Table des matières

Couverture

Agroecology: research for the transition of agri-food systems and territories

Foreword

Introduction

1 – Integrating agroecology into agri-food systems

Products resulting from agroecology and their properties

Actors’ strategies

Spatial organization of markets

Dynamics and coherence of the agri-food system

Research questions

References

2 – The agroecological transition of farms

Recent scientific advances

Some examples

Research questions

Developing the necessary transdisciplinarity

References

3 – Leveraging ecological and hydrobiogeochemical processes in multifunctional landscapes

Recent scientific advances

Some examples

Research questions

References

4 – Leveraging genetic diversity in plant and animal breeding

Recent scientific advances

Some examples

Research questions

References

5 – Modelling interactions between living organisms in their environments and socio-economic contexts

Recent scientific advances

Some examples

Research issues

References

6 – Contribution of agricultural equipment and digital technology to agroecology: considering living organisms better

Recent scientific advances

Some examples

Research questions

References

Conclusions

Contributors

Agroecology: research for the transition of agri-food systems and territories

Thierry Caquet, Chantal Gascuel, Michèle Tixier-Boichard, coord.

Thierry Caquet, Chantal Gascuel, Michèle Tixier-Boichard, Michael Corson, Benoît Dedieu, Cécile Détang-Dessendre, Pierre Dupraz, Philippe Faverdin, Laurent Hazard, Philippe Hinsinger, Françoise Lescourret, Isabelle Litrico-Chiarelli, Françoise Médale, Hervé Monod, Sandrine Petit, Xavier Reboud, Lionel Roques, Alban Thomas, Hugo de Vries, Jean-François Soussana

In French: Agroécologie. Des recherches pour la transition des filières et des territoires. ISBN : 978-2-7592-3129-4 © Éditions Quæ, 2020

To cite this book:
Caquet T., Gascuel C., Tixier-Boichard M. (eds), 2020. Agroecology: research for the transition of agri-food systems and territories. Versailles, éditions Quæ, 96 p. doi:10.35690/978-2-7592-3294-9

ISBN print: 978-2-7592-3293-2
ISBN PDF: 978-2-7592-3294-9
ISBN ePub: 978-2-7592-3295-6
ISSN: 2115-1229

Éditions Quæ
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78026 Versailles Cedex

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Creative Commons Licence book (CC-by-NC-ND 4.0).

For any question or suggestion: quae-numerique@quae.fr

Foreword

Over the past decade, many national and international entities have become enthusiastic proponents of agroecology. In 2012, the French Ministry of Agriculture launched the “Agroecological project for France”. This mobilizing project for all of French agriculture is aimed to produce differently by rethinking agricultural production systems and by making them part of collective dynamics, especially through Economic and Environmental Interest Groups, i.e. groups of farmers sharing the same agroecological perspectives (GIEE)[1]. The French Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE) took up the issue of agroecology and weighed in with an opinion in 2016. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) organized the first “International Symposium on Agroecology for Food Security and Nutrition” in 2014. It subsequently organized meetings by world region and shared conclusions of these meetings at a second symposium in April 2018, where it launched the “Scaling up Agroecology Initiative”. At the same time, the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD) and the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE) highlighted their convergence of views on agroecology in a joint note[2]. All of this activity not only stimulated national and international research efforts, but also led to better articulation between societal initiatives and the research systems of the countries of the Global North and the Global South.

Launched in 2011, INRAE’s “agroecology” project is providing a new impetus to research. Agroecology is thus considered as a scientific discipline in its own right, located at the interface between ecology and agronomy. This first project makes it possible to amplify a systemic and ecological vision of research on agroecosystems, considering them as ecosystems managed no longer for the sole purpose of agricultural production, but, more broadly, for the provision of ecosystem services. The objectives of preserving natural resources (water, soil, biodiversity) and cultural heritage (landscape), and mitigating climate change are added to that of producing biomass.

Five research priorities have been identified: knowledge and use of biological interactions in agroecosystems; agroecology of the landscape; multi-criteria assessment of agroecosystems that includes biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services; sustainable management of soil and water resources as a mechanism for agroecology; and the design of new agricultural systems through the mobilization of human and social sciences.

In 2012, this work led to the production of an overview[3] as well as the drafting of recommendations for INRAE. In 2013, a conference was organized by INRAE, under the aegis of the Ministry of Agriculture, bringing together researchers, decision makers and actors from the agricultural world. It was an occasion for exchanges and the insertion of agroecology into the agenda of the research community, of the agricultural world and, more generally, of civil society as a whole. The conference’s deliberations were reported in the free online journal Innovations agronomiques[4].

The term “agroecology” soon started being increasingly used across INRAE – and in society in general – as a new paradigm for rethinking agroecosystems and agricultural activities. In 2014, the “New modelling challenges: agroecology” [5] seminar stimulated progress in the field of representation, prediction and management of agroecosystems. Since 2014, the EcoServ (“Services provided by ecosystems”) metaprogramme has proposed an ecosystem approach to agroecosystems: agriculture is a provider of ecosystem services (and disservices) among which one seeks to leverage synergies and identify antagonisms. This holistic approach also improves agriculture by embracing a systemic vision. The AgriBio programme (“For and on organic farming”), launched in 2000, was supported by a specific research project in 2015. In 2019, it was adopted as an INRAE metaprogramme, Métabio “Scaling up organic farming”. Organic farming is seen as a label based on agroecological principles. The study of the mechanisms that can amplify biological and ecological regulations in agroecosystems is now the basis of a new engineering discipline whose performance deserves to be assessed.

In 2016, with its “Inra2025”[6] orientation document, INRAE decided to intensify research in agroecology by choosing certain themes to study in depth and by widening the field of investigation, considering larger transformations, at the scales of agri-food chains and territories. Agroecology is not a simple or new way of seeing agronomy, but a redesign of agricultural production as part of a social process, with economic, sociological, food and environmental dimensions. This decision led to the launch by INRAE in 2017 of a forward-looking interdisciplinary discussion on the research necessary for agroecology, involving around 80 researchers and teacher-researchers.

This book presents the fruit of this collective reflection. The aim is to share this work and open it up to discussion internally, with our partners in the research community and the agricultural world, and with society at large.

The creation of INRAE as the result of the merger of INRA and IRSTEA in 2020, the expansion of skills, and the implementation of new interdisciplinary metaprogrammes and of “Territories of innovation” projects will help amplify research in agroecology, advance necessary knowledge frontiers, and put knowledge and co-construction at the heart of developments in agri-food chains and territories with the involvement of all actors.

Philippe Mauguin, president and CEO, INRAE

1See https://agriculture.gouv.fr/pres-de-10-000-agriculteurs-engages-dans-les-groupements-dinteret-economique-et-environnemental-giee .

2 Soussana J.-F., Côte F., 2016. Agro-écologie : le positionnement des recherches de l’Inra et du Cirad, 8 p. See https://www.cirad.fr/content/download/11293/132717/version/3/file/Agro-ecologie-Inra-CIRAD-note-longue.pdf .

3See https://www6.inrae.fr/ciag/content/download/5608/42552/file/RevueIAvolume43.pdf .

4See https://www6.inrae.fr/ciag/Revue/Volumes-publies-en-2015/Volume-43-Mars-2015 .

5Garcia F., Gascuel-Odoux C., Soussana J.-F. (eds), 2014. Colloque sur les nouveaux défis de la modélisation : l’agroécologie, Synthèse, INRA, 49 p.

6https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01607768/document

Introduction

Given the increasing world population, environmental and climatic challenges, and the growing scarcity of water and fossil fuel resources, an adaptation of, or even a complete break from, current agricultural production methods has become unavoidable. Agricultural systems will henceforth have to be designed not only to produce agricultural goods, but also to provide other ecosystem services. To this end, agricultural actors will need support from the research community and appropriate training.

In industrialized temperate-zone countries, improvements in productivity of agriculture and its economic competitiveness since the 1950s have been made possible by a modernization process which has resulted in specialization of production systems, expansion of farms and increased reliance on synthetic inputs, agricultural machinery, and plant varieties and animal breeds with high productive potential. The specialization of systems and the alteration and homogenization of environments have made economies of scale possible, both in terms of production and agri-food processing to more standardized food products that better meet the needs of processing sectors and agri-food industries.

During this period, the agricultural sector organized itself by creating frames of reference and advisory structures. Natural environments were considered to be largely abiotic and homogenized through land consolidation and drainage, while agriculture-friendly biotic interactions in the soil and ecosystems were ignored. Advice provided to farms was aimed to optimize production. Agriculture became industrialized. This industrialization generated externalities considered to be positive (“sanitized” environments, without pests and with high productivity), but also negative externalities (soil, water, and air pollution; greenhouse gas emissions; biodiversity loss), whose consequences have led to crucial questions being asked in recent decades. The conclusions by IPBES[7] in its global assessment of biodiversity and ecosystem services are clear: through changes in land use and the use of inputs, agriculture, including animal production, is one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss (IPBES, 2019).

A better compromise between agriculture and the environment has been sought by improving the efficiency of inputs, decreasing discharges of waste into the environment, and even completely redesigning agricultural systems. Several movements (organic farming, conservation agriculture, and eco-farming at the international level; “reasoned” agriculture, high environmental performance agriculture in France, etc.) have proposed terms and advocated concepts to better combine and reconcile the economic, social, environmental and health performances of agriculture. Agroecology appears, including in this context of industrialized countries, as the essential, inclusive and principled way to contribute to the development of sustainable and resilient agriculture.

Founding principles

Agroecology is at the same time a scientific field, a practice and a social movement (Wezel et al., 2009), as shown in Figure 1. Various definitions of agroecology have been developed, associating ecology to varying degrees with other disciplines (agronomy, genetics, sociology, etc.) or with local or traditional knowledge, in pursuit of the sustainability of production or food systems and the preservation and use of biodiversity (Wezel et al., 2018). Interdisciplinarity, the interaction between disciplines, and transdisciplinarity, the interaction between the research community and society, are both key aspects of agroecology.

Figure 1. Agroecology is at the same time a practice, a social movement and a scientific field (based on Wezel et al., 2009).

One objective: leveraging biological processes

Agroecology is above all a new paradigm that aims to leverage biological processes to meet expectations for agrosystems: agricultural production, of course, but also ecosystem services (protecting resources, mitigating climate change, preserving habitats and cultural heritage). A corollary is to consider agroecology as an aim so that, through agricultural systems and adopted practices, agrosystems integrate the ecological functions that guarantee their own sustainability, especially in terms of replenishing nutrient stocks and maintaining productive potential.

From this first paradigm stems a second: leveraging biological processes means accepting and accounting for increased diversity in agroecosystems, which leads to a greater diversity of agricultural products as well as a greater heterogeneity of each product that will have to be processed and included in food products, even in new diets.

This definition makes it possible to clarify what is expected from the research community. Thus, under the terms “smart agriculture” or “sustainable agriculture”, there exists a body of mainly technologically oriented studies on the best possible use of resources. This model of agriculture corresponds to “weak” agroecology, which maintains continuity with current systems, neither advocating for a qualitative leap in the efficiency of the use of inputs, nor explicitly calling to replace them with biological processes (Duru et al., 2014). Weak agroecology contrasts with “strong” agroecology, defined by its pursuit of consistency and sustainability and by the mobilization of biological processes (Duru et al., 2014). This strong agroecology requires in-depth transformation of agricultural production systems. It is this more comprehensive agroecology that is INRAE’s goal, because getting there will require a significant commitment to research, as all agricultural production is concerned and all academic disciplines are involved. This should not be seen as a desire to oppose what currently exists, but should be perceived for what it is: an ambition to rethink the mobilization of biological processes at all levels (species, breed/variety, animal and plant physiology, feed and fertility, animal production methods and cropping practices, future of products and co-products, connections to resources, to forms of energy, to soil and water, location, etc.).

Towards the redesign of cropping systems

The desire to “leverage biological processes”, the underlying principle of building agroecological systems, usually requires redesigning cropping systems, involving changes in, for example, rotations, genotypes used or agricultural practices adopted, articulations between plant and animal production, connections to distribution methods and consumption patterns, organization of landscapes, etc. The field of agroecology is not restricted to plant production alone; indeed, animal production is a major pillar of biological processes given its complementarities with plant production. The monitoring of processes and flows maintained in a dynamic balance from the field to the landscape, which allows for the exploitation and reconstitution of organic and mineral stocks and the development of soil life, lies at the heart of this redesign. Strong agroecology therefore involves going beyond the mere optimization of agricultural systems.

From a very integrative viewpoint, agroecology cannot develop without a demand from society, consistent with the needs of food consumption and their organization into agri-food chains and territories. Some authors therefore incorporate the dimension of food systems into agroecology (Francis et al., 2003; Gliessman, 2006). The in-depth redesign of agroecosystems, and that of agri-food chains and their organization into territories, in line with consumption needs, is an adaptive process that is built while moving forward along a trajectory that cannot be mapped in advance: the transition phase itself therefore becomes a subject of research.

This redesign is based on using principles of ecology. One motivation is to strengthen the resilience of agroecosystems, defined as their ability to adapt to disturbances or to return to...