Diverging Agri-food-imaginaries of startup entrepreneurs in urban and rural areas: A comparative case study from Berlin and Lower Saxony

Abstract

Under the impact of changing societal demands due to global population growth, the effects of climate change and the ecological crisis, agriculture is expected to increase its yields while providing environmental services and respecting planetary boundaries. A growing number of entrepreneurs are seeking to meet these challenges with innovative technologies developed in and promoted by agri-startups. Many of these entrepreneurs are especially new actors in the field who have no background in agriculture and their approaches to the current agri-food-system may be assumed to differ from startups generated by incumbent actors. Such variations may especially result from different knowledge, perspectives, and worldviews relating with different collective visions for the future, as captured by the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries.

The aim of the presentation is to present diverging sociotechnical imaginaries of start-up founders in terms of their spatial origins. We do this by presenting results from qualitative interviews with startup entrepreneurs in contrasting spaces: (1) in an incumbent rural and intensive agricultural production cluster (Lower Saxony, Germany) and (2) in an urban environment characterized by a vibrant start-up scene (Berlin, Germany). We use the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries (STI) to look beyond the mere technical details of the startups´ innovations and give insights on the entrepreneurs´ perspectives on socioecological systems and its transformations in correspondence with technological developments.

Results show an urban-rural divide in perspectives and imaginaries as well as in the types of actors involved and their embeddedness in agri-food-systems. This is reflected not only in spatially differentiated narratives about challenges and collective visions of the future but also in different solution approaches and types of innovations. Incremental innovations are common in a rural setting, while system innovations are more frequently developed in urban places. While imaginaries from the rural setting tend to maintain and manifest current structures, imaginaries from urban actors more often include new system approaches that aim to establish new interrelations between urban and rural areas including new collaborative approaches between producers and consumers. We interpret this as contesting spatial imaginaries with respect to rural-urban linkages: urban actors envision an entangled rural-urban space while rural actors envision a rather decoupled space. Preliminary results indicate that agri-startups in the urban area are not only driven by economic and ecological motives but are more often also motivated by social interests as well, while agri-startups in rural Lower Saxony seem to be rather driven by classical entrepreneurship with the main focus lying on economic interests combined with ecological gains.