Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the contested research economic imaginaries of 'exchanging knowledge' around food and its implications for developing more inclusive and collaborative policy agendas.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates the contested research economic imaginaries (Jasanoff and Kim, 2009; Jessop, 2008; Levidow and Papaioannou, 2013) of 'exchanging knowledge' around food and its implications for developing more inclusive and collaborative research and policy agendas. In recent years, the concept of 'knowledge exchange' has become increasingly important in developing 'impactful' research by 'bring[ing] closer science and society' (RCUK, 2015). Agriculture and Food constitute an interesting space where 'knowledge exchange' is envisioned as an opportunity for facilitating new alliances and inclusive collaborations around food. However, in many cases, a narrow approach prevails through which 'knowledge exchange' is transformed into a space of contestation and battles between different stakeholders (both academic and non-academic), their knowledges and values around food. This paper will focus on different examples of 'exchanging knowledge around food' in order to investigate the different challenges and opportunities that are opened up for shaping future research and policy around food. On the one hand, it will discuss about the dominance of certain disciplinary frameworks and industry actors in framing and enacting 'knowledge exchange', and thus research and policy, around food. On the other hand, it will look into the prospects for doing 'knowledge exchange' differently (e.g. through the model of 'food hubs') and thus contributing to the construction of alternative research economic imaginaries based on the inclusion of the voices and visions of a wider spectrum of usually marginalised stakeholders.