Evaluation de la durabilité des systèmes de production agricoles : limites des démarches normatives et voies d'amélioration

International audienceThe concepts of sustainable development and multifunctional agriculture are at the origin of several efforts aiming at their clarification and the development of methods to make them operational. The main principles of agricultural sustainability stress the importance of economic viability, environmental protection and social equity. For farms and farmers, the concept of sustainability is commonly grounded by methods and tools to evaluate their contribution these principles. These methods and tools, abundantly developed in France (IDEA, DIALECTE, ARBRE ...) are commonly based on a fixed set of criteria and indicators chosen a priori, a series of preset measurement and monitoring methods to quantify indicators and aggregation and weighting methods aiming at a single note for the sustainability of the farm. The objective of this contribution is to critically review such types of methods and tools showing their unsuitability for common cases in the context of French agriculture such as (i) farms in transition phases or aiming at radical changes in the farming activities, (ii) multifunctional farms or farms strongly dependent upon off-farm activities and (iii) farms inserted in a territory where their sustainability depends on the spatial and organizational arrangements among different farms. The contribution concludes with some principle to develop evaluation approaches to overcome some of the limitations of existing methods

HOW TO EVALUATE THE IMPACTS OF THE EXTENSION OF INNOVATIVE FARMING SYSTEMS AT THE REGIONAL SCALE? SCENARIO ANALYSIS OF ORGANIC AGRICULTURE IN THE CAMARGUE

N° ISBN - 978-2-7380-1284-5International audienceThe Camargue, South of France, is an agricultural region highly multifunctional and with strong issues linking the environment and the society. Evaluating scenarios of alternative agricultural systems extension in this region imply to use tools that allow Prospective, Integrated, Multiscale and Participatory Assessment of Agricultural Systems (PIMPAAS). In this paper, we reviewed the use of three approaches (BEM, ABM and LUCC) for PIMPAAS. After a presentation of the three approaches, we analyzed their advantages and drawbacks, and possible complementarities. As it is not possible to implement the three approaches together at one time, our aim was to make a choice for the Camargue. We found LUCC to be the least suitable approach, mainly because it does not allow participatory processes at farm scale. BEM and MAS appeared to be the most suitable tools as they allow quantitative and ex-ante studies and are able to incorporate the three sustainability domains. Their ways of up-scaling are complementary: BEM seems efficient for up-scaling from field to farm and field to region, whereas MAS allow up-scaling without aggregation from farm to region. We believe that the combination of the two approaches will enable highly participatory evaluations of alternative farming systems. Using the results of this analysis, we recommend using a combination of MAS and BEM in a global framework. We are currently implementing a framework in the Camargue to test this combination and to evaluate its suitability for prospective, multiscale, multicriteria and participatory evaluation