Science et vin : entre mondialisation et terroir. Journée de terrain du 02/04/ 2015 : Cheverny et Cour-Cheverny (Loir et Cher).

Le vignoble des appellations d'origine contrôlée « Cour-Cheverny » et « Cheverny » sont situés dans la région viticole de la vallée de la Loire. Située en rive gauche de la Loire. Ils s’étendent entre les bords du fleuve au nord, et les communes de Cheverny et Cour-Cheverny au sud. Ailleurs ils sont limités par les grandes forêts : la forêt domaniale de Russy au nord-ouest et par les forêts de Sologne l'est et au sud (en particulier les boisements continus du parc de Chambord et de la forêt de Cheverny). La forêt est très importante au sein de la zone géographique, et lorsqu'il n'est pas à proximité de la Loire, le vignoble est au coeur de clairières, entre les nombreux massifs boisés de plus ou moins grande taille

The Socio-Cultural Benefits of Urban Agriculture: A Review of the Literature

© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Despite extensive literature on the socio-cultural services of urban open spaces, the role of food-producing spaces has not received sufficient attention. This hampers advocacy for preserving and growing urban agricultural activities, often dismissed on justifications that their contributions to overall food supply are negligible. To understand how the social benefits of urban agriculture have been measured, we conducted a systematic review of 272 peer-reviewed publications, which drew on insights from urban agriculture sites in 57 different countries. Through content analysis, we investigated socio-cultural benefits in four spheres: engaged and cohesive communities, health and well-being, economic opportunities, and education. The analysis revealed growth in research on the social impacts of gardens and farms, with most studies measuring the effects on community cohesion and engagement, followed by increased availability and consumption of fruits and vegetables associated with reduced food insecurity and better health. Fewer studies assessed the impact of urban farming on educational and economic outcomes. Quantifying the multiple ways in which urban agriculture provides benefits to people will empower planners and the private sector to justify future investments. These findings are also informative for research theorizing cities as socio-ecological systems and broader efforts to measure the benefits of urban agriculture, in its many forms.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Comparing the carbon footprints of urban and conventional agriculture

Urban agriculture (UA) is a widely proposed strategy to make cities and urban food systems more sustainable. Until now, we have lacked a comprehensive assessment of the environmental performance of UA relative to conventional agriculture, and results from earlier studies have been mixed. This is the first large-scale study to resolve this uncertainty across cities and types of UA, employing citizen science at 73 UA sites in Europe and the United States to compare UA products to food from conventional farms. Results reveal that the carbon footprint of food from UA is six times greater than conventional agriculture (420 gCO2e versus 70 gCO2e per serving). However, some UA crops (for example, tomatoes) and sites (for example, 25% of individually managed gardens) outperform conventional agriculture. These exceptions suggest that UA practitioners can reduce their climate impacts by cultivating crops that are typically greenhouse-grown or air-freighted, maintaining UA sites for many years, and leveraging circularity (waste as inputs)

Food production and resource use of urban farms and gardens: a five-country study

There is a lack of data on resources used and food produced at urban farms. This hampers attempts to quantify the environmental impacts of urban agriculture or craft policies for sustainable food production in cities. To address this gap, we used a citizen science approach to collect data from 72 urban agriculture sites, representing three types of spaces (urban farms, collective gardens, individual gardens), in five countries (France, Germany, Poland, United Kingdom, and United States). We answered three key questions about urban agriculture with this unprecedented dataset: (1) What are its land, water, nutrient, and energy demands? (2) How productive is it relative to conventional agriculture and across types of farms? and (3) What are its contributions to local biodiversity? We found that participant farms used dozens of inputs, most of which were organic (e.g., manure for fertilizers). Farms required on average 71.6 L of irrigation water, 5.5 L of compost, and 0.53 m2 of land per kilogram of harvested food. Irrigation was lower in individual gardens and higher in sites using drip irrigation. While extremely variable, yields at well-managed urban farms can exceed those of conventional counterparts. Although farm type did not predict yield, our cluster analysis demonstrated that individually managed leisure gardens had lower yields than other farms and gardens. Farms in our sample contributed significantly to local biodiversity, with an average of 20 different crops per farm not including ornamental plants. Aside from clarifying important trends in resource use at urban farms using a robust and open dataset, this study also raises numerous questions about how crop selection and growing practices influence the environmental impacts of growing food in cities. We conclude with a research agenda to tackle these and other pressing questions on resource use at urban farms

Formalizing Objectives and Criteria for Urban Agriculture Sustainability with a Participatory Approach

The last few years have seen an exponential development of urban agriculture projects within global North countries, especially professional intra-urban farms which are professional forms of agriculture located within densely settled areas of city. Such projects aim to cope with the challenge of sustainable urban development and today the sustainability of the projects is questioned. To date, no set of criteria has been designed to specifically assess the environmental, social and economic sustainability of these farms at the farm scale. Our study aims to identify sustainability objectives and criteria applicable to professional intra-urban farms. It relies on a participatory approach involving various stakeholders of the French urban agriculture sector comprising an initial focus group, online surveys and interviews. We obtained a set of six objectives related to environmental impacts, link to the city, economic and ethical meaning, food and environmental education, consumer/producer connection and socio-territorial services. In addition, 21 criteria split between agro-environmental, socio-territorial and economic dimensions were identified to reach these objectives. Overall, agro-environmental and socio-territorial criteria were assessed as more important than economic criteria, whereas food production was not mentioned. Differences were identified between urban farmers and decision makers, highlighting that decision makers were more focused on projects’ external sustainability. They also pay attention to the urban farmer agricultural background, suggesting that they rely on urban farmers to ensure the internal sustainability of the farm. Based on our results, indicators could be designed to measure the sustainability criteria identified, and to allow the sustainability assessment of intra-urban farms

Integrating farming techniques in an ecological matrix model: Implementation on the primrose (Primula vulgaris)

Several studies have proven the importance of field margins in sustaining biodiversity and other work has been done on the effect of field management on field margin flora. However few models have been built to predict the effects of field management on the flora. Our project addresses this need for a model capable of predicting the effect of cropping techniques and their timing on the flora of field margins. Primula vulgaris is a biodiversity indicator, characteristic of undisturbed flora and found in field margins and woodlands: its population has been declining for several years. We created a temporal matrix model of P. vulgaris populations on field margins, taking into account the effects of field, field margin and roadside management based on literature and expert knowledge. We then analysed its sensitivity to demographic parameters by comparing lambda (growth rate) sensitivity and elasticity. We compared the management parameter effect using the relative growth rate of the population after 6 years of simulation. Sensitivity analysis to biological parameters showed the importance of adult survival and seed production and germination. Results show that P. vulgaris is particularly sensitive to broad-spectrum herbicides and that other management techniques like early mowing, scything and scrub-killer (diluted broad-spectrum herbicide or specific herbicide) are less aggressive. Our simulations show that management of cash crops in Brittany is too aggressive for P. vulgaris populations and that 4-5 years of grassland in the adjacent field are necessary to maintain populations

The adoption drivers of new technology: the case of genetically modified crop adoption by French farmers

This work is the first study of adoption of GM crops by French farmers. The GM crop technology case was a fertile field for the study of technology adoption but existing literature mainly focuses on studies of these issues in USA, Africa and Asia. In France, main production area of maize in Europe, the agricultural sector is very atypical compared to the agricultural sector investigated in the existing literature on the GMO adoption. By a study of the GM crop adoption in the French context and within the main production area, the south-west region of France, this study reveals 4 determinant factors that shape the choice of GM or NGM maize cropping. Some of the factors pointed by this study are in line with the existing literature on technology adoption and output uncertainty and input uncertainty (uncertainty on the expected marginal benefits and costs to sustain the new technology). Other factors identified under the atypical French agriculture sector distinctive features are particularly novel. These new factors are linked to the implementation of the UE regulation on GM/NGM coexistence in the context of small fragmented farms (need of coordination between farmers to prevent GM dispersal) and importance of the market outlets proximity to federate farmers. These novel results pinpoint that in the French context there is a need of both vertical coordination (farmers with the operators downstream the supply chain as the outlet industrial) and horizontal coordination (among farmers in neighbourhood situation) to foster the technology adoption in such industry context

La diversité des formes d'agriculture urbaine et de leurs modèles économiques

International audiencePreprint d'un chapitre publié dans un ouvrage QUAE (2022) : « Comprendre, accompagner et outiller les acteurs de l'agriculture urbaine. Contributions de la recherche

Comparing maize management and coexistence means between GM and non GM maize in two french regions

We compared how coexistence in maize at the farm level was i) envisioned in the east of France where GM have never been really cropped, and ii) managed in the south of France where GM maize was cropped in 2006 and 2007. Surveys in respectively 27 and 23 contrasted farms were made in maize-rich sub-regions with high maize pest pressure. Sampling farms for diversity, we used semi-directive interviews with two different protocols for the 2 regions. After data analysis, we identified factors explaining the choice of GM or NGM maize cropping like: presence of maize specialty crops (no GM), presence of other technical scope of progress for maize yield (no GM), perception of corn borer as a risk (more GM) or return time of maize (more GM when maize is frequent). We also identified the different coexistence means preferred according to the region: buffer zone in the South of France with its large fields and sowing period shifts in the East of France where available sowing days are plenty in the spring. We also found out that the results of the first year of testing the GM crop may be the main factor explaining GM maize adoption or abandonment. We will use these results to build a multi-criteria model of maize allocation in a small region