Changement de pratiques agricoles.Acteurs et modalités d’hybridation technique des exploitations laitières bretonnes

Cet article porte sur l’adoption croissante de techniques agricoles alternatives, notamment issues de l’agriculture biologique, par les agriculteurs conventionnels. Sans remettre en cause le rôle incitatif des politiques agricoles en la matière, l’article s’interroge, à partir d’une enquête qualitative menée auprès d’exploitants laitiers en Bretagne, sur les facteurs personnels, techniques, sociaux et institutionnels expliquant les décisions des exploitants conventionnels d’adopter certaines pratiques alternatives.This article considers the growing adoption of alternative agricultural practices, notably organic farming, by conventional farmers. Without questioning the guiding role of public policies, the article examine, via a qualitative survey of dairy farmers in Brittany, the role of personnel, technical, social and institutional factors in explaining farmers’ decisions on whether to adopt alternative practices

Terroir et protection de l’environnement : un mariage indésirable ?

À partir de l’exemple de la politique des Indications Géographiques des produits alimentaires (IG), cet article s’interroge sur les processus d’intégration de critères environnementaux dans les politiques sectorielles. Il présente tout d’abord les différentes tentatives de réforme dans ce sens depuis les années 1990, portées par des acteurs de plus en plus nombreux et variés, dont des professionnels agricoles. Leurs échecs successifs, d’autant plus étonnants que les IG sont généralement associées aux terroirs, aux traditions, et au respect de l’environnement, sont expliqués par la fermeture du débat sur des arènes sectorielles très peu publicisées au sein desquelles un sous-segment du ministère de l’agriculture dispose de ressources majeures lui permettant de s’opposer au changement. L’article analyse ensuite le retournement de situation qu’a opéré le Grenelle de l’environnement, en permettant le transfert du débat de politique agricole vers une arène intersectorielle et fortement publicisée, imposant aux opposants au changement un coût politique trop important. L’article souligne ainsi les effets des instruments de politique publique mis en jeu, de la configuration du cadre des négociations et du degré de publicité des débats sur les processus d’introduction de critères environnementaux dans les politiques sectorielles.Based on the example of Geographical Indications (GI) for agricultural products in France, this article addresses the issue of greening sectoral public policies. It describes the successive attempts by an increasing number of social actors (including farmers) to “marry” GI and the environment in the nineties, by introducing compulsory criteria of environmental friendship in the policy. Their repeated failures can be considered as surprising because representations about GIs are usually very close to ideas like the ‘terroir’, traditions and environmental friendship. Such failures result from the fact that the policy debate takes place on narrow sectoral arenas, weakly publicized, in which one single segment of the Ministry of agriculture holds considerable resources and acts as a veto player. The paper then addresses the shift that took place through the ‘Grenelle de l’environnement’, by transferring the bargaining process to a cross-sectoral and highly publicized arena, imposing considerable political constraints on opponents. Through this example, the paper illustrates and outlines the impacts that the configuration of the policy debate (institutional setting), the degree of openness of the policy process, and the policy instruments themselves, can have on the introduction of environment friendly criteria in sectoral policies

How national and local contexts shape the impacts of foreign investment in land: a comparative analysis from three African countries

Recent changes in the global agro–food–energy system, driven in part by consumption trends and climate change mitigation efforts, have led to renewed interest in investment in agriculture and a rush to acquire land among investors. The broader socio-economic and ecological impacts of these land use changes are not always clear and many assessments focus mainly on short-term effects at the local level, without relating them to the wider agrarian and socio-economic transformations that are now underway. Against this backdrop, the objective of the Belmont Forum supported AFGROLAND project is to analyze how large-scale investments in land and agriculture impact on natural resources, poverty, food security, rural economies and local policies in African countries. The project focuses on 3 countries that are, according to a decreasing level of experience in terms of large scale agricultural investments: Kenya, Mozambique and Madagascar. Based on political sciences, economy, sociology, geography and agronomy analytical grid, it adopts a mixed methods approach coupling GIS data, qualitative interviews and quantitative data production (households survey) to conduct within- and cross-country analyses of these dynamics of agricultural investments. The project comprises 3 main components. It tries to understand what drivers and rules of the game pull, push or regulate agricultural investments at the global and at the national level. It also deciphers the investors' strategies and studies how their business models evolve (or not) in relation to global drivers and national/local governance. It then evaluates how these agricultural investments impact on natural resources (soil, water and vegetation), poverty as well as food security at the national, local and household levels. By taking a cross-country comparative approach, looking at three country cases in the South-Eastern sub-region of Africa, we shed light on differences in the national contexts that reshape the influence of international drivers and shape the concrete outcomes and impact of these agricultural investments. Preliminary results of the project suggest that although the international drivers at work are the same, the outcomes at local levels in terms of land use change, ecological impacts, food security and livelihoods differ significantly due to differences in national policy frameworks, land tenure rights, business climate, resource endowments and path-dependencies regarding investment and business practices. In our presentation, we discuss those differences in terms of the business models applied, the success and failures of investments, as well as their impacts at local level, considering the three dimension of sustainable development. The presentation will contribute to a better understanding of how national contexts mediate the impacts of distant drivers on local-level land system outcomes. Furthermore, these results contribute to a better understanding of the multi-scale impacts of global agro-food-energy system changes, allowing for the identification of leverage points for managing sustainability trade-offs and synergies in the global land rush