Governments around the world are seeking to achieve socially just transitions to environmentally sustainable modes of agricultural production. Policy makers have increasingly sought to engage an array of societal actors in the collaborative design and implementation of associated policies, which we refer to as Agri-Environmental Policy (AEP) initiatives. Yet, the existing literature includes little context specific exploration of the motivations of those who engage with such initiatives. This paper addresses this gap by exploring the motivations of a small group of actors who established and coordinated a collaborative group to apply to one AEP initiative in Ireland – the European Innovation Partnership for Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability (EIP-AGRI). This group included three farmers, an agri-environmental policy advocate, and a research scientist. Drawing on assemblage literature, we illustrate how each of these actors' motivations emerged 1) based on the specific relationships in which they operated and 2) based on their imagining of potential future scenarios, which they sought to actualise through EIP-AGRI. This paper thus provides a qualitative account of how motivations emerge as different actors creatively navigate complex sets of relationships. We illustrate the utility of an assemblage approach to explore such motivations in ways that account for specific contexts and the capacity of each actor to engage with possible futures. We conclude that the capacity of collaborative approaches to AEP to appeal to actors from different backgrounds relies heavily on such actors’ ability to envisage and anticipate new possibilities. This line of exploration helps us to better understand the extent to which collaborative AEP may align the multiple goals associated with transitioning to environmentally sustainable and socially just food production systems.

世界各国政府都在寻求实现向环境可持续的农业生产模式的社会公正过渡。政策制定者越来越多地寻求让一系列社会参与者参与相关政策的协作设计和实施，我们将其称为农业环境政策 (AEP) 举措。然而，现有文献几乎没有对参与此类计划的人的动机进行具体的上下文探索。本文通过探讨一小群参与者的动机来解决这一差距，这些参与者建立并协调了一个协作小组，以申请爱尔兰的一项 AEP 倡议——欧洲农业生产力和可持续性创新伙伴关系 (EIP-AGRI)。该小组包括三名农民、一名农业环境政策倡导者、和研究科学家。利用组合文献，我们说明了每个参与者的动机是如何出现的：1) 基于他们运作的特定关系，2) 基于他们对潜在未来场景的想象，他们试图通过 EIP-AGRI 实现。因此，本文提供了一个关于动机如何随着不同参与者创造性地驾驭复杂关系集而出现的定性描述。我们说明了组合方法的效用，以考虑特定背景和每个参与者参与可能的未来的能力的方式探索此类动机。我们得出的结论是，AEP 的协作方法吸引来自不同背景的参与者的能力在很大程度上取决于这些参与者设想和预测新可能性的能力。