works proposals, and even for some large policies. This method was officially first used in 1995 by the French government to appease protestors following widespread opposition to the building of a major high-speed train line. Since then, specific authorities, like the French National Commission of Public Debate (CNDP) have been created to open and manage the compulsory PDs connected to major projects. The main goal of the public debates usually is to include all stakeholders and affected individuals in the planning process of large public works [7][8]. As the Transdanubia initiative aims to create a diverse and enriched discussion amongst the different economic entities of the region regarding the implementation of the farm to fork concept, the decision to tailor the method of PD has been made regarding three key aspects. Firstly, the debate was not centred around a specific infrastructural development project, but rather focused on the necessary steps to achieve the farm to fork model. Additionally, because the region lacks a decision maker legal entity, the debate was performed without the participation of a municipality or governmental organisation. Finally, although originally PDs were supposed to happen in person, during the COVID-19 pandemic, fully online versions have started to gain popularity [9][10]. In a regional case, this version can be especially useful, because in many situations, travel distances can be a barrier for participation. Thanks to most of the population having smartphones or laptops, a level of diversity can be achieved in online debates nowadays, even thought it might not give the same feeling of rich diversity for the participants as an in-person event [11][12].

To decide the dates of the debates, Doodle was used, and for the four Commission sessions, Google Meet was chosen because its Jamboard function enabled the facilitators to write ideas on a virtual board during the discussions [13][14]. This board could later be exported and used in subsequent sessions to present previously identified problems and ideas to new participants. Each session was voice and screen recorded with the consent of the participants. The discussions were originally planned to last 90 minutes, but due to the active participation and engagement of the farmers, the time limit was exceeded in every case, resulting in an average duration of around 110 minutes. Each session started with a brief round of introductions as ice-breaking, focusing, on the enterprises of the participants (where do they operate, what are they doing, how big is the company). The introduction was followed by the opening question: "What do you consider to be the biggest problem related to the implementation of the farm to fork concept?" From there, the discussion proceeded based on the participants' train of thought, debating problems and possible solutions. Facilitation and the presentation of the summary Jamboards from previous sessions ensured that the most important 8-10 topics were covered in every TCDD meeting. The facilitators were the three researchers of the University of Szeged in every session and made sure to give the adequate amount of time for every participant to express their opinions. The farmers could decide whether they wanted to turn on their cameras or not, but the fact that most of them did shows that the facilitators were able to create a meeting that felt save and inclusive for the participants.

For the pilot phase, an online platform was developed by the consortium partner OneSource in order to discuss those ideas that have emerged during the Territorial Commission phase. The plan with the created website was that it could serve as platform which could be accessible by every participant during the eight weeks of the pilot phase whenever they had the time to react to the ideas that have been submitted. These kinds of online tools have been shown to make the participation easier for busy individuals [9][15][12], like the farmers of Transdanubia. Moreover, because of the Commission phase was also held online, it seemed like the registration and the online debating process would not be a challenge for the participants. The main function of the platform was to facilitate online discussions about topics that were either uploaded by the researchers or by the participants. It was possible to comment, like or dislike each idea, and the users could see each other’s activities. Although the platform was developed by an international consortium, every part of the website was translated into Hungarian, and eight starting discussion topics were uploaded by the researchers of the University of Szeged based on the results of the TCDD discussions. Each discussion topic had a title, a short description and 3-5 questions that could serve as starting points for the debates.

Finally, during the pilot phase, semi-structured expert interviews were conducted online. Although this not a participatory tool, it is still one of the most often used methods to conduct research regarding the participatory processes [16].

What Went On: Process, Interaction, and Participation

To understand the whole process and the final format of this participate process, it is necessary to take a look at the timeline of the planning, organization and implementation of the project from the beginning to the end. First of all, at the start of the PHOENIX Horizon 2020 project in 2023, the Central Transdanubian Regional Innovation Agency was chosen as the local partner to coordinate the setup of the initiative. The researchers of the University of Szeged planed the roadmap of the participatory process jointly with the local partner and came up with the idea of organizing a public debate on the topic of farm to fork with the end goal of creating a seal of quality for participatory agricultural production. However, both the specific tools or democratic innovations, and also the targeted outcome was set to be finalized during the creation of the tangram and by the decision of the Territorial Commission of Co-Design. The planning phase lasted until June 2024, when the participant recruitment started for the Territorial Commission. The reason of the delayed start of the implementation was due to the fact that the end goal had to be replanned, because the desired seal of quality was created by another project. Hence, the researchers and the local Agency looked for a new final goal and landed on the idea of a bricolage that focuses on the farm to fork ideas of the local entrepreneurs.

Based on the created tangram, the Territorial Commission meetings implemented an online version of public debates, where participants could share and discuss their ideas regarding the implementation of farm to fork practices. The debates were facilitated by the organizers, although in most cases, the discussions naturally evolved and introduced new topics and ideas as the meetings proceeded. This shows the value of the tool of public debates if it is tailored to fit the local context. The first TCCD session took place on July 9, 2024, with five participants, in addition to the three facilitators from the university. The second Commission meeting had five participants representing four enterprises, while the third session included three entrepreneurs. These took place on the morning and afternoon of July 17, 2024. A fourth session was planned for July, and although three entrepreneurs had indicated their intention to participate, eventually none of them joined to the live session. Instead, they all shared their opinions via email or phone. While this does not count as a focus group session, the information they provided was still included in the final bricolage. Since many entrepreneurs reported that the main barrier against their participation was the lack of free time during the peak summer season, an additional Territorial Commission meeting was scheduled for the fall. This took place on September 25, 2024, with three entrepreneurs discussing and sharing their opinions.

After the conclusion of the Territorial Commission for Co-Design sessions, the collected ideas and opinions were systematically analysed by the researchers of the University of Szeged. As a result of the Commission meetings, eight key ideas were selected as the cornerstones of the pilot phase. The focus of the pilot was to discuss and elaborate on the ideas of the Territorial Commission, with the emphasis moving from problem gathering to problem solving. A website based online platform was created by OneSource, where the participants were able to like, dislike or comment on the ideas submitted by them or uploaded by the researchers of the University of Szeged. The platform was available between October 4, 2024, and November 30, 2024, in which eight-week period, the Commission members and also possible new participants were encouraged to register and discuss. Despite the special recruiting efforts of the organisers, only onemember of the Territorial Commission for Co-Design commented on the platform. The organisers expected more participants during this phase of the process, but due to multiple challenging factors, like the busy schedule of the local farmers or the low interest towards participatory processes and sustainability focused initiatives in Hungary. To thoroughly uncover the underlying reasons of the low participation rate, the researchers of the University of Szeged conducted seven semi-structured expert interviews between November 4, 2024, and November 12, 2024. These both helped to understand the lack of responses, and also to refine the content of the bricolage, that was created after the conclusion of the pilot phase.

Influence, Outcomes, and Effects

The process had partly achieved its goals and had a mixed result. On one hand, the collection of the local farmers and actors’ knowledge was created via a bricolage. Moreover, a conversation has been started between the agricultural producers to focus more on the goals and topics of the EGD, such as farm to fork or short food supply chains. Additionally, a case study has been performed regarding the state of the participatory processes in Central Transdanubia, which highlighted the biggest barriers and their possible solutions in a regional scale co-design process. On the other hand, the seal of quality that was planned to be created had to be dismissed due to the fact that a different project has implemented and created its own similar seal prior to this initiative’s. Moreover, the online platform that was created during the pilot phase and was intended to facilitate a wider debate, saw a very limited number of activities from the participants.

The communication of the project outcomes was a complex question, especially because of the uniqueness of the farm to fork topic and short food supply chains. Due to the fact that the implementation of the F2F concept mostly involves the actions of the local farmers – who were the main participant group of the process – the most urgent need was not to communicate to a wider public, but rather to have an influence on the participants. The 110 local food producers, who were reached out to in the beginning by the organizers, are the ones who need to implement changes in order to achieve the goals of the EGD. The change in the attitudes and behaviour of the 19 Territorial Commission participants and the 6 additional interview partners is the real measuring way to assess the success of the process. Hence it can be seen as a positive sing that many of them have requested to be informed about the future developments and related projects or initiatives. However, a formal assessment is yet to be performed, just like a communication campaign to a wider audience. Apart from the entrepreneurs, the other most important target group is the decision makers and researchers working in the field, who can be reached via conference presentations and papers. The later are still under finalization, but the researchers of the University of Szeged have already presented the results in four different scientific conferences, but this number is still rising month-by-month. The value of the research that was done as part of the process can be showcased by the fact that several other, farm to fork or food producer participation related projects, institutions have reached out to the University of Szeged following these conference presentations. This shows the groundbreaking nature and importance of the addressed questions, which have a larger impact, than just the farmers of the Central Transdanubia region.

Finally, the researchers of the University of Szeged are still actively working to formulate the policy recommendations and convey them to the local decision makers, but just like it has been highlighted before, the Central Transdanubia region lacks any formal legislative entity, hence it is difficult to find the right stakeholders.

Analysis and Lessons Learned

Although the process has only partially achieved its initially intended results, the experimental nature of the project and the need of replanning in multiple occasions have created unique and valuable lessons. This is true both form the perspective of the implementation of the EGD and its farm to fork concept, and also from the viewpoint of the organization of participatory processes and enriched democratic innovations. Most of the takeaway messages can be applied in other, rural and developing parts of Central or Eastern Europe, but there are also lessons that are valuable for regional initiatives all over the EU. To analyse the results of the processes and to turn them into more general takeaway messages, the consortium partners of the PHOENIX Horizon 2020 project utilized the framework of the four democratic goods by Graham Smith and also identified six key challenges that need to be addressed. Additionally, there are some lessons that are important, however do not fit into the above-mentioned frameworks, hence they are explained in the next paragraphs.

A valuable lesson that needs to be highlighted is that the participants showed a limited interest in discussing on the online platform during the pilot phase despite the monetary incentives that were planned and communicated to be given to them. The interviews and the participants responses highlighted that they rather want the promise of tangible and effective outcomes, than small incentives. There are local actors - mostly farmers who have moved here from Budapest or other major cities - in the region who are familiar with the goals of the EGD and support sustainability and co-creation focused initiatives with their participation. However, they are mostly sole employees who have changed their corporate office jobs to farming in rural areas and work extremely hard in order to achieve financial stability in their new lives. This means that most of them have barely any free time to participate in processes like this, and when they take part in an action, they want to see tangible outcomes and changes. Rather than long term plans or unimplemented policy recommendations. Hence, by only offering a small amount of monetary incentives and nontangible plans, it is nearly impossible to keep their attention and maintain a high retention rate. However, this phenomenon is not exclusive to the Transdanubia region, this can be also experienced in other parts of Hungary or Europe. Hence, the findings of this study can be implemented as a valuable lesson for a wide range of EGD and DI related initiatives.

Additionally, beside the four democratic goods, Graham Smith’s framework also highlights two institutional goods: efficiency and transferability [17]. Due to its online nature, the Transdanubia initiative can be considered very effective due to its low cost for the participants and the organisers as well. There was no need to rent out a venue for the public debate, while on the other hand, the participants could save the time and financial cost of the travelling. Moreover, the value of the regional scale is that in this case, it enables transferability to other territorial scales. The examined problems have foundations on a micro scale, such as on a settlements level, because most of the participants came from smaller villages and represented the problems and ideas of the smaller scale local communities. However, the final bricolage contains the ideas and problems of a larger geographical scale, hence it represents multiple counties. Moreover, to a certain extent, the findings can be implemented to a larger area than the Central Transdanubia Region. Although the Balaton area has some unique attributes, many of its problems come from its post-socialist background and Middle-European location, hence the findings of the bricolage can be implemented in other parts of Hungary or the EU.

In addition to the four democratic goods and the six challenges, the consortium partners of the PHOENIX Horizon 2020 project had a special focus on three other aspects: impact on trust on institutions, impact on efficacy of participants, impact on learning of participants. The later was well achieved in the Transdanubia initiative thanks to the public debates, where the participants were able to learn from each other’s ideas and experiences. Farmers coming from different settlements or sectors were able to hear about other’s best sustainability practices. A great example of this is the two sectors with the most representers, the winemakers and bakers, because the later were able to learn about how working together and forming joint associations helps in producing the best wines of Hungary. Thanks to its online form, the process also had a positive impact on the efficacy of participants, because it did not require any travelling from them. Moreover, the 90 minute public debates with 3 to 5 participants were an effective format regarding collecting as many ideas and reflections as possible, without restricting anyone’s voice. Finally, considering the impact on the trust on institutions, it is certain that there’s a huge amount of mistrust in Hungary, especially from the sole proprietors and SME-s who have to comply with the same laws and regulations as the big companies. As a result of this, there were participants who brought up negative experiences with authorities, but other people tried to convince them with positive cases, hence increasing everyone’s trust towards the local and national level authorities. Moreover, the participants’ trust towards the EU seemed to increase after they realised that it cares about their opinion regarding the implementation of the EGD and its farm to fork concept.

The four Democratic Goods

The consortium partners have decided to use Graham Smith’s analytical framework, which consists of four democratic goods: inclusiveness, popular control, considered judgement and transparency [17]. They are designed to allow for qualitative comparison of different types of democratic innovations [18], hence especially useful to draw conclusions from the project’s initiatives.

1. Inclusion

Inclusiveness can be examined from multiple perspectives, like gender balance, age composition or the diversity of the represented SMEs. In the Transdanubia initiative’s Territorial Commission, there were 11 male and 8 female participants. Although all in all there are slightly (51%-49%) more females living in the region [19], agriculture and its most prominent business, wine making is dominated by males, hence the Commission’s gender distribution can be considered fairly ideal. The same can be said about the age of the participants, which is heavily dominated by middle aged people, just like most of the farms of the region. The lack of under 30 participants can be seen as a deficiency, but the region as a whole suffers from ageing and the migration of the youth to big cities like Budapest. However, more elderly participants would have been ideal, the reasons of the lack of them can be separated into three groups. First of all, most pensioners are only consumers and not producers of the food and liquors, secondly, the debate was held online and required the usage of a computer or smartphone connected to the internet, which certainly discouraged some elderly individuals. Finally, the whole process was focused on sustainability and the European Green Deal, which topics tend to be less important for the elderly population in Hungary. Regarding background of the participants, the diversity adequately represents the wide variety of the local SME-s, with a special focus on winemakers, who are historically the most significant group of the local businesses.

Due to the farm to fork concept being the focus topic of the process, there were no goals of including people from outside the agriculture and tourism sectors, but this decision certainly reduced diversity and excluded some additional viewpoints. Moreover, the usage of the online tools and platforms were not mentioned as challenges or barriers by any participant or invite receiver, but it definitely could have been a limiting factor for some people living in rural areas without Wifi connection. As a result of this, the conclusion can be drawn that although the final composition of the Territorial Commission can be seen as diverse, it certainly lacks the representation of marginalized people.

Inclusion can be also examined regarding the effectiveness of the participation. In the case of the Transdanubia process, a diverse number of voices were allowed to be heard and there were rarely any instances when the facilitators had to intervene in order to prevent a person or a small group to dominate the whole debate. Additionally, the fact that only one person submitted new comments on the pilot platform shows, that everyone else were able to express all of their ideas during the Territorial Commission debates and self-censoring was not significant.

2. Empowerment or Popular Control

Popular control was strong regarding the content of the TCCD debates, the pilot platform and the final bricolage, because the participants were the ones who submitted the ideas and expressed their opinion. Although the topic of farm to fork was given, it was up to the participants to decide which subtopic would they like to dive into and prioritize. This led to the Commission members taking an open-minded approach and enriching the debate with bringing in the connection of F2F to the populations health or the education system. On the other hand, the design of the pilot platform and the form of the final outcome was led by the organisers due to technical reasons and was less controlled by the opinion of the participants, which might be one of the reasons of the low response rate in the pilot phase.

3. Considered Judgment or Quality of deliberation

The participants of the process were local entrepreneurs working in the agriculture and tourism sectors; hence they already had a wide knowledge regarding the farm to form practices already implemented. There was no need for a classical training or teaching session provided by outsider experts or the facilitators, the participants showed that they rather prefer learning from each other’s experiences and ideas. The amount of knowledge the participants had was well showcased by their active brainstorming and intense debates. However, when looking at the quality of deliberation from the viewpoint of “did everyone’s voice got heard?”, it has to be emphasised that for 3-5 participants, 90 minutes were often not enough time. Fortunately, every Territorial Commission debate had to chance to run longer, hence most of them went on for 110-120 minutes. With this modification, every voice was heard in a safe and not rushed environment. The tool of the public debate used for deliberation enhanced the participants knowledge about the F2F practices and the democratic innovations at the same time.

4. Transparency

Transparency can be examined from two different aspects: internally and externally. The later was less important in the case of the Transdanubia initiative, because the target group of the created bricolage are the farmers themselves, who mostly already knew about the process as a result of the 110 sent invitation. However, the best F2F practices and ideas can be also valuable for professionals outside the region, this is why the researchers of the University of Szeged have presented the findings at multiple conferences. On the other hand, it is certain that a green transition is only possible with the changing of the behaviour of the consumers, which has yet to be addressed in the process. Regarding the internal transparency, the initiative had mixed results. At the beginning of each TCCD session, a 10 minutes introduction phase happened, where the facilitators presented the PHOENIX Horizon 2020 project with the goals and the structure of the process. However, by each Territorial Commission meeting, it became more and more evident, that the participants were more focused on sharing their ideas and listening to other members opinions, than getting to know the project. Hence by the fourth debate, there was less emphasis put on presenting the project structure, but the participants still had enough knowledge to comfortably present their ideas and debate.

The six PHOENIX challenges

In the initial stages of the PHOENIX Horizon 2020 project, the consortium partners collected and summarized the six most important challenges regarding the success of the EGD related participatory processes.

1. Scope

The first challenge focuses on setting adequate time-frame horizons for the topics at stake, in this case, for the implementation of the farm to fork concept. The importance of targeting outcomes and goals that have a foreseeable and tangible time scale was heavily emphasized by both the participants of the Territorial Commission meetings, and also by the interviewed experts. As the effects of climate change are appearing more and more evidently in the whole region, people feel the urge to act and implement sustainable practises. However, the first, short scale steps are not well defined, preventing a wider change in behaviour. The difference was also evident by analysing the success of the Commission debates and the struggle of the online platform. Each public debate had the goal to uncover the most important problems in 90 minutes, which relatively short timeframe sparked motivation and resulted in a very active discussion and participation. On the other hand, the eight-week time window of the pilot phase to comment on the platform barely resulted in any activities. Moreover, the few responses could be also due to the lack of a short and exact date for the output bricolage to be used in practice or in a decision-making process. There is a high chance that the participants felt like devoting two hours from their free time to participate in an online public debate to collect the problems of farm to fork implementation is worth it, but after they realised that the outcome bricolage had no timeline to be put in practical use, they refused to spend any minutes on writing comments on the platform. Hence, although having less restrictions regarding the time for participation can be generally see as an advantage, in this case, it worked out much better to have a limited, 90 minute meeting time that can be expanded by 15 or 30 minutes according to the needs of the participants, than having a restriction free eight-week time window.

2. Complexity

The second challenge emphasizes the need to improve the understandability and tractability of complex issues and their interrelated relations. Although the EGD’s content can be complicated for certain people, this process solely focused on the concept of farm to fork, and specially on two aspects of it: food production and food processing/distribution. The participants were all experienced entrepreneurs working in these two areas, hence there was no need to simplify the various interconnected areas related to F2F. In neither Territorial Commission meetings did the need for training or teaching by the facilitators arise from the participants; even the initial introductions proved to be lengthy and less interesting to the TCCD members.

3. Management

In most participatory processes, optimising the synergies among stakeholders in a transcalar and inter-scalar perspective is extremely important in order to be successful regarding the implementation of the outcome. However, in this case, the lack of a legal decision maker entity in the region resulted in not needing to address multilevel governance bodies. Although, this made the process more simplistic, easier to carry out and organize, but this was also the main reason why the created bricolage is hard to be implemented short term. The later had a heavy effect on the participation rate during the pilot phase.

4. Constitution of public

The fourth challenge focuses on behavioural changes of actors to increase their active partnership in the initiatives. In the case of Transdanubia, the main tool to combat this challenge was to hold each public debate online and create a website-based platform. This lifts the burden of having to travel to participate, which saves both time and money for the participants. However, it is important to note that online tools have their limitations too, which was experienced especially during the pilot phase and also lessened the inclusive aspect of the Territorial Commission meetings.

5. Conflict

Promoting a more deliberative dialogue to face conflictual visions and expectations for the EGD can be a major challenge, but was well tackled in the case of Transdanubia. Although there are many conflicts and societal fault lines in the region, the concept of working for a sustainable future as a united goal helped in preventing major conflicts between the participants. Even if there were minor differences regarding how people would want the transition to happen, everyone was open to hear about the others opinion. Thanks to the diverse backgrounds of the participants, with the region and the goal of sustainability as common grounds, the members actively listened to each other and viewed the disagreements as a learning experience, rather than conflict sources. However, it needs to be highlighted that most of the participants were entrepreneurs with similar interests, hence, the conflict potential could have been much bigger with involving people from different parts of society, such as tourists or weekend house owners.

6. Trust

Increasing mutual trust relations among the participants is a key challenge, that helps in preventing conflicts and increases the effectiveness of the discussion. Making the online debates feel like a safe environment was the job of the facilitators, but with the three of them in a meeting where 3 to 5 entrepreneurs participated helped a major amount. This way if a person was too oppressive, or not communicating properly, the facilitators were able to step in; this was rarely necessary during the four meetings fortunately. Having face cameras turned on by the facilitators and by most of the participants created a welcoming atmosphere despite the online setting. Additionally, during the debate, the ideas and opinions were collected and written out anonymously on the Jamboard, resulting in a more open and creative brainstorming.

Tangram developed for the pilot and relation among it and the process implemented

The consortium partners of the PHOENIX Horizon 2020 project have chosen the metaphor of the Tangram, which is a Chinese dissection puzzle consisting of seven flat polygons, which can be assembled together to form thousands of different natural and anthropic shapes/figures within its square frame. For PHOENIX, the Tangram visualises the possibility of imagining a series of tools and different participatory and deliberative methodologies (the coloured tans) that can be combined and aggregated in order to design diverse forms of Enriched Democratic Innovations (the shapes) that can better help to face the challenges of the EGD in different situated contexts.

In the case of the Central Transdanubia region, the main goal of the tangram development was to choose a set of specific tools and methods that could help the mobilisation of the local population in the participatory process. During the initial creation of the tangram, the idea of a seal of quality for participatory agricultural production with the use of a participatory guarantee system emerged. If implemented correctly, the seal could have been the stepping stone to establish a short food supply chain that connects the producers and the costumers. However, before the start of the participatory process, a local quality seal, called “Éltető Balaton-felvidék Védjegy” was created by the Éltető LEADER Group and the Veszprém-Balaton European Cultural Capital 2023 initiative [20]. As a result of this, the PHOENIX Transdanubia tangram had to be modified in order to have a new end goal and set of tools that do not overlap the already existing quality seal but still contribute to the creation of participatory short food supply chains. Hence, the new tangram emphasized the regional aspect of the process, which appeared to be a significant challenge in effectively mobilizing the local farmers. The farm to fork topic developed in the tangram was a solid foundation, which was planned to be explored throughout an online public debate focusing on problem identification, discussion and co-creation.

The tangram was implemented in multiple ways, mostly during the planning of the Territorial Commission meetings, and partly during the online debates and later on in the pilot phase as well. The biggest advantage of it was that it gave a solid foundation for the planning and the organization of both the Territorial Commission of Co-Design and the pilot, the created document was always there to refer to when a new question or challenge emerged. This meant that even if the final form of the pilot was different from the original planned, it still had a well-founded base, especially regarding the available tools for democratic innovations.

Territorial Commission of Co-Design impact on the pilot process

The original idea developed by the PHOENIX Horizon 2020 project consortium partners was to - based on the created tangrams - a Territorial Commission of Co-Design should be established, which would set the foundations for the pilots. Consequently, in most cases, the Territorial Commissions could be well separated from the created pilots in terms of actions, the number of participants and time scale, with only a few overlaps occurring. However, in the case of Transdanubia, due to the initial setbacks and the experienced difficulties, the TCCD and the pilot phases were heavily linked together and form a complete participatory process as a whole. The consortium created a framework about how the Territorial Commission s should be created and operated. According to this, the Transdanubia’s can be viewed as an inclusive one because it contained all three “sides”: the participants, the local agency who was the partner in the implementation and the organizers. The later were the facilitators of the discussion. The selection of the cooperating local authority or agency was a difficult question because the region lacks a designated legal entity that has ruling power over the whole territory. The final decision landed on the Central Transdanubian Regional Innovation Agency, which both helped in the planning of the process and also had a participant represent them, their opinion in the Commission.

The initiative held four successful Territorial Commission meetings in 2024 between July 9 and September 25, where besides the three organisers/facilitators and the representer of the Agency, 15 local entrepreneurs participated. They represented different aspects of the Farm to Fork concept with a diverse background focused on agriculture and tourism. Apart from the sectoral diversity, the participant recruitment process also addressed the micro-regional differences of Transdanubia by inviting people from a wide range of settlements and holding the meetings online. At the start of the debates, the participants were shortly introduced and got provided a brief overview of the project, focusing on the goals of the TCCD and the role intended for them in shaping the pilot and the final outcome. The aim of these debates was to create a deliberative discussion regarding the implementation of the farm to fork concept in the region. As a result of this, the emerging ideas were both planned to be the foundations of the final bricolage and also the key cornerstones of the pilot phase. Hence, the Territorial Commission members had a major impact on the pilot phase, because they were the one’s deciding the pilot’s content. Moreover, the interconnectedness of the TCCD and the pilot was showcased by the fact that the Commission members were encouraged to participate in the pilot phase as well.

What obstacles or challenges did you encounter in deploying the process, and how did you address or work around them?

Due to its experimental nature and its novelty in the region, the process had a challenging path. It had to be replanned or modified multiple times in order to succeed, but this complicated journey is what made the initiative extremely useful regarding the study of participatory processes and the real-world implementation of the EGD. Both from a researcher and from a policy maker perspective, the lessons learned throughout the hardships are the most important ones. Hence in this section, we would like to highlight three key situations that required replanning and served as valuable lessons for the organizers.

First of all, during the planning phase and at the time of the creation of the tangram, the main goal set out was to create an agricultural quality seal with the use of a participatory guarantee system. However, before the start of the participatory process, a local quality seal, called “Éltető Balaton-felvidék Védjegy” was created by the Éltető LEADER Group and the Veszprém-Balaton European Cultural Capital 2023 initiative [20]. As a result of this, the PHOENIX Transdanubia tangram had to be modified in order to have a new end goal that do not overlap the already existing quality seal but still contribute to the creation of participatory short food supply chains. The new aimed outcome was a bricolage on the topic of farm to fork based on the ideas of the local food producers.

As the result of the additional time required to replan the final outcome from a quality seal to a bricolage, the original scheduling of the process had to be pushed back by a few months. The consequence of this was that the planning stage got finished in May 2024, and the organization and participant recruitment started in June 2024. However, the fact that the local farmers were reached out to at the beginning of the summer season and the proposed Territorial Commission online debate sessions were scheduled to be in July severely affected the number of participants. Tourism in the Balaton region has extreme seasonality, which peaks at the summer, hence this is the busiest time for every local farmer and entrepreneur. Even though the online Commission discussions did not require any travel from the participants, many of them still declined the invitation with the reason that they do not have the time to participate in a 90 minute debate. This was the most evident in the case of the fourth Territorial Commission meeting, which was planned to be held in July just like the previous three online debates, but all three of the participants who should have joined decided in the last minute to withdraw and rather just share their opinions in an email or phone call. The organizers tried to increase the number of participants by reaching out to 110 local farmers and offering them multiple possible dates for the online discussion via a Doodle voting system. Moreover, a fifth TCCD session was organised at the end of the summer season in September 25, 2024, where three farmers joined.

Finally, after overcoming the difficulties of the change in the outcome and the busy schedules of the local farmers, the last phase of the participatory process was to use an online platform to discuss and develop the ideas for the bricolage. The platform was specifically developed for this purpose and contained the different ideas that emerged during the Territorial Commission meetings. It aimed to be user friendly with an easy registration process and the option to like, dislike or comment and idea, or even to propose a brand new one. The participants who were the most active on the platform were promised to get a minimal financial compensation for their work. Despite all of these, the platform saw minimal activities by the participants and only one of them commented the ideas. The multiple rounds of emails and phone calls to the Commission participants often resulted in answers like “Yes I am going to check out the platform and comment the ideas!”, but in the end only one person did it. The organizers tried to reach local farmers and entrepreneurs outside of the ones who have already participated in the Territorial Commission, but this did not result in any activity on the platform. One of the logical reasons behind the low response rate could be the busy schedule of the farmers, just like in the case of the summer TCCD sessions. But the platform was available between October 4, 2024, and November 30, 2024, which is an eight-week period outside of the main tourism season, and the participants were able to comment whenever they had a free 10 or 15 minutes. Hence the organizing team realized that there must be some more complex reasoning behind the extremely low participation rate, which encouraged them to conduct scientific research on the topic. They reached out to 28 potential interview partners, seven of whom responded positively. One of them was a researcher of the local short food supply chains and was also a member of the Territorial Commission as he is also a restaurant manager in practice. There were two additional local researchers, two implementers of successful Hungarian short food supply chain projects, and two local LEADER group representatives. Comparing the diverse perspectives of these actors to the ones gathered during the TCCD sessions from the local farmers helped the researchers of the University of Szeged understand the underlying societal and territorial differences and transformations in the region. The complex case study that has been prepared based on the Territorial Commission debates, the comments on the online platform, the expert interviews and an additional statistical analysis helps to understand the societal factors behind the participation rates of democratic initiatives not just in the Transdanubia region, but also in the whole of Europe.

See Also

The Transdanubia pilot in the PHOENIX Horizon 2020 project website: https://phoenix-horizon.eu/transdanubia/

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External Links

The PHOENIX Horizon 2020 project website: https://phoenix-horizon.eu/

The University of Szeged Department of Human Geography website: https://human.geo.u-szeged.hu/

The Central Transdanubian Regional Innovation Agency website: https://www.kdriu.hu/

Notes