Sociotechnical barriers to the development of social farming

According to the literature, several barriers may obstruct the development of Social Farming. The objective of our paper is to identify the barriers hindering effective collaboration and cooperation among the stakeholders involved. The expected impact of the paper is to raise awareness among stakeholders, empowering them to develop strategies to overcome these barriers. In order to achieve this objective, a methodology has been developed to account for the complex interaction within the multi-actor interplay, and to identify the barriers that emerged during the case study analysis. The adopted methodological approach is participatory, based on observing and critically analyzing multi-actor dialogues within focus groups designed using the “Living Lab” model. The main findings of this study shed light on the barriers that emerged from the participatory experience, providing factual evidence to guide possible interventions aimed at fostering the innovation process. We conducted field research in the province of Foggia (Southern Italy), involving farmers, social enterprises, health-welfare-social institutions, consultants, families of disadvantaged individuals, and representatives of the creative industry.