The Territorial Food Projects (tfp), in French « Projets Alimentaires Territoriaux (PAT) », is an initiative defined in the French ‘Future of agriculture, food and forest law’ from 13th October 2014. Their goal is to develop sustainable agriculture and food quality at local level in order to contribute to the consolidation of local food chains and to a territorialized food system thought around the economic, environmental and social dimensions of sustainable development. As such, this tool can allow the spread of agroecological transition on a territorial scale.

The objective of tfp is to unite and federate different players of a territory, in order to build a strategy around production, food and their impacts. Tfp can regroup producers, development agencies, local authorities, cooperatives, food companies, civil society and social economy organizations, research organizations, etc. Their first step is commonly a shared diagnosis of agriculture production and food consumption in the territory. The leaders are generally local authorities: municipalities, federations of municipalities, or more recently departments.

They are partly funded by calls for tender issued by the French National Food Program, and must meet the objectives identified in various programs, as the French National Nutrition and Health Program, and laws, such as school canteen supplying, fight against food waste and search for food justice.

Urban municipalities were the first to seize on this mechanism, in an international context where the emphasis on urban food policies is spreading, as evidenced by the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact in 2015. Since then, any type of territory has been able to adopt a tfp, as evidenced by their number: over 400 recognized by the French government in 2023.