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Byline: Emilie Coudel, Helene Rey-Valette, Jean-Philippe Tonneau Implementing decentralisation of public policies requires adequate governance devices, but local actors also need new competencies to get involved in the new devices. What are the competencies required, and how can they be built? This paper analyses a Farmer University in Brazil to see how the actors trained have been able to mobilise their newly acquired knowledge for territorial development. We formalised the learning process as the construction of human, social and institutional capital, which, when combined, enable local actors to play an active role in governance. Our evaluation analyses how the students have become involved individually in different organisations, and how the collective involvement of these actors in territorial governance has been possible through the creation of a student association. Although the learning process helped in building the actors' capital, several limits were identified, especially the difficulty in developing legitimate relations with other institutions in the territory.

Byline: Dominique Cairol, Emilie Coudel, Karlheinz Knickel, Patrick Caron This last paper aims to summarise reflexions made in the preceding papers of this Special Issue. We will first show the common conclusions of the different reviews on multifunctionality, and discuss the global state-of-the-art: multifuntionality does not yet appear as a very stabilised concept, and its scientific use suffers from confusions with political discourses. We suggest therefore that research should detach itself from multifunctionality as a political goal and should instead consider multifunctionality as a useful conceptual and analytical framework. In order to support this recommendation, directions for this analytical framework are sketched out, by referring to three main elements which appear in previous papers: functions and their interrelations, reembedding agriculture in society, and linking multifunctionality and sustainability. From this global picture, theoretical, methodological and empirical research gaps are identified. To conclude this paper, we suggest other inputs for research on multifunctionality, from other disciplines which deal with functionalism, and discuss the potential of this concept for rural development.