Voices of the Agora: Exploring transition discourses in La Réunion's agri-food waste system through a participatory research approach

Agri-food waste systems (AFWS) encompass interdependent activities across agriculture, food production, energy, waste management, and urban sectors. They constitute arenas where competing visions of change shape the direction of transitions, notably in rural areas where land and biomass uses are contested. Empirical research on AFWS transition discourses reveals a methodological polarization. Document-based studies offer broad, multisectoral coverage but limited engagement with stakeholders, while participatory studies capture situated perspectives but tend to remain sector-specific. In response, this study develops a participatory, place-based, and multisectoral approach to understand what characterizes the diversity of stakeholder transition discourses within an AFWS. It combines a stakeholder analysis framework, articulating the Multi-Level Perspective and the Multi-Actor Perspective, with a participatory workshop protocol. Applied to the AFWS of La Réunion, the approach brought together 33 participants across four stakeholder groups (Techno-economic Regime, Public, Techno-economic Niche, and Civil Society). Storylines identified inductively from participants' verbatims were used to construct four discourse profiles. The Regime profile is performance-oriented and pragmatic, locating weaknesses outside its own practices and favoring the optimization of the existing system. The Public profile is reformist, relying on sustained public support to redirect the system. The Niche profile is transformative and institutionally oriented, attributing weaknesses to the practices of the dominant model, such as sugarcane monoculture. The Civil Society profile is civic-transformative, combining systemic critique with self-critique and centering citizen mobilization. Results show that stakeholders' structural position is the main factor differentiating their discourses. The study's principal contribution is methodological, providing a transferable approach for characterizing transition discourses in other AFWS. For rural studies, it illustrates how competing visions of rural futures under bioeconomy agendas are carried by differently positioned stakeholders.