Project description
Exploring sustainability practices in greenhouse growth
In Europe, greenhouses are under pressure to adapt to changing needs. The push to enhance horticultural productivity, coupled with concerns about land and biodiversity loss, is challenging Europe’s traditional industrial production model. Countries like the Netherlands and Spain face additional pressure to reduce chemical and water usage, while social concerns about migrant worker exploitation further complicate the landscape. With this in mind, the ERC-funded VITALGREENHOUSE project will apply ethnographic methods to investigate sustainability practices within greenhouse agriculture. Focusing on the Netherlands and Spain, it will examine how growers, workers and environmental groups enact various forms of sustainability. It will also develop an analytical framework that views sustainability as a relational practice, while also conceptualising greenhouses as vital landscapes.
Objective
Greenhouses play a crucial role in Europe, ensuring the production of affordable vegetables, but they are under great pressure to change. The EU is encouraging consumers to move towards a plant-based diet, necessitating an increase in horticultural productivity. Simultaneously, the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals include reducing land degradation and biodiversity loss. Such pressures – including requirements to reduce chemical use in the Netherlands and water use in Spain, and social unrest about the exploitation of migrant workers – challenge the industrial model of production. Using ethnographic methods, VITALGREENHOUSE will examine how greenhouse growers, workers, scientists, and environmental community groups are experimenting with sustainability. In Spain and the Netherlands, both leaders in intensive greenhouse use, our team will study how different versions of sustainability are performed in the various and often competing practices of growing food, handling multispecies relations, and addressing workers’ rights. The work is divided into four subprojects: (1) studying the multispecies relations of growers, pickers, and other non-human laborers such as pollinator bees, (2) investigating how growers and workers are adapting to or resisting ‘climate-intelligent agriculture’, a recent iteration of sustainability, (3) examining how greenhouses spark and sustain labour mobilities, creating novel ways of belonging forged through working in the greenhouse, and (4) historicising and contextualising current sustainability practices in the European greenhouse complex. VITALGREENHOUSE will develop an innovative analytical framework that conceives of sustainability as a relational practice and theorises greenhouses as a vital landscapes. Combining political ecology, science and technology studies, and decolonial thought, VITALGREENHOUSE will produce a new understanding of sustainability for environmental anthropology.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences sociology anthropology
- social sciences economics and business economics production economics productivity
- medical and health sciences health sciences nutrition
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture horticulture vegetable growing
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology ecosystems
You need to log in or register to use this function
We are sorry... an unexpected error occurred during execution.
You need to be authenticated. Your session might have expired.
Thank you for your feedback. You will soon receive an email to confirm the submission. If you have selected to be notified about the reporting status, you will also be contacted when the reporting status will change.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
-
HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
See all projects funded under this programme
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
See all projects funded under this funding scheme
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2023-STG
See all projects funded under this callHost institution
Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
1011 JV AMSTERDAM
Netherlands
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.