Sustainable Agri-Food Systems: Case Studies in Transitions towards Sustainability from France and Brazil 9781350101128, 9781350101159, 9781350101135

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Sustainable Agri-Food Systems

Contemporary Food Studies: Economy, Culture and Politics Series Editors: David Goodman and Michael K. Goodman ISSN: 2058-1807 This interdisciplinary series represents a significant step towards unifying the study, teaching and research of food studies across the social sciences. The series features authoritative appraisals of core themes, debates and emerging research, written by leading scholars in the field. Titles are comprised of jargon-free introductions for upper-level undergraduate and postgraduate students in the social sciences and humanities, and research works on specific aspects of food-related topics for postgraduate students and scholars. The Agency of Eating, Emma-Jayne Abbots Agri-Food and Rural Development, Terry Marsden Anxious Appetites: Food and Consumer Culture, Peter Jackson Concentration and Power in the Food System: Who Controls What We Eat?, Philip H. Howard Digital Food, Tania Lewis Food and Animal Welfare, Henry Buller and Emma Roe Food and Femininity, Kate Cairns and Josée Johnston

Sustainable Agri-Food Systems Case Studies in Transitions towards Sustainability from France and Brazil Claire Lamine

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 This edition published in 2022 Copyright © Claire Lamine, 2021 Claire Lamine has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. vii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image: Lettuce field near Valencia in Spain © Miguel Sotomayor/Getty Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Control Number: 2020939737 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-0112-8 PB: 978-1-3503-2761-0 ePDF: 978-1-3501-0113-5 eBook: 978-1-3501-0114-2 Series: Contemporary Food Studies: Economy, Culture and Politics, 2058-1807 Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters

Contents Acknowledgements List of Acronyms Introduction 1

2

3

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A dynamic and pragmatist approach to sustainability transitions in agri-food systems: Building blocks I. A dynamic mapping of sociological approaches to food systems’ sustainable transitions II. Towards a systemic, dynamic and pragmatist approach to agri-food systems transitions III. Key issues around food system transitions and challenges for social scientists Sustainability transition processes at the farm scale: A new agricultural ethos? I. Ecologization trajectories: Case studies from organic agriculture and from pesticide reduction II. Changes in farmer identity: A new agricultural ethos? III. Farming with uncertainty IV. Farming with nature: Nature and technique in ecologized farming Conclusion The role of advisers and collective dynamics in agroecological transitions I. Transformations in the landscape of advisory systems and collective dynamics II. Spatial and social proximity and webs of legitimization III. Production and circulation of knowledge Conclusion Sustainability transitions at the food chain scale I. Lock-in mechanisms against input reduction and triggers of change at the scale of food chains

vii viii 1

7 7 14 15

23 24 36 44 49 52

55 55 61 68 73 75 76

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Contents

II.

Redefining interdependencies by building one’s own sociotechnical system (Biocoop) III. Agreco: Territorial agroecology or conventionalized organic agriculture? Conclusion

5

6

7

Sustainability transitions at the territorial scale in France and Brazil: The role of governance innovations I. An analytical framework to address territorial ecological transitions II. The Drôme valley III. The Southern Ardèche case IV. The Serra do Rio region in Brazil V. The relevance of the regional scale for studying ecological transitions The process of political construction of organic agriculture and agroecology in Brazil and in France: Alliances and controversies I. Pathways of politicization of ecological agricultures in France II. The politicization of agroecology in Brazil III. Paraná: A pioneer dynamic that is hindered by state scale political changes IV. What does the confrontation of the Brazilian and French cases teach us? Conclusion Sustainable agri-food systems and social justice: Crossed lessons from the Brazilian and the French experiences I. The affirmation of the concept of food and nutritional security in Brazil as an outcome of a convergence of social movements actions and claims II. The territorial approach: Facilitator of the reconnection between agriculture, food, environment and health with a concern for social justice

86 93 97

101 102 106 110 117 124

129 132 141 146 149 153

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Conclusion

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References Index

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Acknowledgements I want to thank the many farmers and local actors who gave me lots of their precious time in my fieldwork and all my colleagues and students in France, Europe and Brazil – I am particularly grateful to Claudia Schmitt, Juliano Palm, Alfio Brandenburg and Thaise Guzzati with whom I elaborated the analyses of the Brazilian case studies. Thanks to David Goodman for encouraging me to publish this book, based on my habilitation work, and Jean-Paul Billaud who supported me in this habilitation process (a French academic oddity). I  also want to thank the Bloomsbury editing team and finally the anonymous reviewers of the preliminary version of my manuscript. And, of course, thanks to all my friends and family for all the good ideas and things we share, besides all foodand nature-related ones.

Acronyms ABA ADDEAR

AFN AMAP ANA ANR ANT AOPA ASPTA CEASA CEDRAF CEO CIRAD

CIVAM CMR CNAPO CONDRAF CONSEA CONTAG CSA

Associação Brasileira de Agroecologia (Brazilian Society of Agroecology) Association de Développement de l’Emploi Agricole et Rural (Association for the Development of Agricultural and Rural Employment) Alternative Food Networks Associations pour le Maintien de l’Agriculture Paysanne (Organisations to Support Peasant Agriculture) Articulação Nacional de Agroecologia (National Articulation of Agroecology) Agence Nationale de la Recherche (National Research Agency) Actor Network Theory Associação de Agricultores Organicos do Paraná (Association of Organic Producers of Paraná) Agricultura familiar e agroecologia (Support and Services for Alternative Technologies Projects) Centros de Abastecimento (Supply Centre) Conselho Estadual de Desenvolvimento Rural e Agricultura Familiar (State Council of Regional Development and Family Agriculture) Chief Executive Officer Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (Agricultural Research and International Cooperation Organization) Centres d’Initiatives pour Valoriser l’Agriculture et le Milieu rural (Initiative Centers for Agriculture and Rural world) Curitiba Metropolitan Region Comissão Nacional de Agroecologia e Produção Orgânica (National Commission for Agroecology and Organic Production) Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Rural Sustentável (National Council for Sustainable Rural Development) Conselho Nacional de Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional (National Council for Food and Nutritional Security) Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura (National Confederation of Agricultural Workers) Community Supported Agriculture

Acronyms CSO EBAA EMATER ESR EU FAO FASE FBSSAN FETRAF FNAB GAO GI GIEE IFOAM INRA MDA MLP MST NGO OF PAA PLANAPO PNAE PNAPO PGS PNR PRONAF PT SYAL

ix

Civil Society Organization Encontro Brasileiro de Agricultura Alternativa (Brazilian Encounter of Alternative Agriculture) EMpresa de Assistência Técnica e Extensão (National Extension Services) Efficiency-Substitution-Reconception European Union Food and Agriculture Organization Federação de Órgãos para Assistência Social (Federation para Social Assistance) Forum Brasileiro de Segurança e Soberania Alimentar e Nutricional (Brasilian Forum of Food and Nutritional Sovereignty and Security) Federação Nacional dos Trabalhadores e Trabalhadoras na Agricultura Familiar (Federation of Family Farm Workers) Fédération Nationale de l’Agriculture Biologique (National Federation for Organic Farming) Grupos de Agricultures Organicos (Group of Organic Producers) Geographical Indication Groupement d’Intérêt Economique et Environnemental (Environmental and Economic Interest Group) International Foundation for Organic Agriculture Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (National Institute for Agronomic Research, France) Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrário (Ministry of Agrarian Development) Multi-Level Perspective Movimento Sem Terra (Landless Movement) Non-Governmental Organization Organic Farming Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos (Food Acquisition Programme) Plano Nacional de Agroecologia e Produção Orgânica (National Plan of Agroecology and Organic Production) Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar (National Programme for School Food) Política Nacional de Agroecologia e Produção Orgânica (National Policy of Agroecology and Organic Farming) Participatory Guarantee System Parc Naturel Régional (Regional Natural Park) Programa Nacional de Fortalecimento da Agricultura Familiar (National Programme to Support Family Agriculture) Partido dos Trabalhadores (Labour Party) Systèmes Alimentaires Localisés (Localized Food Systems)

x TM UFFRJ US

Acronyms Transition Management Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro Rural Federal University) United States (of America)

Introduction

While most human communities have long relied  – and some still rely  – on a universal pattern that holistically articulates agriculture, food and the local environment, these elements have been disconnected through the processes of modernization and industrialization. These processes have had the effect of increasing not only detrimental environmental impacts but also health problems all over the world. The close articulation of agriculture, food, environment and health may seem evident but it is increasingly problematic. The quality of food products and diets is impaired by intensified systems and the increasing consumption of ultra-processed foods (Louzada et  al. 2015; Moubarac et  al. 2017). The proportion of those who are overweight has doubled since the 1960s (Gordon et al. 2017), with a high prevalence of obesity and metabolic-related diseases even in developing and middle-income countries, as well as in the poorest segments of the population in developed countries (Ford et al. 2017). In this context, the need for sustainable transitions that reconnect agriculture, environment, food and health is increasingly advocated at various levels, from local civil societies to scientific commissions and global policymaking agencies (International Food Policy Research Institute. 2015; IPES-Food 2017; Willett et al. 2019). It is present in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development from the United Nations (UN 2015), with an explicit articulation between food security, nutrition and sustainable agriculture in Sustainable Development Goals 2 (SDG2) ‘Zero hunger’. In the social sciences, past, current and possible future transitions of agrifood systems have been tackled through a diversity of theoretical approaches and applied to a diversity of contexts. In the 1980s and 1990s, critical approaches inspired by a Marxist political economy tradition focused on the global-scale analysis of negative trends and the impacts of global food relations (Friedmann and McMichael 1989). These approaches drew attention to the unsustainability

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of the ‘dominant’ (or mainstream, or corporate) agri-food system (Buttel 2006). Other authors suggested more reformist and optimistic approaches enhancing actors’ agency and capacity for action and explored the possibility and promises of alternative paradigms for rural development such as multifunctionality or agroecology (Van der Ploeg et al. 2000; Levidow 2015). While the development of alternative food networks (AFNs) in the global north has given rise to a large body of literature, it is characterized by intense debates between more critical approaches that highlight the potential elitism of these AFNs and more optimistic ones that highlight their transformative power (Goodman et al. 2011). From the late 1990s onwards, the above approaches were refined and adapted to the evolving context, in order to study, for example, the mechanisms through which the global food system responds to the growing criticism by forging a new ‘corporate environmental food regime’ (Buller and Morris 2004; Campbell 2005). At the same time, other approaches have emerged, using concepts emanating from other fields and theoretical backgrounds, and applying them in agri-food studies. This is the case of the multilevel Perspective and ‘sustainable transition’ approaches (Geels 2010) as well as of approaches inspired by Actor-Network Theory (ANT) (Whatmore and Thorne 1997). Despite very different ontologies, these approaches share a common principle, which is to take into account the diversity of actors involved in agri-food systems and to analyse their interactions and interdependencies. This book is anchored in food studies and rural sociology and aims to contribute to these recent debates over sustainable transitions as a research object and these different theoretical and methodological approaches in order to develop an original systemic, dynamic and pragmatist approach to agricultural and agri-food systems transitions inspired by recent scholarship in pragmatist sociology. Systemic, because it focuses on the articulations and interdependencies between the different components of the agri-food system, defined here as the array of actors, institutions, rules and devices involved in the production, processing, distribution and consumption of food products. Dynamic, because it studies the processes of transformation that over time redefine (or not) the interdependencies that block or promote ecologization processes. Pragmatist, because it considers agri-food systems as systems of actors and institutions that have different ideas, visions and aims that guide their action and may enter in alliances, controversies and conflicts. Pragmatist or pragmatic sociology is often described as having been developed in the 1980s in opposition to the then dominating critical theories of Pierre Bourdieu and his followers by theorists such as Luc Boltanski, Laurent

Introduction

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Thévenot, Bruno Latour and many others. The sociology of critical capacities (also known as justifications or ‘cités’) of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot has analysed the cognitive and moral grammars on which argumentations are based in everyday situations of both coordination and conflicts (Boltanski and Thévenot 1991). ANT offered a new conceptualization aimed at overcoming the ontological structures of modernity and the separation of human (or society) and nature (and non-humans) (Latour 1991). Both theoretical schools have addressed environmental issues, including the notion of a new ‘green order of worth’ proposed by Lafaye and Thévenot (1993) – a conceptualization that may seem to reduce the actual diversity of ecological visions (Blok 2013)  – and a redefinition of democracy, aimed at bringing controversies into the democratic process (Latour 1999; Barthe, Callon and Lascoumes 2001). Partly inspired by these approaches, this book develops its own pragmatist approach, aimed at analysing jointly actors’ ideas, visions and aims, the possible changes in their practices, as well as the transformations of these ideas, visions, aims and practices over time, and how such transformations contribute to a redefinition (or not) of the interdependencies that make up the agri-food system. Key to this approach is the analysis of debates and controversies over visions and models of ecological transition of agriculture and food in the ‘social worlds’1 that are involved in these issues  – that is, social movements, the academic world, the agricultural world and public policy. This analysis of debates and controversies is necessary to unravel the complexity of argumentative processes and understand why and how some visions and models become more influential and dominant while others are marginalized. This book tackles the cases of organic agriculture and input reduction in France. We give special attention to the current emergence of the agroecological paradigm in France and Brazil, developing empirical case studies of these two countries and analysing how and under which conditions this paradigm facilitates and guides new transition pathways. France and Brazil are two major agricultural countries and food exporters. Even though the social structure of French and Brazilian agriculture is very different, farming in both countries is at the heart of controversies and social struggles between its ‘dominant’ forms and ‘alternative’ forms, between a ‘large’ and ‘small’ agriculture, categories that are quite heterogeneous, as we will see in this book. Connected to these controversies and social struggles surrounding economic, environmental and social issues, public policies in both countries have recently been forged based on the notion of agroecology. In Brazil, pressured by social movements, agroecology has progressively been integrated into the public

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policies related specifically to family agriculture, starting in the late 1990s, at a time when organic agriculture’s institutionalization was still weak. In the case of France, since 2012, agroecology has been adopted by the government as an all-encompassing frame of reference that concerns all of agriculture, in a context where organic agriculture had been institutionalized since the early 1980s. Brazil has implemented pioneering food and nutrition policies with strong social, health and education components, strongly articulated with these family farming and agroecological policies. Brazil’s national agroecological policy received an FAO policy award in 2018. Beyond the case of agroecology and agricultural and food policies, France and Brazil are two countries with a strong state, with a highly complex set of institutions and mechanisms aimed at involving social and economic actors in the elaboration, implementation and evaluation of public policies, which could be described as ‘thick’ institutional democracies (although highly threatened in Brazil by the recent political changes). Brazil has been a pioneer in constructing and experimenting with inter-sectoral public policies that incorporate a strong concern for social justice and social participation, partially influenced by Paulo Freire’s emancipation theory, whereby stakeholders should to be protagonists of their own story and take part in the construction of appropriate initiatives and policies. France also has adopted innovative public policies to address rural development and ecological transition at the regional and territorial scale, with a concern rather focused on local development and territorial justice. France and Brazil are also two countries that are, although to different degrees, affected by strong political changes. The dismantling of Brazilian policies since the recent political turmoil (the then president impeachment in 2016 and the 2018 elections) raises major concerns as to the future trajectories of the country’s agri-food system and the fate of its innovative policies. In France, a looming political and social crisis may lead to other priorities in the near future, as the frequent change of environmental ministers in the years 2017–19 suggests. In both France and Brazil, and in other countries elsewhere in Europe and Latin America, the current context and its key challenges raise innumerable questions that express the complexity of ecologization processes. Why do farmers change (or not) their practices and reduce or decrease the use of chemical inputs, or even ‘convert’ (or not) to organic farming? How can the ecological transition of agriculture be accompanied by a transition of consumers practices towards more sustainable diets? Of course, these questions prompt others: how can farming or consumption practices change if those of the other actors in the agri-food system, from upstream input suppliers to downstream processing and

Introduction

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distribution, do not change too? For example, how can pesticides be reduced when downstream chains demand standardized and ‘perfect’ products – qualities that pesticides help to guarantee? The complexity of transition mechanisms makes it necessary to articulate different scales of analysis. Some approaches claim to do this within an integrated conceptual framework, such as the multilevel perspective approach, However, my proposal in this book is rather to develop complementary perspectives on transition processes at different scales and focus on different analytical objects. This book will thus offer different complementary perspectives and analytical building blocks on ecological transitions within agri-food systems, based on the different case studies that I have carried out over the last fifteen years both in France and in Brazil. The objective is to offer readers, whether they are students, academics or people interested in agri-food issues, different options to address the complex issue of agri-food systems transitions. These options vary in terms of scale (global/national/territorial/food chain/networks/individuals); of the system components on which the analysis focuses (producers/farmers/food chain actors/policymakers, etc.); of analytical objects (practices, discourses, policies, interdependencies, etc.); and, of course, of theoretical frameworks. The possible combinations between scale, system component, analytical object and theoretical framework are, of course, numerous and not all will be explored in the book. The aim is to encourage readers, and particularly students, to find their own way and analytical trajectory between these different scales and options. We begin with a discussion of the dynamic and pragmatist approach to agri-food systems’ transitions, which is the backbone of this book and its building blocks (Chapter 1). It then develops these building blocks which offer complementary insights on agri-food systems’ ecological transitions. This will start with a study of ecologization processes at the farm scale (Chapter 2): the characteristics of farm trajectories when they transition towards more ecological practices, such as organic agriculture or integrated production, the changes in farmers’ identity and conception of their work, the importance of the notions of autonomy and resilience. Then we turn to the role of rural development and agricultural extension structures and the collective scale of networks in supporting ecological transitions (Chapter  3). Chapter  4 addresses ecological transitions at the food chain scale, considering the diversity of their actors, based on French and Brazilian case studies. Chapter 5 adopts a territorial scale to address ecological transitions and show how these rely on a combination of grassroots initiatives and governance innovations, and discusses the issues of social justice and territorial equity that are raised by the flourishing of local

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food projects. The last two chapters (Chapters 6 and 7) address the political construction of agroecology in the French and Brazilian contexts, and the lessons that can be learned from these experiences to accelerate the reconnection between agriculture, food, environment and health within agri-food systems transitions.

Note 1 We borrow here Anselm Strauss’s (1982) definition: social worlds form on the basis of a shared activity that generates a perspective and a shared engagement with a dynamic community organized around places, organizations, technology and meaning construction in a diversity of arenas.

1

A dynamic and pragmatist approach to sustainability transitions in agri-food systems: Building blocks

The need to transition to more sustainable food systems, increasingly advocated at different levels, from local civil society to global policymaking, is addressed through a variety of approaches in diverse disciplines. In recent years, several collective books have focused on this challenge (Spaargaren, Oosterveer and Loeber 2013; Marsden and Morley 2014) and have characterized the key questions that are addressed to the social sciences. The aim of this chapter is not to suggest another narrative about these challenges and questions but rather to suggest a chronological periodization of the sociological approaches to agri-food systems transitions that have been developed in the past decades. With no pretention to be exhaustive, it aims at helping readers, especially students, to find their way in the jungle of food studies and at offering a more Latin insight into a context where most reviews and syntheses focus on the English-language literature. It then introduces the systemic, dynamic and pragmatist approach adopted in this book.

I. A dynamic mapping of sociological approaches to food systems’ sustainable transitions A lasting focus on the production side and on food chains dynamics Until the early 1990s, rural sociology (and geography) and food sociology or anthropology remained quite distinct scholarships:  rural sociologists would study the changes in agriculture and the rural world without addressing food-related practices and issues (Mendras 1967), while food sociologists and anthropologists would study food-related practices and cultural aspects

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of food consumption without considering agricultural changes and the wider food system (Fischler 1990). In France, like in many other countries, rural sociologists and food sociologists were in different teams and laboratories. The notion of food system was not tackled as such in these scholarships until the late 1980s, although in the 1970s, the French rural economist Louis Malassis had suggested the analytical notion of ‘food system’, defined as the set of interdependent elements that work together towards satisfying the food needs of a given population in a given space and time, mainly at the global scale (Malassis 1979, 1996). Food systems started to be discussed in international rural sociology journals in the late 1980s, with H. Friedmann and P. McMichael’s work on the evolution of national agricultures and their conceptualization of ‘food regimes’ (Friedmann and McMichael 1989), focused on historical changes and power relations. In the US literature, food regime theories have taken a critical stance to highlight the negative trends in global food relations and their effects on resource-poor farmers (Friedmann and McMichael 1989). They have also studied the adaptation of the global food system to the growing criticisms confronting it, as exemplified in the emergence of a ‘corporate environmental food regime’ (Campbell 2005). In France, in the same period, the focus has rather been on understanding regulations in food chains, partly under the influence of the original conceptual framework of conventions theory (Eymard-Duvernay 1989; Boltanski and Thévenot 1991), but partly also in order to account for the diversity of dynamics linked to the development of geographical indications (GIs) and quality signs. The key concept of conventions was defined as encompassing ‘practices, routines, agreements, and their associated informal and institutional forms which bind actors together through mutual expectations’ (Salais and Storper 1992, 174). This approach led to identify a series of convention types or cités:  market performance, industrial efficiency, civic equality, domestic worth, inspiration and reputation (Boltanski and Thévenot 1991), as well as green justifications (Lafaye and Thévenot 1993). The application of this theoretical framework to the agri-food sector (Allaire and Boyer 1995) has led to a focus on forms of coordination among actors, in contrast with a focus of food regime theories on power relations. Coordination is however understood not only in a consensual sense, and the convergences as well as the differences of interpretations among different actors are subject to a symmetric attention. Both in France and in many other countries, this framework has inspired a wide range of studies applied to diverse kinds of food chains, networks or situations (Deverre and Lamine 2010; Ponte 2016).

Dynamic and Pragmatist Approach: Building Blocks

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While convention theories are a specificity of the French scholarship about agriculture and food chains, in Italy, starting from the 1990s, intense debate on agrifood and rural ‘districts’ has developed in the scientific community and beyond (Iacoponi et  al. 1995; Brasili and Fanfani 2006), leading to the incorporation of these concepts into national regulations as recognized governance patterns. The main theoretical influences here are those of institutional economics and learning organizations (Iacoponi et  al. 1995; Saccomandi and Van der Ploeg 1998), and of the Marshallian theory of industrial districts (Courlet 2002). These agri-food districts, codified into a national law in 2001, were defined based on a criterion of local specialization, following the definition of industrial districts. Controversies have thus emerged about the effects of this specialization, which may have ambiguous if not detrimental effects on the social and ecological dimensions of rural development (Belletti et  al. 2017), an argument that also arises over GIs and initiatives focused on specialty products in general in the French and other contexts. The 1990s were characterized not only by the development of quality signs and qualification dynamics but also by that of agro-environmental policies at the EU scale. These developments led to the emergence of the ‘post-productivist compromise’ (Marsden 2013) that was enacted in diverse public and private conventions and quality standards. They spawned a critical literature on both public agri-environmental schemes and private certifications (Morris and Potter 1995; Winter 2000; Campbell 2005; Hatanaka and Busch 2008; Bourblanc and Brives 2009), as well as new approaches to rural development. These approaches started to assess the emergence of a re-peasantization process and alternative paradigms of rural development, at least in European contexts, focused on viable forms of agriculture and fairer relations between producers and consumers (Van der Ploeg et al. 2000; Renting, Marsden and Banks 2003).

The consumption turn and the alternative food networks literature In the 1990s, most studies focused on quality signs, commodity chains or agrienvironmental schemes addressed the role of these initiatives and schemes in rural development (Terry, Banks and Bristow 2000; Fine 2004), but overlooked the consumption side. In contrast, the turn of the century was also a ‘consumption turn’ in agri-food studies, with a call to reintegrate food and consumers into the analysis of rural development and agricultural dynamics (Tovey 1997; Whatmore and Thorne 1997), and to focus on the interrelations between production and consumption (Goodman 2002; Goodman and DuPuis 2002; Lockie 2002).

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Meanwhile, in response to the industrialization of food systems and the recognition of its environmental impacts, as well as the deepening public health concerns associated with diverse crises such as that of the ‘mad cow disease’, new alliances between producers, consumers and sometimes other actors developed. During the 2000s and beyond, they generated an abundant literature on alternative food networks (AFNs) (see Allen et al. 2003; Goodman, DuPuis and Goodman 2011 for a review). Despite blurry definitional boundaries, in the literature the notion of AFNs generally relates to networks that seek to link producers and consumers in direct ways and/or at the local scale. They are called ‘alternative’ because they are opposed to mainstream food systems’ principles of distance and standardization (Goodman 2002; Allen et  al. 2003; Lamine 2005). As they are most often promoted by civil society organizations, some authors use the notion civic food networks (Renting, Schermer and Rossi 2012). AFNs encompass a wide variety of initiatives such as community-supported agriculture (CSA) groups, farmers’ markets, community gardens and other kinds of marketing schemes that are not always new. Indeed, part of this recent and current dynamic appears to be the effect of a revival of essentially traditional forms of exchange and interaction. Other kinds of initiatives, such as collective local brands and GIs, have also been developed, especially in Europe, in order to establish supply chains and marketing schemes that differ from mainstream food systems (Brunori 2007; Tregear et al. 2007). These initiatives that can be called ‘quality food networks’ are usually taken by other kinds of stakeholders than those involved in the types of AFNs mentioned above; they are mostly endorsed by producers’ organizations and/or other agri-food chain actors (cooperatives, processors, retailers, etc.). They also mostly focus on specific products, whereas AFNs would rather include a diversity of products, and they target tourists or distant consumers, whereas AFNs mostly develop short food supply chains. However, some authors would range all these different initiatives under the same category of AFNs (see Deverre and Lamine 2010 for a review). The rich debates supported by the increasing number of studies about these diverse forms of AFNs led to the acknowledgement of the process of politicization of food as not just a commodity but also a link to the construction of more sustainable futures for a diversity of actors. They also led to intense ongoing controversies over the transformative potential of AFNs – do alternative food systems only provide alternative options for their members or do they influence the larger agri-food system? (Allen et  al. 2003)  – and their potential elitism

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(DuPuis and Goodman 2005; Born and Purcell 2006) or, in other words, their inability to address food justice issues (see Goodman et  al. 2011 for a wider discussion of these issues).

A vanishing US/European divide between a more critical and a more reformist stance? This debate about potential inequalities in food access and about food justice is much more present in the North American scholarship (Mares and Alkon 2011; Agyeman and McEntee 2014) where it has been on the agenda for a few decades (Clancy 1994; Koc and Dahlberg 1999), than in the European one which appears at first sight to be less critical and more ‘reformist’. This resonates with the fact that American scholars have long tended to focus more on a critique of industrial food systems, on radical forms of opposition to the industrial food system and on inequalities and social justice issues, while European scholars focus rather on the possibility of reforming public policies and the food system (Goodman 2004). Of course, this contrast between US and European  – and especially southern European – literature has to be understood in a sociopolitical context where the relatively decentralized governance of rural development, which characterizes Europe as opposed to the United States,1 potentially allows the participation of a wide variety of actors in the definition of rural development models. This leads to what can be seen as this ‘more reformist’ European perspective where alternative and quality food networks as well as their scholars are also more directly involved in public policies (e.g. rural development and multifunctionality) (Fonte 2008). This contrast between a North American ‘oppositional’ standpoint versus a more reformist European perspective is however partially blurring today. On the one hand, the development of farmers’ market movements, food hubs and food policy councils in the United States and Canada has led to less of a focus on ‘radical’ initiatives. On the other hand, even in the context of a more reformist European literature, we find more radical and critical currents, and debates about potential inequalities in food access and about food justice have gained importance in Europe in recent years (Hochedez and Le Gall 2016). In fact, the social justice focus, far from being marginal today within agri-food studies, could turn out to be their next step, after three preceding periods that have focused mainly on agrarian issues (in the 1980s), environmental issues (in the 1990s) and food issues (in the 2000s) (Constance 2008).

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Overcoming the binaries between conventional and alternative In the AFN literature, the fact that alternative networks (e.g. communitysupported agriculture, community gardens, farmers’ markets, etc.) are considered as autonomous objects and are mostly studied in isolation often leads to a failure to examine the interactions between them and other initiatives, including those stemming from more conventional stakeholders. In the real world, food systems barely fit into such circumscribed boundaries as those defined through AFNs and more conventional networks; instead, they tend to borrow from different models (Lamine 2012, 2015; Garçon 2015; Lamine, Garçon and Brunori 2018). Some initiatives or networks embody intermediary forms, as in the case of Slow Food. Whereas the debates on quality food networks and especially GIs initially focused on production systems and producers, neglecting consumers and civil society’s potential roles, a bridge with the AFNs’ concern for overcoming the production/consumption gap (Goodman 2002) has been provided by some food networks that have developed around local breeds and varieties, and traditional recipes, to which Slow Food has given an unprecedented visibility in the public space (Miele and Murdoch 2002; Fonte 2006; Brunori 2007). In his manifesto, Slow Food founding father Carlo Petrini introduced the concept of consumers as co-producers (Petrini 2004), and the aphorism ‘eating is an agricultural act’ has become the key principle of Slow Food initiatives. However, given the characteristics of products promoted by Slow Food – high quality, low quantities, high prices – some scholars have identified an internal contradiction in the Slow Food discourse when applied to the daily food of masses of people (Pratt 2007). In this book, I argue for an intertwined approach that aims at overcoming/ transcending binaries between alternative and conventional networks (Marsden and Morley 2014) in order to build a relevant research framework for assessing the intrinsic diversity of agri-food system transitions.

The influence of more generalist conceptual frameworks This can be supported and enriched by the analytical concepts and tools provided by different theories that have emerged and been refined in the past thirty years, as rural and food studies are of course influenced by more generalist conceptual turns in the social sciences. Without claiming any exhaustiveness, of course, we can mention here transition studies, Actor Network Theory (ANT),

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socio-ecological systems, and other theories that emerged throughout the 2000s and 2010s, such as pragmatist sociology in France, practice theory (partly developed in reaction to transition studies) and assemblage theories.2 The expanding field of transition studies has had a growing influence since the 2000s. Sustainability transitions approaches3 focus on transition mechanisms defined around a particular technology or sector, either for understanding past transitions as in the multilevel perspective (MLP) approach (Geels 2004; Geels and Schot 2007) or for governing transitions towards a specific sustainable goal, as in the transition management (TM) approaches (Rotmans et  al. 2001). The MLP approach conceptualizes transition as the processes of regime reconfiguration under pressure of the ‘landscape’ (exogenous economic, political and cultural context) and the ability of niches (spaces where radical innovations are developed by small networks of actors) to be integrated into the dominant sociotechnical regime. This conceptual framework has indeed been increasingly applied to food systems (Spaargaren, Oosterveer and Loeber 2013; Elzen et al. 2017), and especially to study the transformative potential of AFNs. These can be considered as sociotechnical niches within broader sociotechnical regimes, in a macro landscape characterized by the globalization of the food system. When these niches enter into contact and conflict with the incumbent sociotechnical regimes, they may succeed in removing legal, technological and cultural barriers to their own development and to changes in production and consumption practices (Brunori, Rossi and Guidi 2012). ANT approaches focus on sociotechnical controversies, alliances, enrolment processes and alignment of visions within networks (Callon 1986), and adopt an ethnographical stance in order to understand how actors progressively change their perspectives, due not only to relational processes but also to sociotechnical devices and artefacts. Several authors have turned to ANT in order to explore the entwinement of natural and social entities in food networks (Whatmore and Thorne 1997; Stassart 2003). This has led to more optimistic accounts of food system transitions than those offered by political economy approaches to food regimes, with their narrative focused on an ‘irresistible and unimpeded enclosure of the world by the relentless mass of the capitalist machine’ (Whatmore and Thorne 1997, 250). The idea is to consider food systems as composites of various actors or ‘actants’ – human and non-human alike – in interaction, all seeking to form and maintain alliances, associations and relations (Callon 1986), instead of focusing on the bifurcation between global and local processes.

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II. Towards a systemic, dynamic and pragmatist approach to agri-food systems transitions The notion of agri-food system (and not just food systems) that will be used along the coming chapters aims at highlighting the interactions between agricultural and food (production and consumption) dynamics and practices and at analytically encompassing the diversity of actors involved in the production, processing, distribution and consumption of food products: farmers, middlemen, processors, civil society, agricultural institutions, public authorities and so on. The approach which will be developed in this book considers agri-food systems as systems of actors and institutions that may have different visions and aims guiding their actions but yet are interdependent. Its key principles are borrowed from various theoretical frameworks mentioned above: food regimes theory, transition studies, and ANT. The first principle, key to all these theoretical strands despite their differences, is to analyse the interactions between the different components and actors of a sociotechnical system (here, the agri-food system) in a dynamic way. However, while the established ‘doxa’ within transition studies considers that a regime reconfiguration occurs when a niche develops sufficiently to be able to progressively replace the incumbent regime, recent studies focused on the role of diverse initiatives in agri-food transitions have suggested that such transitions result more often from the effect of a combination of niches that impact on different components of an agri-food system (Bui et  al. 2016; Rossi, Bui and Marsden 2019). They have also explored the complexity of transition mechanisms at various scales, in order to understand how changes in practices are facilitated and shown that transition mechanisms rely on a combination of civil society (lobbying, grassroots initiatives) and private and public action that act on the different components of the agri-food system  – and on governance innovations that link these actors and initiatives (Lamine et al. 2012; Bui et al. 2016). This focus on the combination of diverse initiatives does not mean an optimistic vision of the potential of such combinations and hybridization processes, but rather relies on a critical perspective focused on the effects of alternative/conventional clashes (and controversies) in terms of ‘redifferentiation’ processes (Lamine 2017). This is why it is important to consider the variety of visions and possible controversies between actors and social groups, a second key principle of my approach, drawn from ‘French pragmatism’, which shares with American

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pragmatism the concern for the contested emergence and construction of public problems (Dewey 1927), and has developed refined analyses of the trajectories of visions, paradigms and controversies linked to contemporary public problems and especially environmental ones (Cefaï 1996; Chateauraynaud 2011). My approach to agri-food systems transitions is thus systemic, dynamic and pragmatist (Lamine, Bui and Ollivier 2015):  systemic and dynamic because I study how transition processes result from the transformation of the interdependencies between the different components and actors of agri-food systems over time; and pragmatist because I examine both the changes in actors’ visions and practices and, within these, the different and sometimes conflicting visions between them of what an ecological transition should be, as well as the possible controversies and compromises. Transitions are indeed most often ‘contested transitions’ (Marsden 2013), and the diversity of visions and values at play have to be taken into account. A pragmatist approach (in its sociological meaning) allows us to trace this diversity of values, visions and interests, as well as these possible controversies. Within research-action approaches that aim not only at analysing but also at transforming reality, it can be combined with a pragmatist stance (in its philosophical meaning), where methods of dealing with problems are decided upon with concerned or affected actors (as opposed to experts designated by their institutions), and collectively experimented with and evaluated in terms of their consequences (Dewey 1927). In contrast to the Habermasian vision of deliberative democratic processes where a good solution or decision has to be devised through a discursive process, the idea is that a solution or decision is defined as good (or not) based on the consequences of its application and thus on collective experimentation, rather than on mere collective deliberation.

III. Key issues around food system transitions and challenges for social scientists The complexity of transition mechanisms makes it necessary to articulate different scales of analysis, which some approaches claim to do within an integrated conceptual framework, such as the MLP one, while my proposal in this book will rather be to develop complementary perspectives on transition processes at different scales and focusing on different objects in the different chapters, based on French and Brazilian case studies: the farm scale (Chapter 2),

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the farmers groups and networks’ scale (Chapter  3), the food chain scale (Chapter 4), the territorial scale (Chapter 5) and the national or regional scale of public policies (Chapters 6 and 7). The above review of approaches to agri-food systems transitions raises several transversal and cross-scale issues that will also be addressed in these different chapters: the need for and the effect of new forms of governance that favour food democracy; the issue of inequalities and food justice; and the integration of ecological dimensions and health issues.

The need for and the effect of new forms of agri-food governance Governance innovations and forms of governance that are likely to support ecological transitions are a key and widely debated issue in agri-food studies. Many critical studies have shown the expanding role of corporatist governance (Campbell 2009; Fouilleux 2010), and have argued for reflexive forms of governance (Marsden 2013). Food governance has been tackled at various scales, from the international scale of food and agriculture organizations (Fouilleux, Bricas and Alpha 2017), to the local scale of city and regional food councils (Crivits et al. 2016), through the national scale of food and agricultural policies. At these different scales (international, national, local), the need for and the effect of new forms of governance favouring food democracy remains a key issue to be explored. Which governance instruments and approaches are more likely to favour food democracy? Are these instruments of food democracy laboratories or do they embody new forms of neoliberal governmentality? What are the empowerment processes that lead to changes in power relations? Who are the actors included in food governance, and who are those that remain excluded? How are the different components of the agri-food systems represented, and how are specific organizations or individuals chosen? In many cases, actors and/ or organizations are chosen because they are considered as representative of the issues (they are the ‘spokespersons’ of these issues). Another way to tackle this choice of involved actors is to choose those who are legitimate to tackle the issues needing attention and/or who feel concerned by them, even though they might not be representative of their organization or formally appointed by it and might not be influential in the decision system. In project governance, choosing a mix of representative, legitimate and concerned stakeholders has positive effects in terms of actual participation of the different individuals in the debates (Lamine 2018). In any case, actors involved in governance have different visions of food system transitions. How do we navigate differentiated, often conflicting values? What are the timescales that are considered through the governance

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instruments that are set up? The development of short-termism and ‘project proliferation’ (Sjöblom and Godenhjelm 2009) seems at odds with the intrinsic nature of sustainability issues that demand longer-term perspectives to address environmental as well as social problems. How are the different sectors involved in food system transitions and sustainability also involved in governance? All these questions have to be asked and discussed when studying governance structures and instruments and when implementing project governance. As we will see along the chapters of this book, France and Brazil are two contrasting and interesting cases to tackle the issue of agricultural and food governance. Whereas in France, agricultural and food policies remain quite disconnected despite recent support policies for territorial agri-food projects, Brazil appears as a pioneer for having implemented food and nutrition policies linked to agricultural ones that encourage poor farmers to adopt environmentally friendly practices based on the agroecological paradigm. Innovative laws and public policies have been set up and implemented within a wider programme articulating agriculture, food, environment, health and social justice (Grisa et al. 2011), although it has been severely threatened since 2016. The Brazilian governance system around these issues of family farming and food security has been thought to favour both this necessary inter-sectoriality and the inclusion of social movements along with public institutions, through specific inter-ministerial and joint committees.

Just sustainability? The issue of inequalities and food justice The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (United Nations 2015) calls for the inclusion of sustainable consumption and production patterns, as well as for the promotion of ‘peaceful and inclusive societies’ that promote ‘access to justice for all’ as central to development actions. Sustainable transitions inevitably involve major issues of social justice, as they often exclude some actors and social groups. It is not only sustainability transitions in agri-food systems that are at stake but also just sustainability transitions (Lamine, Darnhofer and Marsden 2019). The distributional aspects of food production and consumption (farmers’ access to land and resources, consumers’ access to quality and healthy products) are often overlooked in most food system approaches (Thompson and Scoones 2009), as are power relationships within food systems (IPES Food 2015). These issues are debated in diverse forums at local, national and international scales, which led to the emergence, in the mid-1990s, of the food sovereignty concept (Wittman 2011) and to its inclusion, along with the right to food, within some public policies and even constitutions, as in Brazil, for example.

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The literature about food systems and their sustainable transitions and reform has tended to overlook social justice issues and questions like ‘sustainability of what, and sustainability for whom?’ ‘Sustainability per se is an empty goal for food system reform, unless what will be sustained and for whom are specified’ (Anderson 2008). In agri-food studies, the debates over AFNs have raised major social justice issues. These networks claim to favour sustainable transitions of both production and consumption practices for their consumers and producers; however, they raise issues of social inclusiveness and territorial justice, because they often emerge at the local scale in specific places and are strongly dependent on local skills and resources (Goodman, DuPuis and Goodman 2011). On the other hand, the food justice literature and debates have not directly addressed ecological transition processes, primarily because they focus on social inequalities and the way to address them, more than on sustainability issues. The emergence of the notion of ‘just sustainability’ in the field of environmental justice (Agyeman and Evans 2004) suggests an articulation of these two concerns. Indeed, environmental inequalities reinforce social ones. Some authors highlight the need to address not only symptoms (such as inadequate and unjust access to food) but also causes (structural inequalities and structural organization of food systems) (Mares and Alkon 2011), and to consider both ‘distributive’ and ‘procedural’ aspects of food justice. AFNs have triggered numerous debates about their impacts and limits in terms of social justice in both these distributive and procedural dimensions. The lack of redistributive capacity of AFNs has long been discussed in the related literature (Goodman, DuPuis and Goodman 2011), and the transition that may stem from them has often been criticized as being more a process of selective ecologization of ecogentrification (Quastel 2009) than of a just transition. In procedural terms, while some authors promote AFNs as laboratories for food democracy (Hassanein 2003; Levkoe 2006; Renting et al. 2012), others show that food citizenship often remains defined by consumers’ freedom and ability to choose, rather than by their participation in discussions and actions aiming at a deep transformation of the food system (Allen and Wilson 2008; Guthman 2008). In sum, the potential of these solutions to achieve lasting social justice is strongly contested. It is important to note that most of the literature about social justice in agrifood systems is about urban areas and urban food strategies (Allen and Guthman 2006; Friedmann 2007; Jarosz 2008). In rural areas, social justice issues might be of a different nature. Specific risks exist in rural areas as opposed to urban situations in terms of social justice, despite the common idealization of rural community solidarity. Even though closer relationships might lead to greater

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concern for vulnerable social categories, the lack of public institutions and programmes specifically targeted at marginalized groups, both on the farmers’ and the consumers’ sides, might not be offset by local solidarity. As poverty is more scattered, underprivileged populations are often more difficult to identify.

A (renewed) call for an ecological turn in agri-food systems scholarship Most conceptual approaches to agricultural and food systems transitions tend to look at agriculture, food, environment and health separately or link them in pairs: agriculture and environment, with a wide range of ecological agricultural models (Hill and MacRae 1996); health and environment, with concepts such as ‘One Health’ (Galaz et al. 2014) or, more recently, Global One Health or Planetary Health; food and health, with approaches focused on the health impacts of food practices through epidemiological studies (Kesse-Guyot et al. 2017); and agriculture and food, with the increase in use and the diverse conceptualizations of the notion of ‘food system’ and, in the last decade, of the notion of ‘sustainable food systems’ (Béné et al. 2019) (Figure 1).

Ecologically-based agricultural models

re

r Ag

Food system approaches

ltu icu

Interdisciplinarity

Fo od

Agronomy, ecology

New reconnection paradigms? Issues of social participation and social inclusion?

Food and health sciences

En vir

on me

nt

Health sciences

Risk Analysis, One Health

h alt He

Epidemiological approaches

Figure  1 How most approaches tackle agriculture, food, environment and health mostly by linking them in pairs. Source: Lamine, Magda and Amiot (2019).

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Yet, the concern for agriculture, food, environment and health reconnection is not completely new, and some pioneer ‘reconnecting’ approaches had already appeared in the academia or in other circles a few decades ago, such as the concept of ‘sustainable diets’, introduced in the 1980s (Gussow and Clancy 1986), later neglected due to the focus on food security approaches (Lucy Jarosz 2011), and more recently revived by some scientists (e.g. Wilkins 2005; Hinrichs 2014) and by the FAO, which promotes ‘diets with low environmental impacts which contribute to food and nutrition security and to healthy life for future and present generations’ (Burlingame and Dernini 2012, 7). Other reconnecting approaches have emerged more recently, such as that of ‘nutrition-sensitive agriculture’, which appears more as a political term than as an ‘actionable concept’, and might be criticized for overlooking environmental dimensions (Balz et al. 2015). Mainly emerging in food sciences, often in interaction with other disciplines, such integrated food systems approaches have been flourishing in the last decade. They are mostly designed at the global or national scale (Hammond and Dubé 2012) and are based on modelling and on life cycle assessment (Heller et  al. 2013). They have shown that adopting suitable dietary changes, especially by reducing meat, is necessary to decrease both environmental degradation (Clark and Tilman 2017) and health risks (Vieux et al. 2012; Perignon et al. 2016). By focusing on environmental impacts  – analysed through specific aspects such as Green House Gas Emission (GHGE), land and energy uses, eutrophication and acidification, to the expense of other major aspects such as biodiversity or ecotoxicity (Schader et al. 2014) – these studies overlook the role of ecological processes. Indeed, most approaches adopt an environmental rather than an ecological perspective on the sustainability of agri-food systems. The two terms  – environmental and ecological  – are often used as synonyms, yet they actually convey different visions of the relationship to nature in a context where human activities have been largely based on placing nature at a distance, with its complexities and uncertainties, as environmental sociologists and food regime theorists have described in reference to Marx’s notion of metabolic rift (Campbell 2009). An ecological approach has a processual, dynamic and adaptive perspective on nature, whereas an environmental approach has not. This distinction between a process-based ecological perspective and an impactbased environmental one also justifies the use of the term ecologization or ecological transition (instead of greening, for example), along this book. Some authors have pointed out the limits of not taking into account ecological system dynamics (by focusing only on impacts) and have called

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for an ‘ecological turn’ in food system approaches (Campbell 2009) and for a focus on dynamic system interactions, considering that agri-food systems are embedded in complex ecological, social and economic processes (Thompson and Scoones 2009). The challenge is thus to address these interlinked processes all together and analyse their role in threatening or reinforcing agri-food systems’ sustainability. In the last chapter of this book, we will discuss the potential of the territorial scale in addressing this challenge and the reconnection of agriculture, food, environment and health.

Notes 1 These different sociopolitical contexts are also characterized by different agricultural histories and social structures, different human and social geographies and different kinds of rural/urban links. 2 Assemblage theories, inspired by the work of Deleuze and Guattari, allow us to understand the dynamics of the development of systems as the progressive coordination of independent entities, retaining their autonomy and the capacity to have multiple links and multiple affiliations, within ‘(re)territorialization’ processes (Levkoe and Wakefield 2014). 3 While we can consider that sustainability transition frameworks also encompass social-ecological systems approaches (Ollivier et al. 2018), here we consider sociotechnical transition approaches which themselves include many strands, of which TM and MLP are the most known (Markard et al. 2012).

2

Sustainability transition processes at the farm scale: A new agricultural ethos?

This chapter, based on a series of studies about transitions to diverse forms of ecological agriculture at the farm scale in France, adopts a process-based perspective on farm trajectories by analysing their antecedents, the steps taken and the mechanisms of change. It addresses the changes that occur along these trajectories not only in technical farm practices but also in other farm activities, such as processing and marketing, and in farmers’ visions of their work, of uncertainty and of nature. This leads into a discussion of a new, emerging agricultural ‘ethos’ and its key components, such as farm autonomy, farm resilience, quality of life and work satisfaction. While the question classically addressed to sociologists is ‘why do farmers adopt or not adopt a certain form of agriculture or a certain innovation’, I propose here to effect a double displacement: on one hand, to explore the how (farmers go about changing their practices) rather than the why (they adopt or not certain practices); and on the other hand, to construct a multidimensional interpretation of change, taking into account that change not only involves technical objects but also visions, work structure and organization, based on the study of farmers’ career paths. To do so, I  will focus on processes and pathways of ecological transition at the level of farmers, based on seven sets of comprehensive farmer interviews conducted between 2005 and 2014, involving both organic farmers (for three surveys) and farmers involved in pesticide reduction (for the other surveys). These surveys (fifteen to thirty-five farmers each) were located in three contrasting regions of Southern and Northern France. These regions are characterized by not only pronounced tensions surrounding agriculture, with urbanization in the south threatening agricultural land, but also economic difficulties and growing consumer expectations towards greener production modes affecting key productions of the region, such as the fruit and vegetable sectors. In the north, urban pressure remains moderate, agriculture is more

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oriented towards grain crops and environmental issues focus more on drinking water quality and soil erosion problems than on the products themselves, which unlike fruits and vegetables are not consumed directly.

I. Ecologization trajectories: Case studies from organic agriculture and from pesticide reduction Many studies seek to answer the classic question of ‘why’ (farmers turn  – or not  – to organic agriculture or the reduction of chemical inputs) based on large-scale surveys of farmers’ motivations. In English-language literature on organic farming, we can note a dominance of studies based on quantitative analyses of motivations or attitudes and comparisons with conventional farmers (Fairweather 1999; Darnhofer, Schneeberger and Freyer 2005; Lockie and Halpin 2005; Best 2008). These studies tend to support the idea of an opposition of ‘pragmatic’ organic farmers and ‘activist’ ones. Studies based on more qualitative approaches show that motivations are actually far more intricate and evolving than attitude surveys at a time ‘t’ can capture, and that it is necessary to go beyond a simplistic opposition of commercialism and activism and consider the diversity of motivations (Padel 2001) and of shared values and practices (Alroe 2005; Van Dam et al. 2009). Many studies adopt the time frame of the administrative definition of organic conversion, that is, two or three years depending on the production. However, the beginning of a transition to organic farming is not so much the beginning of the administrative conversion of the farm as the moment when farmers begin to take an interest in and sometimes experiment with organic farming, or even at first with the reduction of chemical inputs. In the cases studied in my surveys, the transition often began well before the beginning of the conversion in the administrative sense, and continued well after. For this reason, it seems more appropriate to use the term ‘transition’ to organic farming, rather than conversion (Lamine and Bellon 2009; Alavoine-Mornas and Madelrieux 2014). Finally, a common feature of most social science work, whether more quantitative or qualitative, whether dealing with organic farming or input reduction, is that they respect the traditional splitting of research subjects between the biological and technical sciences and the social sciences. For agronomists:  agricultural techniques; for sociologists:  farmer motivations, representations, sometimes networks  – few look at technical practices and changes in the conceptions of these practices (Guthman 2000). The bet here is

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precisely to take into consideration in parallel the conceptions of farmers, and the practices they implement along their pathways of change.

The transition to organic: Rupture or continuity in farmers’ pathways of change? A pathways approach aims to account for the process-based characteristics of these transitions to organic farming:  are the shifts sudden or progressive, conditioned by antecedents or not? It also aims at reframing the traditional question of farmers’ motivations by showing their entangled nature and possible courses of evolution, and by identifying the presence of triggers, whether they be ‘external’ such as personal encounters or contextual such as the legitimization of organic farming. Along with motivations, these triggers are part of the web of elements that help to understand why a farmer chooses organic. For the researcher, the analysis of pathways of change is based on farmers’ narratives that are reconstructed afterwards, with the farmers weaving a certain coherence within their career and life history (Ricoeur 1990), knowing that the researcher will also reinterpret this telling in the analysis he/she proposes from it. There is a great diversity of forms of shifts to organic farming. For some farmers, the transition to organic occurs quickly and is a true rupture in their professional history. Whatever the motivations and triggers that drive them towards organic farming (be they economic, health, ethical or environmental issues), these farmers then enter the certification process more or less quickly. Whether they be prepared technically (through professional training or trial and error, before the administrative conversion), or not, they undertake direct shifts from conventional to organic agriculture. Farmers ‘pivot’ (as some say) from one mode of production to another, fairly quickly – often between less than a year and three years. This shift is sometimes the result of health concerns or an experienced intoxication, although in general this trigger does not appear alone, and can combine not only with difficulties in marketing but also with a familiarity with organic farmers, showing this form of agriculture to be a possible solution for such difficulties (see Chapter 3). For other farmers, the transition to organic farming is part of a certain continuity. When they become interested in organic farming (even before their conversion), they have for several years already undertaken important changes in their production practices (such as a reduction of chemical inputs). They do not move directly from conventional agriculture to organic farming but first through an intermediate state, a sort of redefined conventional

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agriculture. Sometimes, they are farmers at the end of their career, who also experience this transition to organic as a last revival of their activity and/or as a ‘freer’ phase in their career, a way to give another sense of purpose to their activity. While farmers in direct transition to organic talk of their ‘pivot’ towards this mode of production, those who are in the above situations of indirect passages express an initial fear of ‘starting off ’, which leads them to take their time, to go through trial and error, to be particularly precautious. While direct passages are often linked to situations of ‘crisis’ in conventional agriculture – an economic crisis or health problems – progressive shifts are rather linked to a progressive distancing from the conventional agricultural model, linked to environmental and/or health issues, as well as to setbacks in relations with downstream partners (intermediaries and supermarket distribution). Whether undertaking sudden or progressive shifts, farmers can have multiple motivations for going organic, which evolve over time. This calls into question the two classic poles of activism and commercialism, often associated with organic conversions. A  farmer can start from pragmatic commercial reasons but progressively develop ethical arguments. Symmetrically, some farmers are strongly inspired by social or philosophical movements and activist figures like that of Pierre Rabhi1 in France, for example, but like others, they will of course also seek to make a living from their work. In these pathways, the presence of close or neighbouring organic farmers appears to be a determining factor that attests the feasibility of this mode of production and that provides concrete advice and encouragement. One’s family context is also decisive. First, farmers often say that they have contemplated conversion for their children’s sake, that the responsibility they owe their children reinforces their sensitivity to the use of agrochemicals. The role of women is also determining, as they are often at the origin of the implementation of not only innovative forms of marketing (direct sales, farm tourism, etc.) (Giraud and Rémy 2008) but also of a more holistic vision of agricultural activity and of the transition itself, involving not only the technical production system but also family food and health practices. Thus, where P.  Bourdieu described farmer/ peasant celibacy as primarily related to the refusal of young women to embrace farm life and its difficulties, a scenario in which women appeared as ‘agents of social decomposition’ (Bourdieu 1962; Candau and Rémy 2009), here they appear rather as agents of ‘recomposition’. Older parents also play a role, most often by accompanying a transition through the help they provide in production and/or direct sales spaces, and more generally by making the activity more viable

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and livable (Dupré, Lamine and Navarrete 2017), but they occasionally also have the reverse effect, by discouraging or hampering a conversion. The progressive or rapid nature of organic shifts is also influenced by the context of institutionalization and legitimization of organic agriculture at the moment where this shift plays out. Thus, in cases of progressive transition, farmers began to take an interest in organic farming in a period when it was still poorly developed (the 1980s or early 1990s in France); this context may explain a preferred orientation towards intermediate types of agriculture (responsible agriculture,2 integrated pest management) rather than directly towards organic farming. In contrast, ‘quick pivot’ cases are more likely to be farmers who became interested in organic farming in a context of greater legitimization of this type of agriculture (in the late 1990s), when organic farming no longer appeared to be essentially the domain of a specific or marginal group of farmers, and had ‘proven its worth’ (see Chapter 3).

New organic farmers: Professional ambitions that are also lifestyle goals These patterns of a more sudden or more progressive transition can also be found in the case of farmers who begin directly with organic farming without having ever practiced conventional farming, that is to say in the case of new farmers – who are not always young – who establish their farms without any family connection (hors cadre familial, i.e., ‘outside the family setting’, in the French agricultural-administrative jargon), and as such without any inherited capital, be it proprietorial or social.3 In these cases, their entry into organic farming is more or less preceded by antecedents and more or less prepared, before the actual professional start of farming, hence the need to consider professional trajectories over the long term. Antecedents may be related to a previous occupation, for example, in the fields of environmental or agricultural development. And this passage through other professions can be decisive, either because it raises awareness of environmental or health issues or because it makes it easier for new farmers to free themselves from the prevailing models in the professional farming setting, or even more prosaically, because it provides them with an initial investment capacity and ‘safety net’ that facilitates risk-taking. Their preparation processes rely on trainings, internships or sometimes a phase of introductory agricultural wage labour. These new organic farmers often come from other regions, sometimes large cities, and want to live and develop their businesses in these rural areas. This

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is the ‘classic’ profile of those that other farmers often call ‘neo-rurals’. Let us note here that this category of ‘neo-rural’, too often presented as homogeneous, needs to be deconstructed, especially when we speak of farmers: to be sure, some farmers come from an urban environment and previously had little contact with the agricultural world (they are true neo-farmers or neo-peasants).4 However, others return to their region of origin and have retained links with the local agricultural community, and still others do come from the agricultural sector but originally are from another region. Some of these new organic farmers want to establish their farming activity with projects that can sometimes be very ‘alternative’, with the agricultural dimension of the project being perhaps secondary to the desire for a ‘lifestyle change’, to live in contact with nature, to be autonomous in food production, to be part of a local community and the neighbourhood relationships of rural village life. Their farms are often established on small areas, with very low investment, and are based on a highly diversified selection of vegetables: such systems are often close to large gardens. The choice of a very diversified system is linked not only to potential outlets in local distribution (farmers’ markets, Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs), direct sales on the farm) but also, at least in the first years, to a desire to test oneself, and for some to take the first steps towards self-subsistence. One of the main obstacles is the search for available land, which is often pre-emptively bought for the expansion of other, established farms. The search for land is difficult because these emerging farmers are generally not from the agricultural sector or from the area where they plan to establish themselves, and therefore do not have local contacts for access to available farmland. Some of these project holders establish themselves by trial and error, gradually, without going through training and internships in farming. But the majority of the new organic farmers, even if their initial motivations are also fairly ‘alternative’, are more prepared and professionalized and have relatively planned-out beginnings:  they undertook professional agricultural training before setting up and have experienced farm daily work as a salaried farm worker, either before or after this training. They also have some investment capital, and a greater capacity for foreseeing opportunities, particularly because they have established links with local farmers. These more professional and well-prepared projects  – which are also better implanted in local agricultural networks – are often perfectly viable on the long term, thus undermining the widely held notion in agricultural development organizations that ‘neo-rural’ projects are founded with precarious circumstances and unrealistic ambitions, inevitably doomed to failure.

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Reducing pesticide use in arable crops: Robustness and reversibility of ecologization processes Between organic farming, which fully excludes chemical inputs, and a conventional agriculture that professional agricultural bodies in France label as ‘responsible’ (agriculture raisonnée), many farmers are exploring other possibilities. Integrated pest management (called protection intégrée in French) represents one such ‘third option’5 for plant crops (that some would today include in agroecology taken in its wider definition, as is the case of the French governmental definition  – see Chapter  7). Its principles  – developed for the production of fruits and vegetables by researchers, producers and extension agents of the International Organisation for Biological and Integrated Control (IOBC) starting in the 1950s, and then later for other productions  – seek on the whole to combine input reductions (of pesticides and fertilizers) with the framework of a more preventive vision (i.e. doing everything possible so that problems of plant diseases or pests do not emerge). It is based on coordinated changes of certain cropping practices that facilitate precisely these reductions and rest on broader ecological equilibriums. It represents a proposal for innovation advanced by research and agricultural administrations, which has not been widely disseminated. In fact, more than a circumscribed technical innovation, it is a range of techniques and principles that inseparably form an innovative mode of production. But the practices involved are in reality very diverse, and one observes within the groups practicing this form of agriculture and from one interlocutor to another, conceptual displacements of the limit between practices seen as conventional on one hand and, on the other hand, practices viewed as falling within the domain of integrated protection. Specifically, in the groups observed in my survey, the ‘decision making roadmap’ proposed by extension agents to farmers was based on certain basic principles (late sowing, low density, etc.), with the overarching principle being to ensure a coherence between all the aspects of crop management, in a kind of virtuous circle that would allow for the reduction of chemical inputs, while the evolution of agronomy sciences and the sociotechnical trajectory of wheat production – which can be considered as the archetype of productivist model of agricultural modernization (Allaire and Boyer 1995; Bonneuil and Hochereau 2008) – had progressively led, on the contrary, to the tackling of technical problems in isolation (Vanloqueren and Baret 2008). Monoculture grain crops, linchpin of twentieth-century agricultural modernization policies (and a laboratory of the agricultural industrialization

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process (Raymond and Goulet 2014), are a sector whose ecologization seems particularly difficult. Despite the evidence provided by certain works in the agricultural sciences, that it was possible to significantly reduce inputs  – fertilizers and pesticides – while maintaining or even improving margins with adapted varieties and crop management, this innovative method of production spread poorly. Integrated protection is not codified by law or by any official labelling system that would allow it to be distinguished from other modes of production in the eyes of consumers, unlike organic farming, nor is it promoted by any organized social movement, as are other forms of agriculture claiming to be more sustainable, such as peasant agriculture or conservation agriculture. Nor has it really attracted the attention of the social sciences. Could this be because integrated protection does not appear to researchers, or to other agricultural stakeholders, as a form of innovation radical enough to challenge the dominant model (Smith 2006)? Admittedly, it is not emblematic of ‘pure’ productivist models, which sociologists may be inclined to decipher critically, nor of some alternative models, which may attract attention for their more critical and resistance-based approaches. However, it has led to certain ecologization processes, both at the individual level and the level of farmers’ groups, which are of interest for the sociologist, precisely because of these blurred lines of definitions and conceptual boundaries. My interviews with grain producers have led to the identification of four main types of change pathways: with farmers in integrated protection groups, we find on the one hand progressive transitions that are fairly robust towards this production model, even if the ‘degree’ of integrated protection can be fairly variable. And on the other hand, we find transitions that are more reversible depending on climate contexts and price evolutions. Among individual farmers, outside of integrated protection groups, we find not only more reticent farmers, whose pathways are more marked by intensification, but also farmers who could potentially be interested but are isolated or poorly accompanied. Farmers who put in place a robust transition towards integrated protection had first sought out, during periods of low grain prices, systems that would allow them to reduce costs, in a context also marked by an insurgence of what they might have perceived as ‘environmental injunctions’. Starting by a reduction in the number of treatments, they would find themselves in a sort of ‘technical impasse’, as some of them said, and realize that it was necessary to restructure more broadly their practices, because of the strong interactions between these practices. It is often at this point that they joined a group of farmers in integrated protection and began to progressively put into place technical changes. As

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with progressive transition pathways to organic farming, antecedents are often decisive in these cases:  several had taken part in public programs6 over the previous years that had increased their awareness of a more global vision of their practices and supported them in the first steps towards more ecological practices. These farmers are characterized by a strong degree of affiliation to independent networks in their production sector and with chemical suppliers, and by a strong involvement in their professional settings. The motivations that they expressed related initially not only to a will to reduce chemical inputs, due to both environmental and health concerns, but also to a strong affinity for technic and experimentation:  they particularly expressed the desire and the pleasure in being able to ‘bring agronomy back’ into their profession. Regarding their environmental motivations, certain farmers felt a ‘motivation as a social citizen’, and considered that periods of higher grain prices should incite them (and others) to ‘be more civic and a better citizen’. We can note here the articulation of individual pathways and societal debates. It is largely within these farmers’ groups and through collective dynamics that such articulations develop, as it is within these contexts that discussions arise on both individual histories and concerns, and on larger professional and societal issues, leading to processes of legitimization of ecological transitions (see Chapter 3). Farmers who had more reversible transitions were, as those above, drawn to integrated protection as a way to optimize financial margins in a period of low grain prices (early 2000s), but increased prices, coupled with poor climatic conditions at the time of the interview (2007–8), drove them in part to reintensify their practices so as to increase their harvests and incomes. These farmers have not overcome certain obstacles: ‘having a thin wheat field at the end of the winter is a pretty big psychological barrier.’ This notion of psychological barrier expresses here a feeling to deviate from the professional reference model that values, for example, a regular and dense wheat field. In their pathways, there are less antecedents liable to incite them to ‘green’ their practices and they had adopted a ‘less systemic’ stage of integrated protection, which is precisely what allows them to back-pedal in their practices. Despite the reversibility of their transitions, these farmers are more attuned than others to integrated protection and fairly well-positioned if regulatory changes were to obligate them to adopt more ecological practices. A third type of pathway concerns reticent farmers:  those whose pathways are clearly characterized by intensification. They are either grain farmers who cannot imagine producing otherwise or, more often, farmers with other crops that are more lucrative such as potatoes or green vegetables for the canning

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sector, whose chemical treatment demands (generally imposed by buyers and processors downstream) have an influence on the practices of other crops in the farm. Finally, certain farmers are potentially interested, but isolated or poorly accompanied. Their only advice source is in general that of the cooperative that furnishes their chemical inputs. They have not heard of integrated protection, or little, but think that agriculture should change in the close future, and claim to be interested, even though they do not see how they could change their practices. These farmers sometimes take ‘the risk of drawing out applications’. This fairly common phrase translates the way certain farmers delay chemical applications as long as they consider that weeds, diseases or pests are not yet overly present, which leads them to sometimes renouncing to some of these applications. They also anticipate possible regulatory changes, which makes them more open to potential changes in their practices: ‘We will eventually have to go there, so if we can apply less and gain the same amount, why not?’ The example of these individuals who are ‘potentially interested’, but institutionally unaccompanied on alternatives, highlights the importance of initiating collective dynamics where otherwise ‘isolated’ farmers can meet.

Pathways of ecologization in very intensive and highly sensitive productions As opposed to the example of grains, fruit and vegetable production represents a sector in crisis that is subjected to significantly greater competition from foreign productions, and to even more pronounced societal pressures. This manifests itself in expectations and constraints that are both contradictory and interdependent with which farmers find themselves confronted:  growing societal expectations in terms of environmental quality, official injunctions for a reduction in chemical inputs,7 plant diseases that are difficult to master or very rigid constraints relating to the commercialization (criteria of conservation, sizing). Within this diverse sector, the example of greenhouse tomatoes is particularly interesting because it presents the paradox of appearing to some as one of the most ecological production modes possible – due to the fact that the production in an enclosed greenhouse allows for a minute control of the whole system and facilitates the use of biological pest control – while for others, it represents one of the most artificial models, as it is generally soil-less. In the context of a project that sought to test an alternative to chemical treatments for one of the principal tomato diseases, Botrytis cinerea, sociologists were asked

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to evaluate its acceptability with farmers. While agronomists and agricultural advisers see greenhouse tomato production as relatively homogenous, a first step was to attest the true diversity of farmers’ trajectories and the importance of their sociotechnical settings. In this sector, the steps of ecologization started with biological control measures that were experimented by a handful of producers who sought solutions for pests that no product was able to overcome, having slowly developed a resistance to chemical solutions. Subsequently, with the creation of farmers’ organizations, in the context of the European market reforms and the development of mass distribution in the 1990s, integrated protection measures became progressively more indispensable criteria to address the production requirements imposed by downstream intermediaries and supermarkets, which led some farmers to refer to ‘an appropriation of farmers’ work by mass retail’. Disappointed by this evolution, these farmers felt ‘unheard, unacknowledged, we’re losing control; what’s more, we’re burning gas [to heat the glasshouses], I  didn’t recognize myself any more in the life I  was living. I  wanted to get back to the heart of my profession; furthermore, we hear lots of people on TV or the radio say that the tomatoes aren’t very good; I  wanted to get back to the traditional side of things’ (interview with this farmer, 2005). Some thus radically changed their systems and launched into a more diversified production oriented towards local sales, which gave them the sense of ‘getting back to the true work of vegetable production’. In a context where tomato producers, who are unable to stock their products on the long term (unlike grain producers), are much more dependent on downstream buyers, some may free themselves from the constraints of this situation by choosing a dramatic reorientation such as diversification and direct marketing. By selling their vegetables directly in local markets, they are able to find a certain autonomy. However, these drastic changes involve a number of difficulties and many stay within the intensive and specialized model, in part because they are caught in a maze of constraints (loans, commercial outlets, but also simple daily routine) that makes it difficult to imagine other options, but also in part because some are passionate for this type of highly technical and controlled agriculture, that they compare to ‘Formula 1’. In this survey, perhaps because it is a fairly specific innovation that is at the centre of the study (there is one pest and one alternative technic, as opposed to integrated protection in grain production that combines diverse practices), we are able to find the categories of Rogers’s classic theory of the diffusion of innovation (2003), which proved unsuitable in the context of integrated protection on grain

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farms: the early adopters, the followers and the ‘laggards’, who correspond better to sceptics in this case. The early adopters or ‘pioneers’ – as they call themselves or how colleagues consider them – adopted integrated protection in its earliest stages in the 1980s. They were motivated by a passion for insects and for experimentation, while the questions of health and the environment seem much less present than today. The followers adopted integrated protection a little later when they moved to a soil-less production, between 1985 and 1990, in the face of the technical ‘impasse’ of chemical control that led to yield loss, and in the face of increasing sanitary constraints. Moreover, some stopped intermittently after noticing a marked insufficiency in effectiveness, only to pick it back up later on, which shows that the processes of innovation adoption are not as linear as the theory describes. Finally, the sceptics are of course those that do not believe in biological control. Corresponding to these three types of producers are three large types of positioning in relation to the balance between biological control and chemical control, which the study of evolutions in crop protection practices allows us to identify. The early adopters or pioneers deem biological control to be a priority and do everything they can to maintain it through the full crop cycle, going so far as going against the technical recommendations of their advisers and accepting a certain risk of attack, highlighting the importance of re-establishing a ‘natural’ balance. The followers combine biological and chemical control. Finally, sceptics see chemical control as indispensable and biological control as secondary. They cannot imagine going without chemical control, ‘like people need medicine’. In these changes, constraints linked to work organization are key factors, as such productions are intensive in labour and human intervention (Navarrete, Dupré and Lamine 2015; Dupré, Lamine and Navarrete 2017). Fruit production, although it presents a different temporality from that of tomatoes, constitutes another type of production that is very high in inputs (sometimes up to thirty treatments on apple trees, for example). In fruit production, changes in practices (like for tomatoes) are often induced and regulated by production requirements of downstream intermediaries, which do not always lead to a reduction in inputs (as they seek first and foremost traceability). The analysis of pathways brings to light, as for grain and tomato productions, a strong progressiveness in the processes of ecologization, which translate into processes of adoption of different alternative techniques that are partial and successive. These processes are a function both of the resources accessible to fruit farmers (availability of techniques, cost, informal or formal advice, etc.)

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and of their marketplace insertion, which is more directly determinant than in grain production, as a fruit farmer in a short supply chain can afford to sell imperfect fruit. This progressiveness is all the more accentuated, in relation to grain and tomato productions, because fruit trees are perennials with a longer cycle: another time frame is necessary, for example, when it comes to adopting a variety that is less disease-susceptible. In studies on innovation in agriculture, size of the farms, initial training and age of the farmers are considered to be favourable to the adoption of innovative techniques (Barbier and Bellon 2010), which was not the case in my studies. Regarding the size, for the same type of production, the smallest farms seem more suited for the adoption of new techniques or forms of agriculture. As for the education level, different interviews show the importance of the previous career path  – having been in another profession related to agriculture or the environment  – and not only (or not most essentially) the level of training in agriculture. Finally, on age, in my survey with grain farmers, for example, those in integrated production are slightly older than those in conventional production (forty-eight years versus forty-one on average), which could be explained by the fact that they are more often farmers who have shed the financial burdens of initial investments and have gained a certain autonomy in relation to the previous generation, in a context where the profession is highly hereditary (Rémy 1987; Nicourt 2013) and imposes therefore several long years of cohabitation between generations, which can make a change in practices difficult. These inquiries also show other factors that favour the process of ecologization, such as the previous engagement with a measure in favour of certain environmental practices that had raised their awareness of the societal and environmental dimensions of their work or the type of advice that farmers turn to and the collective dynamics that they adhere to. Whether they are grain, tomato or fruit producers, farmers’ transition pathways are anything but linear: they are characterized by what some call pivot points or bifurcation (Wilson 2008). This notion of bifurcation or turning point, inspired by American works on careers (in particular, A.  Abbot), suggests a sequential vision of pathways. Indeed, these trajectories appear as a series of sequences articulated by variably predictable turning points (Grosseti 2006). These pathways are also multidimensional: whether related to organic farming or input reduction, it is a cluster of elements that organize themselves or converge within these trajectories of ecologization. These elements are on the one hand of a practical nature, being concrete changes that are put into place and lived, and are quite diverse, since they are composed of techniques, marketing strategies,

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work organization, learning methods and connections to diverse networks. On the other hand, they are elements that stem from conceptions and visions of the profession, which showed up in interviews, for example, when farmers spoke of rediscovering the meaning of their profession, of autonomy and of risks related to chemical applications.

II. Changes in farmer identity: A new agricultural ethos? Revisiting and comparing these surveys – seven different surveys between 2005 and 2014  – and contexts, both geographical (south and north of France) and productive (field crops, fruits and vegetables) – allows for the exploration of the transformations of the professional ethos (Pharo 1980). Such transformations are indeed transversal to these processes of ecologization in all their diversity, from organic agriculture to different forms of input reduction. Are we witnessing a certain process of ‘repeasantization’, as suggested by some (Van Der Ploeg 2000), or in any case a new ‘peasant ethos’ that is distinctly contemporary, coming well after the substitution of the ‘historic’ peasant ethos by a model of professional excellence associated with the figure of the modern and competitive farmer? Whether concerning organic agriculture or input reduction, grain, tomato or fruit producers, we find in all these surveys multiple shared traits such as the desire of many farmers to ‘rediscover the meaning of their profession’ and become more ‘active’ in their choices and more autonomous, while others oppose – and sometimes fervently – changes that they perceive to be imposed, as is regularly demonstrated by farmer protests. Their professional identity seems more or less ‘shaken’ by ecologization that is experienced as a desirable or imposed process, depending on not only the particular trajectories that our interviews reveal but also the degree of inter- and extra-professional legitimization of the ecological transition processes in play.

‘Rediscovering the meaning of the profession’ ‘Rediscovering the meaning of the profession’, ‘returning to the heart of our work’ and ‘feeling in harmony’, these are some of the expressions that show up often in interviews with farmers who turned to organic agriculture or input reduction. It is a matter of establishing coherence between their personal choices in different areas and connecting them to a vision of society and the world, as reports a vegetable farmer who converted to organic:  ‘Organic agriculture is

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part of a broader pursuit, of societal development and personal development … I have the impression that I can really align my life with my values as a farmer’ (interview with this farmer, 2005). These farmers often recount a progressive sense of awareness and a progression in their pathway towards coherence. Their sayings echo the notion of conversion in its ‘strong’, rather than administrative, sense.8 Some describe their choices as a way to introduce a coherence between their actions and their values; the conversion to organic is not just a conversion of practices and of farms, it is also a conversion of people, which implicates different aspects of life and work, and translates concretely in the parallel evolution of farming, food and health practices. This continuity sends back to a larger notion of care that is one of the fundamental values of organic agriculture (claimed, e.g., by its international network, the IFOAM), and that is extended from human beings to animals, or even to plants. We also find these progressions in farmers who, although fully invested at a given time in their pathway in the ‘productivist paradigm’ (Lowe 1992) (a high level of recourse to chemical inputs, significant amounts of equipment and investment and a strong dependence on distant markets), have redefined their vision of the profession. Some did so in a fairly radical manner, as is the case of specialized tomato producers who turned to diversified vegetable production in short supply chains, whose vision of professional excellence pivots from classic notions like yield to others that are specific to diversified farmers, such as the virtuosity tied to the mastery of this diversity. Other conventional producers have redefined their vision of the profession in an apparently less radical way. With grain farmers who move to integrated protection, the change of vision is articulated, for example, by the idea of ‘reintroducing agronomy’. It is a question of moving from a model that they have always known (based on the systemic use of agrochemicals) to another that they must learn and put in place, consisting in particular of thinking at the level of the whole farming system and of long-term crop rotations, and not only in annual crop cycles.

Breaking away from the model of professional excellence by resisting the eyes of others These redefinitions of the vision of their profession, more or less radical, translate to a redefinition of the symbols of professional excellence. In our grain farmer interviews, between the two categories of conventional farmers and farmers in integrated production, the symbols of professional excellence are contrasting, point by point: on one hand, high yields, clean and orderly fields;

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on the other, the acceptance of a lower yield in exchange for a satisfactory or even superior profit, as well as a certain ‘soiling’ (salissement) or irregularities in field appearance. Yield and its improvement with time is the principal criterion of ‘modern’ professional excellence in agriculture and a crucial element of comparison between peers – in other words, it is the heart of the productivist paradigm (Lowe 1992). Yet, the adoption of integrated protection assumes a certain acceptance of yield loss, compensated by a rise in profit margins during periods of low agricultural material prices. Nonetheless, in the professional environment, yield remains the dominant criterion: even if they have superior profits, farmers can feel poorly looked upon by colleagues due to their inferior yields. ‘At the ass of a harvester, it’s not profits that you see, it’s yield. It’s cultural’ (interview with a cereal farmer, 2008). We can see here two criteria in opposition: yield, the visible element and object of discussions and comparisons between farmers, and profit margins, less visible and thus less discussed between peers. We can also see the consequences of the time and visibility between the two: yield is visible immediately at the moment of harvest, or even before from field appearance, while profit stays poorly visible and is calculated only much later, at the end of annual price determinations. ‘Am I alone in the right, next to everyone else?’: many ask themselves this question. Being convinced of the need to change evaluation criteria is not sufficient when one’s professional entourage continuously refers to dominant criteria:  professional identity, as is shown by the sociology of professions, is both an identify for self and an identity for others (Dubar 1991). After yield, regularity and cleanness, both visible in the field, form the second column of the classic conception of professional excellence. For a grain farmer, an ‘attractive’ field is a field that is ‘clean’, that has no weeds, is regular, with wheat that ‘makes a table’ (with perfectly uniform stalk length) and vigorous, brilliantly green at the beginning of the cycle, fairly dense. This demonstrates the commitment of the farmer in the care he provides for his crops and presages his yield. Though this criterion of excellence cannot be shifted to public arenas of judgement as is the case for livestock fairs, it is the object of local judgements between ‘field neighbours’, which can play an important role in the ranking of good farmers within the professional community (Burton 2004). ‘The eyes of others’ makes it difficult for farmers in integrated protection to assume the difference in appearance of their crops as a result of their more ecological practices (minimal use of fertilizers and herbicides). The ‘soiling’, that is to say weeds, is a recurring argument to justify a refusal to change their practices, because for the majority of farmers, it is precisely herbicides that permits ‘clean’

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fields. Reducing the use of pesticides also represents a step backwards for an agriculture that has managed to master crop ‘enemies’ or ‘pests’. Limiting the use of herbicides assumes an acceptation of farm plots that are imperfectly clean. Furthermore, farmers who enter this process nevertheless would often not skip the treatments, precisely in order to avoid a soiling of plots that goes beyond what is considered the acceptable limit. This ‘acceptable’, that is in opposition with the perfect cleanliness of fields without weeds, is a function of both the possible consequences on yield of excessive weed cover and how one accepts the eyes of others. Thus, whether it be question of yield, of crops’ appearance or of the presence of weeds, farmers in organic production or in integrated protection must hold their ground in the face of judgement from peers, until the point where their choices prove their worth, at the end of a crop cycle, of a year or even after several years, all of which requires a certain temporal reframing of their own view of their work. It is only after several years of experience that farmers feel they can manage to overcome the eyes of others. Overcoming the judgement of others and accepting or even ‘cultivating’ one’s difference are imperatives for farmers who have begun a process of ecologization of their practices, even if the growing recognition of organic can today make this less difficult.

Autonomy and its different definitions In the farming community, the word autonomy takes on varying meanings depending on the qualifiers that accompany it:  decision-making autonomy, livestock fodder autonomy, input autonomy, and so on. Already present in the discourse of pioneering organic farmers, who did not want to be simple ‘executors’ of the agricultural development system, and rather overtly sought to be agents of their own choices (Barrès et al. 1985; Le Pape and Remy 1988), autonomy has become one of the leitmotifs of the primary ‘alternative’ farmers’ union, the Confédération paysanne, but it also appears in the discourse of more ‘conventional’ agricultural players. The processes of agricultural modernization of the 1950s to 1980s have produced a loss of farmer autonomy compared to the others sectors of the agri-food complex (Bonneuil and Hochereau 2008), a loss that tied to the growing industrialization of certain productions, the globalization of markets, the development of intermediaries and related development of prescription mechanisms, and so on. Farmers undertaking to varying degree trajectories of ecologization of their practices express different conceptions of autonomy, often complementary and

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present simultaneously: input autonomy, autonomy in decision making and the mastery of one’s technical system (versus a dependence on external competencies and specifically on extension agents), autonomy in the determination of a farm’s larger strategy (versus a dependence on other economic actors, particularly of downstream intermediaries). For some farmers who undertake projects of a very alternative nature, we can find a meaning corresponding more to an ‘overarching’ autonomy, which covers self-sustenance food autonomy (tied to the determination of one’s professional and lifestyle choices), whether it be at the level of a household or a group. On the other side of the ‘agricultural spectrum’, conventional farmers who are reticent to change their practices often also express a declaration of autonomy from society and institutions (‘we want to work in our profession as we see fit’). Hence, autonomy appears as an integral value in professional identity, be it expressed defensively or as previously, more positively. In any case, autonomy does not signify isolation and is built more on the choice and potential redefinition of bonds and affiliations than by a rupture (Cardona and Lamine 2014).

Farm pathways and resilience Autonomy is often associated with the idea of a larger viability and resilience, to such an extent that it has become fairly commonplace to consider small farms as more ‘resilient’, due to their contributions to local employment, rural development and the preservation of ecosystems.9 This merits further discussion and either way is a subject of controversy. Indeed, more autonomy does not automatically equal more economic and social viability, and the testing of key concepts of the theories of resilience can support a dynamic and nuanced reading of these questions of viability and autonomy. Resilience is a concept that comes from physics, and was then taken up by ecology: the resilience of a system is its ability to absorb a perturbation and to reorganize itself while still changing, so as to keep the same functions, structures, identities and reactions. Among such perturbations, the theory distinguishes changes that are more sudden (shocks) and others that are long term (stress). In these theories, the notion of resilience is mainly defined through three main aspects: the capacity of a system to resist a perturbation, associated with the idea of stability (buffer capacity); the capacity to recover after perturbation (bouncing back); and finally, its capacity to transform without necessarily returning to a previous state of balance (Folke 2006). Can these concepts enlighten the discussion of the sustainability or economic and social viability of farms?10 The notions of shock and stress, of adaptability

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and transformability, are key concepts in these theories, which seem fairly pertinent for the case of agricultural production, that is, by nature subject to multiple uncertainties. Indeed, our interviews reveal ‘shock’-type changes (drastic events such as a freeze, a hail storm, crop failure, the interdiction of a common pesticide molecule) and ‘stress’-type changes, corresponding to continuous and progressive pressures, such as an increase in competition and pressures on costs, social or political pressures for the reduction of pesticide use. Some of these stresses are more predicted than current, such as for climate change (although many farmers already recognize a certain factuality in the latter, from the powerful climatic irregularities that they observe as well as the long-term advancement of flowering or harvest dates), or include a degree of uncertainty, such as for the appearance of a disease in the region and by which a specific farm does not know if they will be impacted or not. Our interviews allow for the identification of adaptation strategies that are concretely adopted by farmers, in link with short-term shocks or longer stresses impacting the farm. These strategies consist principally in a diversification of productions, a diversification of commercial outlets, an optimization of resources, sometimes even by reducing the area under cultivation or by relying on off-farm incomes. They go against the division of labour specific to the productivist model – in which the different steps from planting to food product are individually undertaken by different entities (Muller 2000a; Deléage 2004) – as they reintegrate some of these steps. These strategies are favoured by three types of ‘resilience factors’. A first type of factor stems from the structure of the farm: having property available, a certain flexibility in terms of labour (with the role of spouses and family being particularly significant) and appropriate equipment are all key factors of adaptation. Certain farmers are dependent upon precarious systems of property access (farming land under agreement with neighbours or colleges, without long-term leases), which may generate instability but also allow them to adjust their production in response to different contexts. This verifies an important hypothesis of resilience theories: a resilience of functions (here, the adaptation of productions to the context) is not necessarily based on a resilience of the structure (Smith and Stirling 2010). A second type of factor is tied to the affiliation to a farmers’ network, which fosters mutual help for large work projects, loaning of equipment, shared commercialization or advice exchange, and of social connections associated with professional and union responsibilities and tasks, or of relationships between neighbours. The support of public policy or of civil society (through CSAs, for

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example) can also be a decisive factor that encourages us to look at ecologization processes at the larger scale of territorial agri-food systems (see Chapter 5). Finally, the third group of factors, which concerns individual adaptations, is more difficult to objectify: they are what is often called farmers’ innovation capacity (or the propensity to be interested in new techniques), and also relate to the capacity to combine forms of knowledge and learning, and to adapt to crises and uncertainty. The analysis of pathways shows how certain farmers, in learning of past crises and failures, manage to adapt to a contextual change. Farms with comparable structures can adopt very different strategies, which shows that the capacity of resilience does not depend so much on ‘objectifiable’ characteristics specific to the farm or farmer but more of farmers’ perceptions (on the potential and limits of their farms, risks, possible options, etc.). This indicates that we must look not so much at the farm’s structure but what the farmer does with this structure (or does not do) (Darnhofer et  al. 2016). Resilience can thus be analysed as an emergent property of the system, which is reinforced or weakened by the interaction between the farmer and his farm, between the farm and its context. Let’s take the emblematic example of diversified vegetable production, which for many farmers embodies their entry into the agricultural profession and into organic production, in a context of high demand from consumers and the development of short supply chains. After a phase of conversion or establishment in a model of pronounced diversification, we can distinguish two principal ‘rationalization’ pathways in farm’s trajectories, allowing farmers to contend in different ways with the formidable difficulties of work organization and crop calendars tied to this diversification (Navarrete, Dupré and Lamine 2015). A first type of rationalization corresponds to an optimal valorization of these highly diversified productions. These farmers seek to most favourably arrange their productions, commercial outlets and networks in order to optimize their system. In a context where a mastery of variability and often the reduction of diversity are the key words in agricultural modernization (Allaire and Boyer 1995; Bonneuil et  al. 2006), these farmers attempt to integrate into their systems not only diversity but also variability (of their products, or even their productions) (Lamine 2005). Their ‘alternative’ mode of production (varietal choices, technical practices) leads de facto to often irregular products that can only be sold in certain outlets, for example, farmers’ markets or CSAs, where this diversity and irregularity are valued. The second type of logic corresponds to organic vegetable farmers that move progressively towards a ‘rationalization’ of their production and of their work

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organization in order to produce greater volumes in a more viable way. This, of course, does not mean that the previously mentioned farmers are not rational, but where they seek primarily to create value from a pronounced diversity and variability (both of which are deliberately maintained or even fostered), the latter seek to reduce this diversity and variability so as to make their work organization more efficient, based, for example, on mechanization. They are often vegetable farmers who are well anchored in the local farming community. Starting with a high diversification like the previous farmers, they increase their production and the amount of land under cultivation, which they rationalize through an increasing mechanization and the combination of short and long supply chains and by restraining to varying degrees the diversity of species and varieties produced. Investigations at the territorial scale allowed identifying two levels for this ‘viabilization’ strategy: either within the farm or within an often informal collective in which several farmers attempt to produce complementary products, which allows each to maintain a certain specialization and thus optimize their work organization and time. These collective dynamics on a small territory appear as a fairly central factor of resilience. Along with their production strategy, these farmers’ vision of organic agriculture also seems to be ‘rationalized’, compared to the previous. If the former model, highly intensive in human labour, goes hand in hand with a strong ecological sensibility and a militant approach to organic farming, the latter producers emphasize the necessity of proposing larger volumes of organic produce, at a lower cost. They seem to be very sensible to the perspectives that conventional producers might have of their own farm, and want to show that it is possible to produce well in organic farms, including in quantitative terms. Do these producers undergo a certain disenchantment with initial visions of organic farming? Indeed, some describe their beginnings as ‘utopic’ and their career path as a part of a logical series of steps that leads them to produce more, be more profitable and have lower production costs, and therefore more accessible prices for consumers, all while having a more reasonable work rhythm. They also put into opposition an organic approach based exclusively on a lifestyle goal (oriented towards the self) with one based on a genuine professional project (opening towards society), allowing one to more broadly feed the population with organic food and to better compensate their work hours. They thus advocate for a new ethic of organic production, consisting of producing so as to be able to feed more people with healthier and better-quality products. As some pioneering works on organic farming have already noted (Le Pape and Remy 1988), production ethics and social ethics are inseparable

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in these contexts, though they take different forms depending on the farmers’ profiles and pathways. Their vision of autonomy also differs from that of vegetable farmers who remain highly diversified:  autonomy is not self-consumption but an independence from different commercial circuits, based on the ability to gain their loyalty without becoming dependent on them. But we also find farmers who defend a radically different ethics for organic farming and fear a ‘downward spiral’ similar to conventional farming that various scientific works analyse as ‘conventionalization’ of organic (Guthman 2004; Darnhofer et  al. 2010): an excessive mechanization that excludes producers who are incapable of investing and leads to a price drop and bankruptcy of producers. Favouring the first strategy type, that of an optimization of an ultra-diversified production system, they find it preferable to cultivate smaller plots more intensively than to mechanize themselves in order to be able to cultivate larger surfaces. They thus defend a production model that is labour-intensive, and though profitable for each worker, a vision which is aligned with the precepts of peasant farming. Peasant identity is actually one of the key points of controversy within organic agriculture (see Chapter 3) and agroecology (see Chapter 6). The sociological profiles of farmers who choose these two strategies are not the same. The former, who optimize their very diversified system, are mostly vegetable farmers who do not come from an agricultural background and have a strong ecological sensibility, whom are often considered to be the standard profile of ‘neo-peasants’, even if we have seen that this profile is fairly diverse. The latter, who choose a relative re-specialization, are more often vegetable farmers who come from a farming background and have an easier access to land acquisition.

III. Farming with uncertainty In the farming profession, uncertainty is omnipresent, in large part linked to the intrinsic unpredictability of agricultural production, particularly in comparison to the production of industrial goods that allows for a pronounced predictability in regards to their processes and products. The result is various uncertainties in farming: on meteorological conditions, on harvests, on the valuing of products and other uncertainties seen as external such as regulations and public aid, as well as their evolution.

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Crop protection, a common object in all my inquiries, is a key element for examining uncertainty and the relationship to risk. Economists in general connect uncertainty to price and market effects:  the farmer, a rational (and isolated) individual, will seek to maximize his yield by arbitrating between the cost of inputs (fertilizers and pesticides) – that would let him increase this yield or bring more security – and the sales price of his harvest, knowing that these prices are variable and that decisions are made in function of a certain anticipation of their evolution in the future. While many economists use the notion of ‘risk aversion’, seen as a quality or attribute that characterizes each farmer, my sociological inquiries seek rather to unpack the complexity of the decision to apply chemical inputs, in order to characterize it pragmatically, including in the diversity of its configurations. Indeed, spraying fruit trees against an insect does not involve just comparing the costs and benefits of the action. For a farmer, it is, quite concretely, an act of following recommendations on a warning bulletin or, on the contrary, deciding that he/she can ‘do without’ the spraying, perhaps based on previous experience that the damage caused by skipping this application would be acceptable, that he/she can orient slightly less than perfect (bitten) fruits towards direct sales. Or yet, that the demands of clients for ‘zero defect’ fruits do not allow him/her to take the risk. It is a choice to dare to be different from one’s neighbour, or not. What beckons us to deploy a sociological analysis of these crop protection practices is thus not only the diversity of forms but also temporalities of uncertainty and the relationship to risk.

In organic farming: Going from a ‘control’ of pests and diseases to an equilibrium in one’s system With farmers converting to organic, we see two contrasting conceptions of crop protection. Some develop an approach expressed in the terms of combat and control, based on a paradigm that agronomists call ‘substitution’, because the biological products and technics substitute for chemical products and technics. This paradigm often follows a past phase of chemical input reduction even while the farmer was still in conventional agriculture, in the goal of increased efficiency. Efficiency followed by substitution composes the first two steps of the ESR model (Hill 1985) frequently used by agronomists to study changes in crop protection practices, by describing the favoured or combined technics at these different steps.

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Some organic farmers seek rather to recreate a ‘natural’ balance in the agroecosystem and develop an approach of ‘reconception’ (the R of the ESR model), which is forged over time, and fully redefines the relationship to risk by focusing on a recomposition of the broader crop environment. Their keywords are ‘balance’, ‘harmony’ and ‘adaptation’. The farm is seen as the result of a balance between earth, vegetal, animal and human action. With this redefined approach, one no longer seeks first and foremost to respond to a problem with a chemical application but to reconceive the problem and/or its solutions. These two broad paradigms of crop protection are also differentiated by different semantic registers:  rhetoric of control and battling against on one side, rhetoric of working with the environment and the ecosystem on the other, which can resonate with the classic distinction proposed by G.  Haudricourt (1962) between man’s positive direct action and negative indirect action on his environment (Haudricourt 1962), but also the notion of piloting conceptualized by M.  Détienne and J.  P. Vernant about navigation in the Greek mythology (Detienne and Vernant 1974), and more recently applied to agriculture – with the idea of piloting natural processes (Larrère 2002). Battling against and working with can nonetheless coexist in the strategies adopted by the same farmer, for example, for different protection problems.

In input reduction: Between insurance and vigilance Conventional farmers, regardless the degree of ecologization that they have achieved or that they aim for, cannot do completely without pesticides. But whether they be grain farmers, tomato producers or fruit producers, their pathways also reveal two strongly contrasting positions in their relationship to risk regarding pests and diseases. On the one hand, a strategy of insurance that consists in spraying ‘systematically’, and that characterizes mostly farmers that are the least invested in a process of ecologization. On the other hand is a preventive strategy of vigilance based on the combination of agronomic methods and a generally more frequent observation of one’s plots, which characterizes the most committed to these pathways of ecologization.11 By renouncing a strategy of insurance, famers undertake a reframing of risk: they no longer consider the risk related to pests and diseases to be covered by agrochemicals, but that it is diminished by a consistent set of crop practices that they must put in place in a coordinated way. Crop observation plays a fundamental role in this case – one must ‘ask oneself more questions’, ‘go look at one’s plots more often’, ‘be close to one’s tomatoes’, ‘have a sense of the tree’. This requires a fine-tuning of one’s

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capacity of perception, an education of attention to detail, that play out precisely in the repeated interactions between humans and their environment, as has been shown by phenomenology or the anthropology of techniques (MerleauPonty 1945; Simondon 1995; Ingold, Virmani and Ingold 2011). In the case of grain farmers, this change in position radically calls into question their image in the profession, as they are often those who, namely in comparison to livestock farmers, exemplify a mastery of living mechanisms, in that they can more easily free themselves from natural and biological constraints. Nonetheless, these farmers, even if strongly committed to an ecologization pathway, reason their reduction of sprayings in function of the possibility to make up for it later if they need to, which leads them, for example, to take more risks for plant diseases (‘we can make up for the lack of spraying easily’) than for weeds (‘once they’ve taken hold, they’re there definitively’). This points to a fundamental difference with organic farming where any chemical recourse is excluded and where one must, as reports one farmer, ‘cut ties’ with conventional safeguards. These two examples of insurance and vigilance correspond to two contrasting definitions of ‘mastery’, or control. Farmers who are less committed to an ecologization process embody a mastery that is associated with following recommended steps and thus with a delegation of decisions. Indeed, their spraying decisions are in a certain way delegated to a spraying calendar provided with the product, or to a technical adviser, despite the fact that most farmers claim decisional autonomy: it is always others who ‘have an adviser that does their farming’ and ‘don’t follow their fields’.12 Those who are more engaged in a process of ecologization embody a mastery that implies a greater involvement, rely on flexibility, observation, a different hierarchization of risks and an acceptance of ‘calculated risks’, all of which are elements tied to the posture of vigilance described above. Their approach is as such comparable to the finesse of nautical navigation between reefs, to evoke Détienne and Vernant’s (1974) study on metis. Indeed, pesticides are in general remarkably simple to use, while putting in place integrated protection requires a series of technical acts that one must master and coordinate in order to benefit from their systemic effects. We also find here the distinction between the tactical and the strategic (De Certeau and Giard 1980). Indeed, two temporalities characterize the strategies of crop protection and the relationship to uncertainty:  in the longer terms of a crop, or of a pluriannual succession of crops, it is strategic decisions that are put in place, while in the shorter term of decisions that must be made in the face of specific climatic conditions, pest attacks or the noted evolution

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of plants, it is more tactical decisions that are made. In strategic dimensions (long temporality), the choice of vigilance (as opposed to prevision) assumes an exploration of diverse scenarios that combine technical options that are contradictory or complementary. In tactical dimensions (short temporality), this choice of vigilance assumes in certain cases an alarm system capacity that can be charged with tension. ‘Skipping a treatment’, as farmers say, is difficult when other farmers spray, and when the extension services also advised a farmer to spray. The relationship to risk does not come from just an individual aversion; it is on the contrary a part of a network of interactions with peers and with the social environment.

Uncertainties relating to future regulation: Anticipate or bide your time The majority of farmers expect to have new restrictions imposed upon them regarding the use of pesticides, that generalized coercive policies will be put in place, or that through incentivizing mechanisms they will be obliged to show results, such as a reduction of inputs or of impacts. All farmers foresee this perspective, even if many seek to minimize its range, more so given the contradictions and about-faces in official discourses regarding what measures will actually be enacted, a situation that generates strong uncertainty among farmers and cumulates with the strong economic uncertainties that characterize the agricultural sector, those tied to the revision of the common agricultural policy, as well as of course the climatic and metabolic uncertainties inherent to agricultural activity. In the face of these future changes that foreshadow the likely reinforcement of environmental requirements, the interviewed grain producers react very differently. We can see two contrasting positions, of anticipation on one hand and of time biding on the other, with a minority adopting a third, more unstable strategy of adjustment to context. The anticipators, who see integrated protection as an unavoidable course for the future  – in other groups, it could be other models such as conservation agriculture – are those who believe that ‘the future of agriculture depends on what farmers do with the accusations of which they are the object’ (Lémery 2003); they seek alternatives in the potential opened by the new demands addressed to agriculture, in a quest for civic revaluing, instead of attaching themselves to a tradition or seeking supplementary modernization. ‘I think that it’s better to be in the engine compartment instead of the caboose when they impose new regulations. It’s easier to tolerate something when we do

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it ourselves’; ‘that which we do voluntarily today, is what will be required to do … because the [treatment] products will have disappeared, because the regulation will have passed. It’s how we’ll produce in 10, 15 or 20  years’ (interview with cereal farmers, 2008). Anticipators favour voluntary participation today over imposed participation tomorrow. They prefer to participate in the construction of a technical model or regulation, for example, by producing technical references for the elaboration of new agroenvironmental measures, instead of having them imposed. The ‘time biders’ are afraid that the steps taken by these ‘anticipators’ or pioneers, who are sometimes their neighbours, serve as a model for future evolutions that will be imposed to the whole agricultural sector. They also express the sentiment of already having significantly progressed in their practices. They consider that especially if they are not forced to, there’s no reason to change: ‘Tomorrow, if we tax agrochemicals or ban them, we won’t have the choice. We’ll do it. But, as of right now, why deprive yourself of tools, of products, that still let us obtain a sort of insurance in terms of yield, and that our neighbours us. Why do without? (Interview with a cereal farmer, 2008).’ The ‘time biding’ position is associated here with a concern for yield maximization and a relationship to risk that is defined by the insurance strategy described above regarding spraying decisions.

IV. Farming with nature: Nature and technique in ecologized farming What status do nature and the environment have in these different forms of ecological transitions? In rural and environmental sociology, one generally refers to ‘environment’ when discussing the politicization of natural elements (e.g., policies related to water protection or biodiversity preservation) and to ‘nature’ when undertaking a more phenomenological approach of the relationships between man and nature. The environmental question in agriculture has been the object of numerous analyses concerning the questions of water quality and biodiversity (Alphandéry and Billaud 1996), more recently the reduction of inputs (Bourblanc and Brives 2009; Fortier 2009; Roussary et  al. 2013). As for connections to nature, it has primarily ethnologists who have broached this subject, historically in the works that we would qualify as exotic (Descola 1986), and much more rarely of more modern and intensive forms of agriculture. We will look here at the connection to nature and the environment by way of the relationship to the technical gesture, which comes

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precisely between man and both ‘the nature’ or his environment. Practices of ‘crop protection’ make up a concrete category of technical gestures that are situated precisely at the intersection of the environment as a social and political question with which farmers can be in a relationship of responsibility, and of nature in its phenomenological dimension, that of a (sensory) relationship to natural elements and to the ‘milieu’. These practices, that cross over all the surveys, stem from a plurality of forms of relationship to the environment or nature, going from the idea of ‘polluting less’ to the idea of relying on nature, and/or rediscovering or even restoring an ecological balance – as, for example, when some speak of ‘putting life back’ in the soil.

From battling with artificial elements to relying on natural processes Farmers who convert to organic initially often don’t just stop polluting by renouncing chemical products but also by moving from a relationship of ‘battling’ and ‘mastery’ of pests and more broadly of nature to a relationship of doing with and relying on natural processes. This relates to manners of ‘piloting’ natural processes (Larrère 2002) that come from the experiential savoir-faire (know-how) of farmers, and should be distinguished from other more technologist forms that are exemplified, for example, by ‘decision support tools’. In their practices, many organic farmers speak of rediscovering a ‘natural’ balance in their crops, sometimes described as comparable to that of natural ecosystems. These farmers define this balance as a counterpoint to conventional agriculture, seen as a source of unbalance, and to its canonical symbol (in farmers’ discourses) that is intensive monoculture. It is by contrast in biodynamics  – that some of the interviewed organic farmers practice, but that influences a much greater portion – that this symbol of balance is the most present. The farm is itself seen as a composite living being, in ‘balance’. Specialization (reduction of species and varieties and the disappearance of livestock/crop combinations), intensification and the use of chemical products are all ‘perturbing’ elements of this balance. In contrast, they seek to ‘accompany’ natural phenomena, while conventional agriculture seeks to ‘force’ nature. Technic and innovation, far from being considered as non-natural or artificial, can fully be a part of the redefinition of the relationship to nature, such as the technique of sexual confusion ‘that allows us to accompany nature more than constrain it’, as says one of these organic farmers. Numerous organic producers express an intermediary position between the fall back on agrochemicals for security, in a perspective that remains one of

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battling, and a goal of radical and systemic change – towards which they aim to go: ‘The main weapon is copper, and the fact of working differently, to not force the trees. What’s more, we try, by pruning, by thinning, by an understanding of the trees, to manage a balance’ (Interview with an organic farmer, 2005). The vocabulary employed is revealing of both the coexistence of two paradigms and of a desired shift: we no longer want to ‘force’ trees but ‘understand’ them and manage a balance, even if copper remains a solution, or even a weapon. Furthermore, this same producer refuses certain techniques that he deems too uncertain, and copper serves here as a safeguard, like chemical sprayings in conventional, but that contrastingly embodies a continuity with agriculture of times gone by. Numerous farmers are situated in this intermediary position, in which the ecological goal does not prevent a selective use of products (even biological ones).

Between responsibility towards the environment and a sensory relationship to nature For conventional farmers who turn towards integrated protection, as opposed to organic farmers, chemical inputs remain present, even if used in smaller quantities or less frequently. Because of this, the notion of responsibility is much more present and problematized than that of ecological balance or the reliance on ecological processes, nonetheless evoked by some. We more often see with these farmers a relationship to responsibility towards the environment than a sensory relationship to natural elements, which are much more present in organic farmers. With grain farmers, we can also identify two conceptual poles that correspond respectively to shouldering versus relativizing the responsibility of agriculture for environmental impacts, an intermediary position consisting in considering that society has legitimate expectations but that are out-of-sync and poorly informed and unrealistic. The position of relativization goes hand in hand with a sentiment of alienation regarding societal expectations (Lémery 2003), and often stems from the farmers who consider on the one hand that chemical products pose no danger – an argument that is particularly present concerning its impacts on human health – and on the other hand that farmers use them with professionalism and precaution. The position of shouldering the responsibility of agriculture for its degradation of the environment is not limited to solely those who green their practices. Indeed, the act of taking environmental challenges into account is increasingly permeating the profession more broadly, due to its growing presence in

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public spheres of debate. Interestingly, the notion of responsibility towards the environment appears relatively homologous to those concerning health impacts: among conventional farmers, those who recognize the responsibility of agriculture in environmental pollution also speak more of ‘proven’ risks of agrochemical usage for farmers’ health. Finally, we find among very different farmers, regardless of their degree of ecologization, a third conception that we can call environmental heritage, focused on soil:  we avoid polluting the soil, because it is all at once a work tool, a family heritage that is passed on, and finally, a common good belonging to all.13 This does not necessarily signify, however, that the more phenomenological dimension is absent in conventional farming. For example, in the case of very intensive tomato production, soil-free and in greenhouses, producers who move towards alternative methods of biological protection report that these methods compel them towards heightened listening skills and specific attention to plants: one must ‘be close to one’s plants’, have a fine-tuned knowledge of one’s greenhouse and be there at the right time, because, for example, ‘in the morning, plants speak more’. Whether they be in organic production or other ecological transition pathways, numerous farmers speak of the effect of their technical changes on concrete natural objects that they are driven to observe – the return of wild fauna, a diversity of birds and insects, earth worms – are all perceived as the direct result of a conversion to organic and the adoption of ecological techniques. Some refer to a ‘return of life’.

Conclusion Be it organic conversion or a reduction in inputs, professional identity, the relationship to risk and uncertainty and the conceptions of nature and the environment all appear as transversal dimensions in ecological transition processes. They embody different facets of the meaning of agricultural work and of the way in which, with ecological transition processes, this meaning is potentially transformed. These different entries remain indebted to specific sociological approaches  – some works dedicate themselves to questions of professional identity, others to the relationships to risk, others still to conceptions of nature at play in trajectories of ecologization or intensification – and can be treated separately, like we did here by taking a comprehensive perspective on the meaning that farmers give to these fundamental dimensions of their profession, after having addressed their close intertwining along farmers’ trajectories.

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Notes 1 French farmer and writer of Algerian origin, Pierre Rabhi is a pioneer of organic agriculture in France. He is the founder of a centre dedicated to agroecology in the south of the Ardèche and co-founder of the Colibri movement with Nicholas Hulot and Coline Serreau. 2 Agriculture ‘raisonnée’, a model proposed starting in 1994 by the agricultural profession in France. 3 Of course, there are also young people – or less young people – who take over a family farm and establish organic practices when they right away, but in these situations, they have generally worked on the farm before, even if only seasonally or by lending the occasional hand, and the forms of transition are closer to the previously mentioned cases. 4 As in the title of a recent work, Les néo-paysans, by Gaspard d’Allens and Lucile Leclair, Seuil, 2016, 144 p. 5 Title of a book on integrated pest management published in 1999: Philippe Viaux, Une troisième voie en agriculture (Paris: Agridécisions). 6 Such as CTE (Contrat Territorial d’Exploitation, Territorial Farms Contract) or PDD (Plan de Développement Durable, Sustainable Development Plan), implemented in France in the late 1990s/early 2000s. 7 Notably in the framework of the government plan Ecophyto 2018, put in place in 2008. This plan requests that farmers reduce their use of pesticides by 50 per cent of the national level within ten years ‘if possible’ (as was written in the original texts), all while maintaining an elevated level of agricultural productivity, both in quantity and quality. It was revised in the form of Ecophyto2 in 2015, which put in place new deadlines and modalities of implementation. 8 We can highlight in this notion of conversion certain notable shared elements between conversions (or reorientations) of consumers towards organic food and conversions (or reorientations) of farmers towards organic agriculture (Lamine 2008). 9 As is the case in the report of O. de Schutter called ‘Agroecology and the right to food’ (2010) or in a large part of Latin American agroecology literature. 10 The principal difficulty, when we try to apply the concepts of these theories to the case of agriculture, is defining the system we are talking about. Resilience theories speak of the socioecological system, a notion that is difficult to apply at the farm scale: it has a scale that is somewhat smaller, ecological processes being influenced by a farmer’s choice via their practice, and economy has an important influence (Darnhofer 2010). 11 In this interpretation of the positions in the face of risks, we find common thread that connect to other sociological works, outside of the agricultural

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sector, concerning the perception of safety risks, be they food-related, industrial or environmental (Chateauraynaud and Torny 1999): prevision and vigilance (regarding food safety risks, see also Lamine 2003). 12 Farmers often compare themselves to each other, and often see themselves as less intensive than their neighbours. We also note a fairly common assimilation between the delegation of technical choices and more intensive production choices, with both farmers and researchers. This does not go without saying, however, as it depends on the strategy adopted ‘without external advice’: some farmers who alone would have undertaken an approach of maximal insurance can be steered towards spraying less, following the advice of an extension agent. 13 This vision, which puts at the forefront plant or animal biodiversity and soil quality, is more frequent with organic farmers as well as in networks that are precisely oriented towards questions of soil conservation (Goulet 2008).

3

The role of advisers and collective dynamics in agroecological transitions

The previous chapter examined the different facets of farmers’ professional identity and ethos, and their transformation during ecologization processes. Of course, farmers interact with various other actors, which influences their trajectories and the changes they implement: actors of the ‘agricultural knowledge system’, especially the technicians and advisers of the agricultural and rural development organizations and cooperatives, who support them; other farmers with whom they may share collective dynamics or simply geographical proximity; and the other inhabitants of their communities and villages and the non-agricultural world at large. These different interactions may form webs of legitimization, as we will see with the case of organic farming and its increasing legitimization over time. They also lead to new forms of production and circulation of knowledge, along with ecologization processes.

I. Transformations in the landscape of advisory systems and collective dynamics In France, agricultural extension services are still financed to a large extent by public funds and/or by a system of additional taxes on the sale of farm produce or on land tax (Laurent, Cerf and Labarthe 2006). This is the case of the chambers of agriculture, which were created in the 1920s to represent the different actors of agricultural production (including farm workers) at the scale of the départements. Cooperatives are other historical major providers of advisory services for the farmers who belong to them and rely on them for the marketing of their products and/or the purchasing of inputs. Since the 1950s, a diversity of independent farmers’ networks and rural development organizations have also developed, which focus on diverse forms of ‘alternative’ and/or ecological

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agriculture, such as peasant agriculture, sustainable agriculture or organic farming.

An ecologization of the advisory system? Over the past decades, the long and non-linear process of institutionalization of diverse forms of ecological agriculture (organic farming, sustainable agriculture or, more recently, agroecology) has led to transformations in how agricultural knowledge production and circulation are seen (Compagnone, Lamine and Dupré 2018). In a first period of this institutionalization process that we could characterize by ‘adjustments to the productivist model’, along the 1990s and 2000s, ‘conventional’ agricultural organizations such as chambers of agriculture and cooperatives found themselves compelled to recognize agriculture’s environmental dimensions, and began to hire specialists to assist them in this (Brives 1998; Compagnone et  al. 2013). Non-agricultural actors, mainly environmental ones, became increasingly involved in agricultural governance. However, the main change has been the emergence of new agricultural organizations or legitimation of existing ones, taking up these new questions and favouring sustainable forms of agriculture, such as the CIVAM, the ADDEAR (linked to the Confédération Paysanne, the French ‘peasant-farmers’ union), local and regional organic farmers organizations and others. They have acquired greater legitimacy and obtained more support from the state in the last years and now have access to pluri-annual programmes and government funds, like the chambers of agriculture, although they benefit from much smaller amounts. Since the 1990s, the extension sector has been increasingly privatized in France, albeit to a lesser extent than in other European countries. A diversity of independent advisors and private consulting companies has thus developed. Whereas some authors argue that this process shows significant benefits, notably by increasing providers’ efficiency, flexibility and accountability, many claim that leaving advisory services to business logics may cause certain subjects to fall by the wayside, particularly sustainability-related issues such as soil, water, biodiversity or landscape management (Laurent, Cerf and Labarthe 2006; Labarthe and Laurent 2009). Moreover, these trends have negative consequences in terms of lack of adequate knowledge for many types of farmers, such as smallscale farmers (Labarthe and Laurent 2009), and ‘minor’ productions such as market gardening. Advisers working for input suppliers and cooperatives are reported to exhibit orientations strongly distorted by their interests in selling more inputs and promoting higher production output, even though recent

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regulations in France have led to a compulsory separation between selling activities and advisory ones within advisory services. Moreover, new profiles of private consultants have emerged in the recent period, especially in link with the development of conservation agriculture or agroecology. Agricultural advisers’ profiles differ, depending on the type of organization they belong to. They may typically be either agricultural technicians trained in agriculture or even in agronomy, or else facilitators with a broader focus, trained in rural development and/or environmental and social sciences, with anything in-between. It is mainly the conceptions of the advisory work that differ, ranging from fairly classical (and often individual) technical advice to collective facilitation aimed at eliciting projects and changes from the farmers’ groups themselves. In any case, the traditional linear view of the agricultural development system based on the transfer of techniques and innovations from experts and advisers to farmers is increasingly called into question. Over the past two decades indeed, the vertical, top-down, linear visions of how agricultural knowledge is produced and exchanged have been increasingly criticized in the farming world as in the scientific literature. Many authors have suggested that knowledge was constructed through and in action, in order to incorporate the singular and local dimensions of farmers’ realities, in the interactions among farmers or between farmers and advisers or researchers (Röling 1992; Darré 1994; Ingram 2008). Organic agriculture, in particular, has constituted a ‘key social space’ for the expression of this critique of vertical, top-down knowledge.

The development of organic advisory networks In the specific case of organic farming, the institutionalization of this sector translates at national level into regulations and support policies, and also leads at territorial level to some reorganization of the agricultural advisory landscape and of relations between the different extension organizations. Thus, in some départements or regions, organic farmers feel ‘sidelined’ from the support and advisory services provided by the chambers of agriculture, and their own structures are often in a situation of conflict or even rivalry with these ‘mainstream’ professional organizations – as described in the results of surveys conducted in the Alpes-Maritimes département (Samak 2013) or in the Ile de France region (Cardona 2012), for example. However, whereas on the one hand this reorganization is continuing and relations of power or cooperation are constantly readjusted, on the other hand the situation varies widely from one region to the next.

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There are indeed different configurations of these relations between conventional advisory services and organic actors that may partially reflect the relative importance of organic farming at the local scale, and which are of course the results of situated relations and interactions. In 2009, organic agriculture became a mandatory component in the pluri-annual contracts binding the chambers of agriculture to the state and justifying public financing. However, even before this process of institutionalization of organic advisory activities, in many chambers of agriculture, some agricultural advisers already devoted times to support these often unassisted farmers, sometimes despite strong opposition of their organization and/or of some colleagues (Rémy, Brives and Lémery 2006). In the new context established in 2009, most chambers of agriculture established partnership agreements with organic organizations. The aim was to organize the sharing, between the two types of organization, of activities devoted to supporting organic conversion. This legitimization of organic agriculture in the public funding system had ambivalent effects, as on the one hand it urged more conventional actors to become involved in support to organic farmers, whereas on the other hand it increased competition between agricultural organizations and even weakened organic organizations. This once again varies a lot, however, from one area to another. With the recent institutionalization of agroecology in France (see Chapter 6), a tension now appears between neo-diffusionist and participatory approaches to development (Compagnone, Lamine and Dupré 2018), as well as a competition among different organizations as to which form of ecologized agriculture development efforts should favour.

Are access to advisory services and collective dynamics conducive to changes in practices? Outside organic agriculture, it is interesting to examine whether farmers who are in contact with a technical adviser are more likely to green their practices or not. The surveys that I  conducted with farmers involved in integrated production schemes showed that this depended largely on the type of advice to which they had access. Farmers who had more robust transitions towards integrated production were also those who were supported by advisers trained and specialized in these types of practices, whether they belonged to chambers of agriculture or alternative agricultural organizations. They were also heavily involved in the local farming community, whereas those who were potentially interested in greening their practices but had not yet initiated systemic changes

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were more isolated farmers and/or had the input provider’s technician as their main adviser. The other survey carried out in the fruit sector showed similarly that the farmers whose main adviser was their input provider or their marketing operator were those who implemented the fewest alternative techniques to pesticides and who used the most chemical treatments. However, other producers, who were more autonomous and did not refer to any adviser, also tended to use fewer inputs. This was evidenced in the results of the survey carried out in 2008 with tomato producers. In the latter case, producers who favoured biological control and talked about establishing an ecological and entomological balance were also those who had less contact with advisers, but spent more time observing their plants. Like advisory organizations and adviser profiles, the types of farmers groups have also changed and diversified over time. Until the 1990s, farmers groups were mainly local professional groups (Darré 1994)1 that were spaces of shared activities and of production of technical norms, and were characterized by strong social links. Today, farmers groups appear to be more scattered, partly due to the development of communication technologies, as show the cases of no-till groups and communities (Goulet 2008) and peasant seed production networks (Bonneuil and Demeulenaere 2007). With the development of short supply chains such as the Associations pour le Maintien de l’Agriculture Paysanne (AMAPs), farmers are also increasingly involved in multi-actor networks involving consumers or other actors such as local authorities. Moreover, my surveys also showed the importance of informal networks. The choice of the method obviously impacts what can be observed. A survey of a sample of farmers who are distant from one another in geographic and relational space (because they are chosen to embody the diversity of the issue being addressed:  for example, that of transitions to organic production in market gardening) does not give access to the same types of information about networks as an investigation which, at the scale of a small region, will proceed by ‘snowball effect’, following precisely the thread of relations between farmers, or as a survey that seeks systematically to reconstruct networks of relations, through a structural approach to networks (Compagnone, Lamine and Hellec 2011). The latter two methods are more likely to reveal the effects of mutual acquaintance, and those of both formal and informal networks. Surveys that compare situations within farmers groups, based on a combination of individual interviews and observation of collective activities, and outside them, allow for understanding the processes whereby collective dynamics may favour changes in practices. Two of my surveys, focused respectively on cereal

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growers and fruit growers groups, showed that farmers who belonged to input reduction groups tended to use more alternative techniques and fewer chemical inputs.2 Part of such groups, at the national scale, belong to the Dephy-Fermes network that was set up in 2011 as part of the Ecophyto plan to reduce the use of pesticides and implement more ecological practices through the creation and facilitation of farmers’ groups. The surveys with cereal farmers have shown that belonging to a group facilitated the implementation of gradual transitions, as learning processes occurred during collective activities, allowing farmers to discuss the changes they have planned or implemented, with the other members of the group. Belonging to a group allowed them to reflect on their own practices and those of the others, and to rely on the others’ experiences and processes of trial and error (Lamine 2011b). The group also allowed them to collectively discuss their technical dead ends and to explore possible solutions together. Farmers collectively strengthen the technical legitimacy of their choices and changes through the tools and practices they test and implement at the same time, and through collective assessment, which echoes the Deweyian conception of collective inquiry (Dewey 1927). The group is also a secure forum where they can express their doubts and mutually support their decisions. Some farmers dare to implement certain techniques considered as particularly risky because other farmers have already implemented them, and for the sake of consistency within the group. ‘When someone has a hard time making up their minds, if he’s in our group he won’t do a chemical treatment; if he’s in a group that does that type of treatment, he’ll also do it’, one of the farmers explained. The notion of collective consistency is key here. By contrast, some farmers who feel isolated in their technical choice express their doubts. A fruit and wine producer, interviewed in 2009 in Ardèche, who was the only one in his area to have started a transition to organic farming, commented, ‘I do what seems to me to be right, because I have a vision of organic production. I’m not a pioneer because there are others who did it before me, but in the area, there’s only me. So I think I did well and I’m right to do it. But then … sometimes I have a doubt because I’m the only one … so I wonder if I’m not mistaken?’ This is why, while the relation to risk is often approached through the notion of ‘risk aversion’, especially by economists, and is thus considered as individual, it appears that it is just as much of a collective nature. Alternative methods are more legitimate because they are talked about, discussed and implemented by some other members of the group, sometimes even collectively constructed. As an adviser interviewed in Normandy in 2008 stated,

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It’s easier to get a message to ten farmers than face-to-face, because the farmer [who is alone in front of you] can always say “yes, he argues well, he knows how to argue, he knows how to talk, and then hey, he’s winding me up.” In a group, this message has much more impact because the farmers all hear the adviser talking; what makes the message accepted or not is the reaction of their colleagues.

This is also what a Dephy group facilitator interviewed in 2014 said: I presented them with trials. Two farmers started, then four and so on. Of course they started on a small piece of land, two or three rows, and then waited to see if it worked before fully adopting it, they did not go for it at once. And when the others in the group see that it works, it makes them change their mind, it’s more convincing than I am.

In other words, besides knowledge and techniques, it is trust that circulates in these groups (Carolan 2006). Such trust is not bilateral (involving the farmers and the adviser) but rather collectively built. It is strengthened through collective listening, and is combined with trust in the experience of peers. Belonging to a group also allows farmers to build a collective identity and thus jointly to resist opposition to ecological practices, in a professional world that is mostly sceptical about their approach. This scepticism stems from a long tradition of professional excellence evaluated, as we have seen, in terms of yields, cleanliness of the field (no visible weeds) and efficient ploughing. It is also due to the fear of being forced to implement changes that many are apprehensive about, because of pioneers who proved that these changes were achievable. To remain credible among their other conventional colleagues (outside the group), some consider it important to also be part of more ‘traditional’ professional collectives. They feel that this enables them to reconcile innovation and professional legitimacy (Darré 1994). However, maintaining this link to the ‘traditional’ professional collectives can also prevent them from changing their practices. A farmer on the board of a chamber of agriculture claimed that he was convinced of the efficacy of integrated protection, but that because of trade union and professional responsibilities he chose not to oppose the majority of his colleagues.

II. Spatial and social proximity and webs of legitimization The process of institutionalization of organic farming in France, started in the early 1980s, has been accompanied by a gradual increase in the number of

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conversions, especially in the last decade (from 2.1 per cent to 7.5 per cent of areas between 2008 and 2018, and from 2.4 per cent to 9.5  percent of farms over the same period). Although organic farming still accounts for only a small proportion of agricultural land and farmers, its image in society and in the agricultural world has changed considerably since the beginning of its institutionalization. We are witnessing a process of increasing legitimization, particularly linked to effects of social and spatial proximity. This is reflected in a real change of how the agricultural world sees organic farming, but also leads to processes of ‘re-differentiation’ within the agricultural world as controversies around organic farming and its place in society develop.

The effects of spatial and social proximity A high geographical density of organic farms generates effects of proximity to the organic farming model. The regions in which my surveys were conducted present different situations from this point of view. In the first survey region (Normandy), the presence of organic farming did not exceed 1 per cent of the farmed area, while it was around 10 per cent or 15 per cent in the second region (Ardèche and Drôme). The density of organic farmers in the territory in which they work and live changes how farmers relate to this model. This proximity is both cognitive – they hear more about organic farming in networks of acquaintances – and sensory – they can see organic farms, fields, actors and products. In the second region, almost all farmers had a neighbour or farmers close by who were involved in organic farming, whereas in the first region they had to ‘travel a little’ to see the organic farms and their fields, which they would often consider to be too ‘dirty’. The analysis of organic conversions shows that the presence of organic farmers in the surroundings is decisive because it generates a sensory, though indirect, form of experience. In addition to the proximity of organic farmers or to organic farming’s ‘physical’ density, it is also a network of actors (characterized by its links and interactions, and not just by a percentage of organic farmers) that develops over time and that makes the wider agri-food system better able not only to legitimize but also to support the development of organic farming (see Chapter 5).

Conventional farmers’ view of organic farming The distance – both cognitive and physical – between conventional farmers and organic farmers is thus decreasing, even this differs from one region to another;

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it has now become rare for a conventional farmer not to know an organic colleague or neighbour. What are the impacts in terms of how conventional farmers consider organic ones? A first way to consider changes in how organic farmers are perceived by others is to interview farmers who have been in organic for a long time, about how they were perceived by their conventional colleagues in the early days of their organic transition, compared to today. Interestingly, many organic farmers reported that in the early days they would not necessarily say that they farmed organic, or at least not to everyone. Until the 1980s at least, organic farmers were often mocked and discredited by their conventional colleagues (Samak 2013). A second way to tackle this question is to compare surveys conducted at different times. Although the interval between the two surveys analysed here (2007–8 and 2014) is not very long, it corresponds to a moment where the legitimization of organic made a leap forwards. Even though in each period and survey, the visions of organic farmers are heterogeneous, a comparison of the two surveys suggests that organic farmers are far less ostracized in the discourse of conventional farmers than they previously were. More positive standpoints are developing, while more negative ones are tending to weaken. For example, organic farming is now seen as a form of highly technical agriculture, which over time produces more respect and less contempt. In the survey conducted in 2007–8 in Normandy with cereal farmers mainly, three views of organic farming appeared: it is not economically viable both at the farm scale and at a large scale; it does not allow farmers to maintain ‘clean’ fields, according to the criterion of professional excellence described above; and finally, it is certainly very technical, but de facto considered inaccessible. Even farmers who were committed to integrated production found it inaccessible, although they appear less critical about organic farming: ‘organic farming seems to me very very complicated technically to implement and I don’t feel able to master it. And I’m not either prepared to have very bad harvests, or to have very dirty fields. So, there’s an extreme that I’m not ready to endure. I know the organic farmers around here, I know their fields. There are things that I don’t feel able to bear. It goes too far, it’s too marginal for me’ (cereal producer, Normandy, 2007). In the survey conducted in 2014 with fruit growers in Drôme and Ardèche, farmers expressed much less distance from organic farming. Many said that if there were technical solutions for their main technical problems, they would go organic. Significantly, while among cereal farmers the most obvious technical problem in organic farming is weeds in the fields, for fruit growers it is insects,

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sometimes diseases, that can radically compromise a harvest:  ‘it is better to treat than to lose the crop for example in case of an infestation of aphids.’ The economic argument remains present, and some growers speak of ‘yields that are substantially diminished’ with a ‘price difference that does not offset that’. One of these fruit growers, who was an elected member of the chamber of agriculture and also a member of the board of the local fruit cooperative, considered transitioning to organic farming and had participated in meetings on this subject and even to trainings, but ‘did not want to take the risk of putting himself in the red’. He considered that this would be like a lottery, especially as his varieties of fruit seemed poorly suited to organic farming practices (fruit grower, Ardèche, 2014). Conversely, some people see organic farming as a train to take: ‘I’m convinced that currently, organic farming … I imagine it as a train, and I must take this train. So I took my ticket, I’m in the train, and I’ll go’, said a fruit grower who had already partially converted some of his fields to organic. In these surveys, like in previous ones in the cereal sector, organic farming is perceived by conventional farmers as a highly technical mode of production:  ‘For organic, you have to know what you’re doing, I think you have to be very very skilled to go organic, there’s no catch-up solution. One has to have a preventive perspective, to find a good balance in the orchards; it’s more complicated’, said the above fruit grower. Others claim that converting to organic farming borders on masochism:  ‘We don’t have to beat ourselves up!’ commented another fruit grower in the Drôme (2014), adding that the demand for organic farming comes from people of the cities who are not aware of the reality of things and want beautiful, good and healthy products:  ‘we’re not going to live like beggars so that the bourgeois of the cities can have a clear conscience.’ This echoes the arguments of many conventional farmers who see organic farming as being elitist: ‘To my mind, the problem of organic, one of the problems of organic, is the cost, the price at which we sell these products. For me, the problem of organic is that it’s for people who have money. And for me, this is a big problem’, explained for example a cereal farmer, even though he was a leader in his integrated production group. These fruit growers thus highlight the contradictions of consumers:  ‘people want cheap, beautiful and untreated products’ – knowing that untreated fruits are generally less beautiful (smaller, less regular, sometimes marked with scab spots – apples – or other appearance defects), and according to some growers, also more expensive to produce. While conventional farmers’ views of organic farming appear to be becoming more positive over time, and organic farming appears as a kind of stimulus that

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drives or justifies expectations of pesticide reduction (Lamine 2011a; Lamine, Tétart and Chateauraynaud 2010), some critics persist, particularly regarding the environmental aspects. Some consider the organic mode of production as contradictory in that it is assumed to use copper in high doses. The controversy over the use of copper is one of the most vivid in organic circles themselves, at least in vine and fruit growing, and in market gardening. In arable crops, critics point to the need to use a tractor more frequently, and thus consume more diesel (for mechanical weeding).

Processes of ‘re-differentiation’ within organic farming The increasing legitimization of organic farming has gone hand in hand with a growing commitment of more ‘mainstream’ actors (chambers of agriculture, large cooperatives, mass retailers, etc.). This has led to growing divergences between what some consider to be a ‘misguided’, ‘substitute’ or ‘conventionalized’ organic farming, which they see in opposition to a more ‘ethical’ organic farming:  a process that many authors and some actors describe as the conventionalization of organic farming (Buck, Getz and Guthman 1997; Guthman 2004; Smith and Stirling 2010). Rather than adopting this dichotomous point of view, let us analyse the controversies caused by the phenomenon of legitimization and consider the processes of ‘re-differentiation’ between different types of organic farming that result from it, and that draw new boundaries which make sense for the actors, in different social worlds. First, in this context of stronger legitimization of organic farming among conventional farmers, a differentiation appears between a technical organic farming and a less credible one. While organic farmers are no longer seen by their peers as ‘strange’ or ‘marginal’, some are still perceived by many nonorganic farmers as more responsible, more credible and more technical than others. We also find this border between the ‘responsible’ organic farmers and the others, in the discourses of the chamber of agriculture’s advisers who support market gardeners in their setting-up process in Drôme and in Ardèche. Some of them distinguish between future farmers who have a certain solidity materialized in a small starting capital, and those who start without a real investment capacity and are seen as much more fragile. There are those who ‘can buy a small tractor, greenhouses, irrigation equipment, who have some capital when they start, who also have some experience of the local climate and agronomic conditions. They are likely to develop over 3–4–5 years and to be able to live from their activity

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after a few years.’ On the other hand, there are those who ‘live thanks to their own resourcefulness; they live in caravans, it’s very complicated, they come up against very difficult working conditions. There are some guys who have a small plough, that’s all, like amateurs, they do everything manually. Well it can be exhausting quickly; these are people who, after 2 or 3 years, have tiny incomes, they can’t make a living. So the future of these people, we don’t know’ (chamber of agriculture’s adviser, Drôme, 2011). For some organic farmers who have strong ties to conventional agricultural farmers, another boundary is emerging, or rather a dilemma between an organic farming that must be democratized and an organic farming that must remain very demanding. This dilemma is mainly expressed around the question of the levels of stringency of organic regulations. The issue here is a question of openness (for some, synonymous with recognition, but for others, with weakness) or closure (for the former, synonymous with sectarianism, for others, with high standards and coherence). ‘You have to stay with the others and not stand apart’, said a fruit grower who had converted most of his production, but accused most organic farmers and their local network of being ‘too sectarian’ and ‘militant’. According to him, organic farming ‘should be only a production technique and not a militant act’ (fruit grower, Drôme, 2014). Another farmer, who was organic but also elected within the main farmers union – once a rare situation, this union having long remained barely integrative compared to organic farmers, which today appears more common and also testifies to this organic farming legitimization process – considered organic farming should not be only for small farms: ‘I have a small farm but I think organic farming should also concern medium-sized farms, or even large ones, because we still need to produce in our country. But we call it human-sized, it is precisely this criterion of being transmissible’ (organic farmer, Ardèche, 2009). Other organic farmers are opposed to this idea of big organic farms, by highlighting the possible effects of price decreases (associated with the famous ‘economies of scale’ of these large structures), also analysed in work on the conventionalization of organic farming (Smith and Marsden 2004). This is in line with the arguments of those who, particularly in various alternative agricultural networks, defend a more ‘peasant’-type or family-run organic farming. A  new border is defined here between an organic farming often described as conventional or ‘substitution’ (from biological inputs to chemical inputs), to a peasant organic farming which is seen as more ‘systemic’ at the technical level, and in which the social, territorial and food dimensions are put forward. Among organic farmers, these different voices and paths reflect contrasting visions of

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the current legitimization of organic food and its future, between those who would like to see organic farming become accessible to more farmers, even if it means relaxing some of its requirements, and those who defend a more social and ‘peasant’ vision of organic farming.

Links to society: A source of neighbourhood conflicts or of legitimization and support? Many farmers who have opted for an organic conversion emphasize the importance of being in tune with society’s expectations. They see the switch to direct selling as materializing this, first because it allows them to discuss their practices directly with consumers, second because it gives them a gratifying return on the quality of their products (and therefore the relevance of their choices) and finally because it puts the nurturing role of agriculture at the fore, which naturally enhances the legitimacy of both producers’ and consumers’ choices. Finally, in some forms of direct selling such as AMAPs, this choice goes hand in hand with the insertion in a real support network composed not only of consumers but also of other producers, even if this model does not prevent certain forms of asymmetry (Lamine 2008a). Outside organic farming, producers may also rely on direct selling to reinforce an ecological transition of their farm, because precisely, in the absence of a label, they can justify and explain to consumers their technical and technological choices and their possible consequences on the products they sell (Perrot 2009). On the other hand, for cereal products, which are not consumed directly, the potential for direct product valorization and consumer support is much lower. In general, in contrast to organic, the lack of translation of their practices into consumer-perceivable qualities causes farmers to talk of their products as ‘hybrids’ that are not recognized. In this case, the lack of intra-professional legitimacy is not compensated for by extra-professional legitimization, as it is in organic farming, despite the general perception of a strong ‘social demand’ for reducing inputs. The actors of the non-agricultural world with which these farmers are connected are not so much the consumers of their products, as neighbours, parents of students, sometimes people with whom they interact professionally (garage, administration, etc.). However, whereas formerly the different professions making up the rural population depended ‘organically’ on one another (Rémy 1987), today, these grain growers sometimes have distant or even potentially conflictual relations with their neighbours. This phenomenon of distancing, which stems from the growing separation between

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agriculture and rural life (Friedland 2002), that is, between farmers and the rural non-farm population, is expressed by farmers in terms of image and ‘what others think’. These ‘others’ may be neighbours:  ‘It pains me to treat [my crops], even if we’re are obliged to, at the edge of their gardens. … Even if I do it correctly, only when it’s necessary, with the right dose, I’m still treating’ (farmer, Normandy, 2008). The issue here is ‘living together’. This requires farmers, in their local communities, to deal both with the eyes of their peers who may reproach them for having fields that are too ‘dirty’ or too irregular, and that of their neighbours and townspeople who criticize them on the contrary for treating too often. Again, however, the configurations are quite diverse and in some regions, the social and relational links between farmers and non-farmers remain very strong. This draws a new element of contrast between the study regions, and even of course between local areas.

III. Production and circulation of knowledge How is knowledge produced and circulated in these agroecological transition situations, whether they relate to organic conversion or to input reduction processes? How do forms of ‘top-down’ knowledge flow, of farmers’ reappropriation of knowledge production (Kloppenburg 1991), or of co-production of knowledge coexist?

Adoption, accommodation or co-construction of innovations? In the integrated protection groups studied in the north of France, farmers could appear as ‘receivers’ of technical proposals coming from their agricultural advisers, who themselves refer to the research in a way that may seem to be essentially top-down. How are farmers responding to these proposals? Where sociologists are often asked by their agronomist colleagues or by agricultural institutions to investigate the factors and conditions of adoption and the ‘acceptability’ of innovations, my comprehensive investigations (based on interviews and group observation) showed above all processes of accommodation. These result from two processes that should be distinguished in what is usually referred to as adoption of innovations. One, ideal, leads an individual (a farmer) to pay attention to new ideas and techniques and new ways of doing things; the other,

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more concrete, leads him/her to test them concretely by inserting them into the whole of his/her system of practices, thus modifying it to varying degrees (Compagnone, Lamine and Hellec 2011). The notion of accommodation is borrowed from Piaget, for whom this process corresponds to a transformation of a thought system following the introduction of a new element, as opposed to the process of ‘assimilation’ in which the integration of a new element does not profoundly affect the thought system. It expresses the fact that the introduction of a new way of doing things entails the joint transformation of both systems of thought and practices. Farmers ‘accommodate’ things to relation to one another (ideas, objects or practices) in order to keep them together. They do this based on reflective work which allows them to determine whether things are going as they should, whether gaps are occurring and why, and whether adjustments are possible (Darré 1994). This work of accommodation of an initial technical proposal aims at organizing a set of practices in a coherent way. It requires from the farmer less effort at transformation when the ‘affordance’ and ‘modulation capacity’ of the proposed innovations are large, thus facilitating the adoption of these innovations. The affordance corresponds to whatever facilitates the take up of these innovations by users  – here, farmers (Bessy and Chateauraynaud 1993, 1995). Once again, this emphasizes the importance of the sensory and empirical test. The ‘modulation capacity’ of an innovation relates to its ability to change shape, that is, to be easily dismantled into sub-elements that may themselves be rearranged with other elements of the system of practices (Simondon 1995).3 From this work of accommodation carried out by the farmers, we can identify three main modes of farmers’ reaction to the technical innovations they are required to implement:  (1) a process of appropriation, in which the farmers adopt in an essentially global and generally robust way the principles of integrated production, through collective learning processes within a group (in the cases studied); (ii) a percolation process, in which farmers combine these proposals with other innovations that come from their own experience, from other farmers, or from other sources – as in the case of no-till agriculture (Goulet 2008); and (iii) finally a process of arrangement, when farmers adopt only parts of the proposals without changing the rest of their practices (Hochereau and Lamine 2010). The latter process generally corresponds to the trajectories of transitions that we have described as more reversible (see Chapter 2), while first two, by their more systemic and progressive nature, correspond to the more robust trajectories.

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Collective knowledge: New alliances and new forms of expertise In these groups, solutions to farmers’ problems can also be built collectively. The group observation showed that advisers combine external propositions (from research or from other advisers) with an analysis and a construction of more endogenous solutions with their farmers group. For example, in one of these groups, each working session was an opportunity to collectively analyse the technical trajectory of one of the farms, with the aim of building appropriate trajectories within the group and over time. The learning processes linked to these agroecological transitions are often played out in a combination of diverse and complementary links that also result in the definition of new alliances. My different surveys showed that the scale and robustness of agroecological transitions depend on farmers’ ability to build not only strong links with networks related to one or another form of ‘sustainable’ agriculture but also weak links which constitute as many bridges for the circulation of information on a variety of techniques favouring input reduction. The combination of these two types of linkages is likely to encourage changes in practices, provided that farmers are not blocked in relationships of dependence with these different networks; in other words, that they are not embedded in asymmetrical relationships that lock them in a world of rules and determined behaviours (Cardona and Lamine 2014). Thus, far from the individualization of the farmer’s work, which is often put forward, we are witnessing new forms of collective learning processes and change. Many forms of peer-to-peer knowledge exchange develop, both in the Global South, with initiatives like campesino a campesino (Rosset et  al. 2011), and in the Global North, for example, with projects to pair beginning farmers with established farmer-mentors (Chrétien and Daneau 2013). These collectives where knowledge is produced and circulated are not just agricultural, and new alliances are emerging. Advisers who lead farmers groups sometimes rely on experts or researchers, as in the case of the group of farmers in integrated protection studied in 2008, where the group’s adviser was strongly involved in various networks and projects in collaboration with researchers. In this case, the alliances woven with public research or development institutions are a source of legitimacy, while in other cases this is the role of independent experts, sometimes former members of these institutions, who have chosen to emancipate themselves and develop their own advisory offer. In the case of AMAP, it can be a member consumer who brings his/her expertise on one or the other subject. In all cases, specific figures of ‘intermediation’ develop

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to support these forms of production and circulation of knowledge (Hazard et al. 2017).

Learning processes for situated knowledge Of course, farmers’ knowledge is partly formal, but mostly constructed in action and in situation. Formal knowledge itself is quite diverse. In addition to their agricultural training (whether initial or continuous) and especially their first farm internships, farmers talk a lot about what they read. Even though the internet has often replaced paper, some seminal books and certain journals remain key references, especially for organic farmers (Sayre 2011), in interaction with their own empirical, day-to-day on-farm learning processes. Many farmers indeed carry out trials (organic, input reduction, new variety, etc.) on small plots; others, like this market gardener, focus year after year on a specific crop in order to improve their knowledge: ‘to optimise, to understand what works. The main crop will be potato. I realised that by irrigating well, by putting down potash, by hoeing, by butting it regularly, doing this, well, it changed the production. So I started with potato, and then I did that with zucchini, then with tomato, and then with lettuce’ (organic market gardener, Ardèche, 2009). In progressive and gradual transitions to organic farming, technical trials are often decisive, whether they are conducted alone by the farmer or with the support of an adviser. They allow farmers to experiment without any obligation as to the result, simply ‘to convince oneself ’. Some trials yield disappointing results, but they would have allowed the farmer to test some new practices and observe their effects on his/her own farm, in his/her typical conditions. Thus, despite the possibly inconclusive results, one of the organic farmers drew from his experiments and observations his ‘first lesson in ecology’. He noticed in his fields the new presence of an auxiliary to fight against aphids, which attested to a positive effect of the changes of practices that he had undertaken: ‘it allowed me to see that there is an ecosystem that could very quickly be put in place.’ It is thus the empirical and sensory experiences allowed by farmers’ experimentation on their own farms that appear decisive. They support the production of situated or actionable knowledge (Argyris 1995), that is, knowledge that can be put into practice in specific situations. In all cases, sensory experience is decisive in learning processes, whether it is the farmer’s own experience – hence, the major role of trials – or that of others. Their own sensory and empirical experiences, or their direct access to those of others, for example through farm visits, contribute to the transition from the

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‘impossible’ to the ‘possible’. They foster trust: ‘I allowed myself to know what others were doing. That which initially intrigued me and did not seem possible in my case, in fact once I  went to see it close up, appeared possible’ (organic farmer, Provence, 2005). In such cases, the ‘good’ eyes of others allay the fears grounded in neighbours’ and colleagues’ critical and negative perception. Sometimes consumers play a role in these sensory learnings, insofar as producers are sensitized to their tastes and dietary preferences (Lamine 2006), or consumers themselves, based on their specific skills – for example, with regard to plants – may provide farmers with useful advice. Learning processes are thus multifarious: they develop through on-farm experiments, through contact with other organic farmers, through training, within farmers groups, and through interactions with advisers and experts, and even sometimes with consumers. Besides these diverse modes of collective and embodied knowledge production, that enable farmers to improve their capacities for the observation and interpretation of specific conditions within their natural environment, and to define relevant actions to implement, new forms of ‘encapsulated’ knowledge are also developing, for example, with so-called precision agriculture, ‘digital’ agriculture or ‘intelligent’ agriculture (associated in turn with certain versions of ‘agroecology’). The goal is to develop ‘smart’ tools based on a continually increasing capacity for data capture and analysis. The ‘encapsulation’ resides in the fact that the knowledge becomes housed within one or several technical objects. A number of agricultural companies, notably large grain cooperatives, are engaged in such efforts to ‘ecologize’ agriculture based on the encapsulation of knowledge, developing their capacities for data collection, storage and analysis and providing farmers with digital tools to monitor crops and assist in decision making (Compagnone, Lamine and Dupré 2018). This opposition between encapsulated and embodied or incorporated knowledge, between reliance on technological tools and reliance on sensory perception and experiential knowledge, raises many interesting questions with regard to modes of governance and the use of technical systems, and with regard to the power dynamics involved in the mastery of such systems. Critical thinking on technique (such as in the works of J. Ellul and I. Illich) has shown the risks of heteronomy resulting from the development of massive, centralized systems versus the autonomy enabled by systems that are lighter, decentralized and flexible at the local level. Today, some groups of farmers develop innovations that allow them to oppose technologized forms of agriculture that promote processes of encapsulation (Compagnone, Lamine and Dupré 2018). For example, a recent claim from the French network InPACT,4 a coalition of alternative

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agriculture associations, argues that the adoption of expensive technologies (robots, computers, biotechnology, etc.) not only renders farmers captive and dependent but also has the effect of generating data that are subject to external appropriation, rather than encouraging independent initiative and allow farmers to gain in competencies and in ‘capability’ (Sen 1992). Such networks, which can also be found at the international level (Arond and Fressoli 2015), claim a greater autonomy for peasant farmers with respect to technical systems – a claim, in other words, for ‘technological sovereignty for peasants’ as says the InPACT network.

Conclusion In a context of diversification of the forms of advice and of the types of professional networks in which farmers are involved, obviously accentuated by the development of internet and new forms of communication, agroecological transitions can be favoured by a diversity of forms of support and collective dynamics. In other words, there is not an ideal type of advice or collective facilitation. The forms of production and circulation of knowledge are also transformed by new communication technologies. However, farmers still strongly value concrete collectives that share physical meetings and direct discussions, as well as offer a sensory and physical access to the techniques implemented by others and allow the unique and iterative processes of exchange of both techniques and ideas.

Notes 1 Many sociological studies have examined the role of peers and of networks or groups in processes of change of practices (Norton, Rajotte and Gapud 1999; Collet and Mormont 2003; Warner 2007). 2 See Lamine et al. (2016), Rapport final du projet Prunus, INRA, 65 p. 3 The concepts of affordance (saillance in French) and modulation were developed by G. Simondon (Simondon 1958, 1995) and discussed by G. Deleuze. The concept of prise (that we might also translate as affordance), but in French it allows for a symmetrical meaning – a situation of an object offers a prise (affordance), which allows a person to have a prise (grasp) on it – was developed partly based on the same sources, by Bessy and Chateauraynaud (1993, 1995). 4 Initiatives Pour une Agriculture Citoyenne et Territoriale (Initiatives for a CitizenBased and Territorial Agriculture).

4

Sustainability transitions at the food chain scale

In the previous chapters, we saw how diverse elements, external or specific to farmers and their families, professional, technical and social environment, can promote – or not – ecological transition processes of their practices. But these processes are often limited by the strong interdependencies in which these farmers are ‘caught’. For example, grain farmers cannot set up crop rotations that facilitate input reductions, because certain products are not valued on the market. Likewise, fruit growers cannot take the risk of switching to more hardy varieties allowing less pesticide-consuming practices, because supermarkets do not want them. The aim here is therefore to decipher these interdependencies and to untangle the web of relationships in which farmers are ‘caught’, in order to analyse how the interdependencies are maintained or even reinforced, or on the contrary redefined through concrete mechanisms, rules and forms of collective action implemented (or not) by various actors in the sociotechnical system. This chapter explores ecological transition processes at the food chain scale, based on three French and Brazilian empirical case studies. The first one is the sociotechnical system of wheat production in France, where an intensification process started in the agricultural modernization era has led to path dependency and to a marginalization of alternatives. The case of the main French organic supermarket chain (Biocoop) is then analysed from a dynamical perspective in order to show how its commitments and its governance were redefined over time in order to react to internal and external controversies. This study is complemented by the case of a Brazilian organic producers’ cooperative and the transformation of its core project and values over time. These two studies inform reflection on the autonomy of organic producers and alternative food networks in relation to the mainstream food system, revisiting issues raised originally in the ‘conventionalisation debates’ of the 1990s and early 2000s.

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I. Lock-in mechanisms against input reduction and triggers of change at the scale of food chains Work on ecological transition processes in agriculture generally focuses on farmers alone, while work on the making of quality – in economics, geography or sociology – takes into account the food chain actors (Allaire and Boyer 1995). While the former talk about agriculture, the latter talk mainly about ‘supply chains’ or filières, in French. Instead of this concept of supply chain, which suggests a linear and vertical view of the system of actors, we prefer that of agrifood system. It allows us here to take into account not only the interdependencies with the component just ‘above’ or just ‘below’ (upstream and downstream) but also those between different components even perceived to be more distant. The sociotechnical system thus defined encompasses the actors of supply chains, from production to consumption, as well as public policies, advisory, research and development institutions and even civil society. It is not only a system of actors but also a system of rules, standards and mechanisms governing these actors. Despite the criticism that can be levelled at the notion of ‘system’ and which can cause power relations to be overlooked, the challenge of using it is precisely to highlight the possibilities of redefining not only these power relations but also the effects of collective unaccountability that the feeling of belonging to a ‘system’ tends to create – a feeling based on the idea that, because one is dependent on others, one cannot do much to change things (Beck 1992). The approaches to ‘sustainable’ transitions, or sustainability transition theories that were gradually developed during the 2000s, call for a systemic approach to transitions and in particular ecological transitions (Markard, Raven and Truffer 2012). Among these approaches, the multilevel perspective suggests that transitions result from interactions at three levels: landscape, regime and niches. From this perspective, niche innovations and changes in the sociotechnical landscape1 create pressures on the regime, which generate destabilizing effects of this (dominant) regime and the opening of windows of opportunity for niche innovations. This approach is partly inspired by evolutionary economics studies on technological trajectories, which showed that these trajectories are explained by a multidimensional causality rather than an opposition between either market or technological innovation determinism, and that the interplay of economic factors, scientific innovations and institutional variables generates powerful exclusionary effects on alternative paths (Dosi 1982). Applied to the agricultural sector, some studies have thus shown how a ‘technological regime’ based on productivity gains emerged and was strengthened

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from the 1960s onwards (Possas, Salles-Filho and Maria da Silveira 1996), creating situations of lock-in and path dependency. These two concepts were designed to explain the stability of technologies: sensitivity to initial conditions and increasing yield effects mean that technologies with similar performance and functions, and perhaps higher long-term potentials, are set aside. More specifically, the impossibility of moving from chemical pesticides to integrated protection, considered as a competing technology, appears to be linked to the accumulation of many factors, associated in particular with uncertainty, coordination problems, technological inertia and precisely the path dependency that creates lock in (Cowan and Gunby 1996). These studies showed that once the chemical control strategy had been widely adopted, funding for pesticide research and development increased, while funding for the development of integrated protection decreased. Despite the negative externalities of pesticides in terms of environment, health and sustainability (highlighted in the early 1960s, in R. Carson’s Silent Spring, for example), and even despite yield declines due to resistance in some crops as early as the 1970s, due to the ‘pesticide treadmill’, farmers still continued to use just as many of these pesticides because they were ‘locked’ and ‘trapped’ in the chemical crop protection system (Wilson and Tisdell 2001). In the case of the cereals and fruits discussed here, these concepts of path dependency and lock in have been put to the test of hardy wheat varieties and scab-resistant apple trees to decipher the obstacles to the wider adoption of these varieties, by linking them to the conflicts of interest of the different actors in the sector (Vanloqueren and Baret 2004, 2008). The transition approach shows us that building ‘transition paths to sustainability’ (Geels and Schot 2007) requires the use of levers that are also located at different levels of the sociotechnical system and must therefore be considered together. This approach has the merit of not seeing this only as a system of actors, and of taking into account the rules, standards and mechanisms that concretely guide and coordinate the activities and perceptions of these actors (Geels 2004). It is cognitive routines, beliefs, skills, lifestyles and consumption habits, institutional arrangements, regulations or contracts that, because they coordinate and guide the activities of the actors concerned, generate a certain stability in the sociotechnical system. This is also the claim of some studies developing a theory of ‘socio-economic orders’ which, applied to the agricultural sector, show that it is strongly determined by its history, the norms governing it and the systems of action that make it work (Aggeri and Hatchuel 2003). But the multilevel perspective can rightly be criticized for failing to take into consideration the actors and their agency or ability to act (to the benefit of structures), its lack of attention to conflicts and power relations and

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its lack of precision on the very processes of change (Shove and Walker 2007). This is why I propose here a pragmatist interpretation of interactions between components in the agri-food system, focused on an analysis of the actions and coordination methods implemented by the various actors embodying them, from a perspective that is both systemic (since it takes into account the interactions and interdependencies between these components) and diachronic (since it considers the transformations of these interactions over time).

The case of wheat: A marginalization of alternative ways This approach allows analysing, in the sociotechnical system associated with wheat cultivation, the interactions and interdependencies between the components in the sociotechnical system, and their redefinition over time. This system is defined as all the actors, rules, standards and devices involved in wheat production: farmers, research, consultants, supply chains (phytosanitary industries, input suppliers, wheat collecting bodies, millers, bakers, etc.), public policies and also consumers. By the early 1990s, agronomists had already described the logic of wheat intensification at the technical level (Meynard and Girardin 1991), showing how it was based on the availability of a diversity of inputs and their use (via suppliers or consultants), which together make it possible to achieve yields close to the potential of the crop in the given environment. The extension of this approach by integrating the diversity of the components in the sociotechnical system2 has made it possible to show that, over time, farming strategies and technical practices at the farm level, innovations in chemical protection or varietal selection and the strategies of agri-food operators, and even public policies (research and experimentation policies, registration of varieties in the official catalogue, agricultural subsidies), gradually converged, in the years 1978–84, and at the end of what is commonly called the first phase of ‘agricultural modernisation’ (1950–70), towards a ‘turning point in intensification’. A chronological review makes it possible to objectify this turning point, which began around 1980, through a series of changes in all these components. One of the features attesting to this turning point was a ‘Wheat Forum’ organized in 1979 by the Institut français des céréales, during which recommendations were presented to farmers and advisers explicitly concerning ‘an overall strategy for intensive cereal cultivation’ combining ‘two types of interventions, those designed to increase yields and those designed to ensure them, [which] act in a reciprocal manner on each other’3. This type of recommendation embodies the application of the productivist paradigm to this wheat crop.

Sustainability Transitions at Food Chain Scale

Pesticides used to deal with unexpected problems

1960

Modernization period First insecticides and growth regulators

1970

First fungicides First systemic herbicides

1980

The intensification turn From curative to systematic treatments Changes in practices: early fertilization, early and dense sowing Adapted equipment

1983

First resistances to fungicides

19851993

First productive multi-resistant varieties First studies on low-input strategies

1993today

The period of questioning Period of low prices Agri-environmental measures Work on low-input strategies and rustic varieties Development of good agricultural practices schemes

Pesticides used as insurance

79

Figure 2 Sociotechnical trajectory of intensification in wheat production. Source: author.

Despite its coherence, this intensification turn did not, however, convince all the stakeholders. Among farmers, different paths were emerging even at the very heart of this period of agricultural modernization, particularly in regions with mixed crop-livestock production (Deléage 2004), while in agricultural research the first criticisms were expressed.4 From around 1993 onwards, successive reforms of the European Common Agricultural Policy and forms of public support for agriculture, the development of societal pressures linked to the environmental impact of input-intensive practices and periods of falling wheat prices could have led to a shift towards de-intensification. However, the intensive model was resistant to criticism and it could even be said that alternative paths were marginalized. Among these alternative paths, one was opened, for example, by a network of experimenters, advisers and researchers  – most of them from structures belonging to the ‘dominant’ system, such as INRA, technical institutes or chambers of agriculture. These were actors seeking alternative paths within this dominant sociotechnical system – which, on the basis of repeated experiments over several years, highlighted the advantages of combining the choice of hardy

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wheat varieties with low-input techniques. These varieties came, in particular, from a partnership initiated in the early 1980s between INRA and several French private breeders, to create varieties that combine disease resistance, good yields and quality.5 Although it demonstrated that such choices (hardy varieties and low-input levels) allowed savings on production costs and therefore better economic margins despite often lower yields, this network had the greatest difficulty in making itself heard in the arenas of the ‘dominant’ system and, for example, in publishing its results in the agricultural press. While the process of marginalization of alternatives experienced by the actors of this network, on this particular point of dissemination, is partly due to a kind of censorship by the professional bodies, when we study the diversity of interactions more comprehensively, a more complex web of phenomena involving other components of the sociotechnical system emerges. For example, farmers point out obstacles related to work organization that causes them to promote systematic and planned practices which tend to be inputintensive. In addition, the problem of input reduction in wheat cultivation goes beyond wheat:  many phytosanitary problems stem from the simplification of crop rotation and the resulting shortening of rotations. Diversification of crops then becomes an issue, which requires the development of new markets. The cooperatives surveyed highlight the difficulty, however, of creating new markets and producing sufficient volumes at the same time: ‘To integrate new productions into collections, you must first initiate a market and then have sufficient volumes’ (interview with a cooperative, 2009). Yet some of them, in the recent period, have started to give themselves the means to develop diversified crops, particularly by relying not only on environmental but also on nutritional arguments (Magrini et  al. 2018). The articulations between the different components of the supply chain also play a decisive role in this marginalization of alternative ways of reducing inputs. While grain farmers are not as integrated as most pork or poultry producers, the fact remains that the cooperative or other organization that collects their grain downstream is often the one that also provides them with their inputs, whether it be seeds, fertilizers or pesticides. The majority of these organizations fear that reduced inputs will lead to a decrease in the volumes of wheat produced and collected, the basis of their activity, and a decrease in the inputs sold – an argument that is obviously seldom expressed! For example, one of the cooperatives studied links integrated protection to ‘a logic of degrowth’ that is ‘not socially acceptable’6 … and, thus, would not support farmers in such choices.

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Another argument raised is the risk of a decline in the technological and sanitary quality of wheat. Because of the quality criteria imposed on grain farmers, such as protein content or mycotoxin levels, many operators (cooperatives, traders, millers) consider the possibilities for input reduction to be limited. Yet research shows that for most hardy varieties grown with fewer inputs, the famous protein content is satisfactory if a judicious use is made of nitrogen fertilization. In addition, millers have the possibility of adjusting to quality variations, as their ‘quality surveys’ carried out at harvest enable them to modify their variety combination formula as needed.7 Further downstream, the case of organic bread shows that adjustments are also possible in breadmaking, with adapted processes, particularly in terms of raising and kneading time. There is however an increasing homogenization of standards, at least in industrial milling and baking, where wheat and flour must be adapted to current processes (e.g. rapid kneading). In practice, how are these downstream requirements imposed on farmers, who theoretically could be expected to be independent and free to choose the varieties and technical routes that suit them? These requirements are translated into prescriptions for farmers not only through the quality criteria imposed on them but also through devices such as breeders’ variety catalogues and lists of recommended varieties and technical guides published by storage organizations (which are also most often suppliers of seeds and other inputs), including cooperatives8. Thus, in these catalogues or lists of varieties, yield and technological quality criteria prevail over disease resistance criteria. This prescription system thus effectively prevents the exploration of alternative ways and the larger adoption of hardy varieties. The economic interests at stake preclude any idea that it could instead be used to encourage the rapid dissemination of more ecological technical models.

How to redefine interdependencies: Baker farmers and regional supply chains One option to overcome these very restrictive prescription systems and redefine interdependencies is to create an autonomous sociotechnical system. This is what farmer bakers (paysans boulangers) do, as they integrate processing into their activity and thus not only retain a greater share of the added value but also adjust their manufacturing processes to the quality of their cereals. When they are unable to find varieties adapted to their mode of production (generally

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organic), due to the lock-in effects mentioned above, and by rejecting the current form of seed market organization, many of them choose to invest in farmer seed exchange networks (Demeulenaere and Goulet 2012). The entire sociotechnical system is thus redefined, making it possible to articulate technical choices, outlets and food choices, by directly linking producers and consumers, in a kind of small-scale integration, adjustable to local conditions. The number of these baker farmers is increasing in France; also, they still represent a small proportion of the production of bread. Between the tightly locked-in functioning described above, and this radical redefinition of the system, is there no way out? There are nevertheless intermediate figures, such as some localized systems, that rely on local millers and bakers. This is the case of the ‘Pain Normand’ regional supply chain set up in 1997 by a rural development organization, the CIVAM Défis Ruraux, in collaboration with a network of bakers in Normandy. The wheat was produced in local mills from wheat produced by local farmers. These farmers were required not only to follow a precise technical roadmap but also to use a particular type of wheat, as the product was to guarantee farm-tobakery traceability. It was the latter constraint that was the most challenging in terms of both investments and organization. This approach was quite pioneering in terms of involvement of the various components of the sociotechnical system, since it involved farmers, bakers, millers, and advisers. But it turned out that the choice of a wheat variety that was difficult to grow with a low level of chemical inputs (fertilizers and pesticides) impeded any significant environmental advance. Thus, although millers and bakers liked this particular type of wheat, notably for its colour, it was indeed difficult to ‘dis-intensify’. This highlights the fact that rusticity means different things to different people: producers see reduced sensitivity to diseases, while millers and bakers relate it to taste and colour criteria. Even though the initial specifications did not require a reduction of inputs, the advice given to the farmers to support their change of practices had this precise objective, which was strongly advocated by the rural development organization that had initiated the supply chain. The farmers therefore set up trials to experiment with nitrogen and fungicide reduction. However, downstream, the millers and bakers feared that these new practices might cause a decline in the quality of the wheat from a technical point of view. Although changes in baking processes could compensate for technically poorer-quality wheat, the bakers were not keen to embark on that path, considering that consumers were more sensitive to the regional and local aspects of bread than to environmental criteria.

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Who doesn’t want fruit from a more ecological agriculture? Consumers are easy to blame As in the case of hardy wheat, hardy apple varieties (resistant or not very susceptible to marks) have long been available. This includes both old varieties and varieties from public research genetics laboratories. Yet, the flagship varieties on the national and international market remain for the most part sensitive varieties (such as Gala, Pink Lady, Braeburn, Golden Delicious), and agricultural practices maintain very high levels of inputs  – so much so that apples are often chosen by environmental organizations as the fruit symbol of campaigns denouncing pesticide use.9 In the case of fruit, the process of modernizing arboriculture, adapted to the growth of mass and remote consumption, has for a long time led the various components in the food chain to favour criteria of productivity and conformity to the standard market: sizes and quality standards relating solely to the visual appearance of the fruit, suitability for transport and preservation. This has been at the expense of both criteria of resistance to diseases and pests and organoleptic qualities. To explain the failure of resistant or low-sensitivity varieties and the impossibility of reducing the use of pesticides, downstream operators highlight ‘consumer preferences’ for common varieties or ‘perfect’ fruits. Yet this concept deserves closer analysis, because these consumer ‘preferences’ are largely formatted by mass distribution: the reduction in the number of varieties offered has fostered habits among consumers, especially in the other components in the agri-food system, which indirectly but effectively contribute to curbing the adoption of varieties that are more environmental-friendly.10 The failure of resistant apple varieties is thus the result of interlinking technical, commercial and organizational factors (Vanloqueren and Baret 2004). Moreover, apart from organic or short supply chains where producers can explain their choices and practices to consumers, it is not easy for retailers to promote the environmental and health benefits of certain fruits. Highlighting the fact that a particular type of fruit is less treated makes it particularly evident that the others are much more treated. In the case of apples, as in that of wheat, downstream prescription and control systems thus contribute to blocking input reduction opportunities, via the organizations that buy these apples from producers (producer organizations, traders, wholesalers, cooperatives) and impose these systems on them. The systems are intended to establish the traceability of products and ensure their standardization, with a view to their circulation, their marketing – whether for a

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generic market or for a market of specific quality – and their processing, in the case of processed fruits or cereals (Dubuisson-Quellier 2003). In a context of general proliferation of marks of quality (Nicolas and Valceschini 1995), certification systems set up by retailers or intermediaries in the agri-food sector aim above all for product traceability, even when they claim to have an environmental asset. Hence, they contribute only slightly to the greening of production methods (Jarosz and Qazi 2000; Morris 2000), except when they are set up by or in close interaction with environmental organizations (Hatanaka, Bain and Busch 2005). These approaches can even become a prerequisite for market access (Hatanaka and Busch 2008), as GlobalGAP has done.11 Some buyers even impose standards that can paradoxically have harmful effects on the environment. For example, they may require a maximum number of traceable active ingredients,12 causing producers to have to use the same products repeatedly. This can generate resistance phenomena and preclude the use of products that are less harmful to the environment.13 More generally, these private standards contribute to a depoliticization of debates on agricultural and environmental issues, for two reasons mainly:  they focus on the construction of objectification criteria and indicators, thus rendering the debate technical; and they are initiated in the private sphere and are therefore not discussed in the arenas of representative democracy (Fouilleux 2010). In the case of fruit, our surveys on apples and then on peaches and apricots show that the different forms of direct sales to consumers (AMAP, fairground markets, orchard picking, farm sales, collective sales outlets) can promote an ecological transition of practices. This is especially true since fruit producers, whose income is not supplemented by direct public aid (unlike grain farmers, in particular) and therefore depends more strongly on the level of commercial valuation, could have a particular interest in differentiating their products, thus responding to consumers’ expectations. Products consumed fresh, unprocessed and with a strong ‘health’ image are more particularly concerned here. In this context, the choice of direct sales makes it easier not only to redirect choices towards varieties that are more resistant to diseases but also – even if this is not always the case in practice – to take the risk of treating crops less or adopting alternative techniques.14 Producers are more likely to introduce new varieties, sometimes little known to consumers, when they have demand potential already in place. The demand for varietal diversity is growing among consumers of short supply chains, who are showing a particular interest in local and old varieties, some

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(but not all) of which are hardier. Conversely, a producer who wants to stop growing a very sensitive variety can directly explain this change in the supply, especially when consumers harvest the fruit directly in the orchard. These situations allow consumers not only to talk to the producer but also to have direct information on the impacts of diseases (Perrot 2009). Direct contact with consumers often (although not always) encourages producers to move towards more environmentally friendly practices. Direct sales can make it easier to sell aesthetically imperfect products (fruit that is marked or stung) and to explain to customers the variety choices and possible visual defects of the products. These types of marketing mainly concern small farms, or small orchards on larger farms with other crops (grain, vines). But it may also concern medium-sized farms that combine different marketing methods (direct and long supply chains) or different forms of direct sales (AMAP or markets, and collective sales outlets that allow larger quantities to be sold), as part of a broader movement to diversify agricultural models.

Differing interdependencies and possibilities of redefinition for different plant species A review of all these surveys enables us to identify a set of interesting contrasts in the main types of species studied, depending on the time scales and uses that characterize them, which also define different stakeholder systems (Table 1): • between annual and perennial species, first of all, as annual species such as grains and vegetables offer greater reversibility and allow for faster adaptation (e.g. a change of variety or species to adapt to technical problems or market movements) or even catch up with other crops, while perennial species such as fruits take several years to adapt; • between products that are mainly consumed raw and fresh (such as fruit and vegetables in general) and products that must be processed and therefore are generally sold through intermediaries (grain); • between products that can be preserved (such as grain) and products that must be consumed or processed quickly (fruit and vegetables, with strong differences between apples, with a relatively long shelf life, and peaches or strawberries, for example); high perishability makes producers much more dependent on markets and intermediaries since they cannot store produce until prices have gone up.

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Table 1 Plant specificities that impact the innovation system

Time scale Use of the product Conservation

Grain

Tomato

Apples

Fisheries

Annual Processed Long

Annual Mostly fresha Short

Long term Mostly fresh Average

Long term Mostly fresh Very short

a

In the case studied here of greenhouse tomatoes, as tomatoes intended for processing are grown in the field.

Depending on the time scales of the species and the uses and characteristics of conservation and processing of the products, interdependencies are therefore more or less easy to develop from an ecological transition perspective. These characteristics also partly determine the scope for producers to change their practices, since when the product does not require processing or can be processed on the farm with little investment, producers can ignore downstream criteria and therefore have more flexibility in terms of technical choices (varieties or production methods). Direct sales and processing systems on the farm, or in collective workshops, which are increasingly present in the agricultural world, are exploring possible ways of developing the agri-food system. Although they are fairly widespread for fruit and vegetables, they are not very common in the cereal sector, because the processing stages are difficult to carry out on the farm (manufacture of flour, then bread) or at least require costly investments.

II. Redefining interdependencies by building one’s own sociotechnical system (Biocoop) In France, unlike other European countries, more than half of organic production still takes place in short supply chains and specialized supply chains, and not in supermarkets. The latter account for only about 45 per cent of the French organic market, compared to 90 per cent in countries such as Denmark or the United Kingdom (and this rate has been fairly stable over the past ten years or so). Specialized shops fall into three categories:  completely independent enterprises; enterprises dependent on supermarket chains; and enterprises belonging to the Biocoop network, which occupies the largest place in this market. All of these businesses have undeniably, over time, experienced a growth curve similar to that of mass retailing:  concentration, increase in the size of shops, control of logistics downstream, with increasing recourse to distant production, in a movement that many describe as ‘conventionalisation

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of organic agriculture’ – despite attempts to return to a more local supply, as we will see in the case of Biocoop.15 Biocoop is a network of organic shops created in 1986 to bring together existing local cooperatives. In 2012, it accounted for about 15 per cent of the organic market (versus 2.5 per cent for its main competitor, La Vie Claire, and 47 per cent for the big conventional retailers all together), and in early 2020 it comprised more than 600 shops across France.

Biocoop’s trajectory and resistance to critics In France, many buying groups of organic consumers emerged in the 1970s, and many of their pioneers and members were strongly involved in the social movements, including the anti-nuclear movements. The products were initially ordered and delivered in private places. Some of these cooperatives subsequently opened shops and started to rely on hired staff, while others remained more informal. The first coordination of these cooperatives was in 1986 when fifty of them decided to create Biocoop, a national organization aimed at supporting the development of organic consumption and organic farming. A  few of the then emerging organic producers’ organizations, such as Biopaïs in the south-east of France (founded in 1984) and Intercoop in the west (1983), also joined this network. This co-presence of producers and consumers right from the start is an important historical feature of Biocoop. The network adopted a common charter (inspired by that of Nature et Progrès, one of the leading organic producers’ organizations), whose main principles are solidarity (involving equity, cooperation), quality (including social and ecological criteria and consumer sensitization about ‘responsible consumption’) and transparency ‘in order to maintain a climate of trust between all the stakeholders’ (Biocoop’s charter). Since 1993 Biocoop has a formal guideline, composed of this charter and four conventions:  a retailing convention (with rules dealing with the proportion of organic labelled products or local provisioning), a management convention (rules dealing with prices, margins, transparency), a social convention (e.g. 75 per cent of worked hours have to be under permanent contracts, internal differences in wages cannot exceed a ratio of 1 to 5, quality of life at work, etc.) and, since the 2000s, an ecological convention (e.g. since 2009, mineral water in plastic bottles has been excluded). When the network was created, its members also decided to share some skills and activities at the regional scale. Between 1989 and 1993, three regional platforms were created, one in Brittany, one in the south-east and the third one in the south-west, and later on (2007) a fourth one was set up in the Paris region.

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The range of activities has progressively been expanded since the 1990s, from only food to non-food products (books, textiles, etc.), catering and transport. New branches have been created for these activities. Today Biocoop is a limited liability company offering central services (platforms, development, etc.). Three main phases can be identified in Biocoop’s history (Figure  3). In a first stage (1986–95), Biocoop grew with a strong respect of its core values and very different kinds of management and business strategies than most retailers. In a second stage (1990–2006), Biocoop set up the tools, management and business strategies adapted to its strong growth, which made it more comparable to other retailers and generated strong criticism (both internally and externally). In the latest stage (from 2006 onwards), Biocoop has set up specific management and business strategies devoted to a reinforcement of its founding values with a new focus on local farmers’ place and on a vision of organic farming that aimed at differing from that of the main competitors and at appearing more ‘committed’. During the 1990s and early 2000s, with the proliferation of shops and the creation of the logistic platforms, some considered that Biocoop was tending to become a network of rather ‘ordinary’ organic shops with standardized and non-local products. Biocoop’s strong and fast growth (more than 20 per cent annual growth from 2003 to 2008, for example) has progressively led to

2011 Campaign « our organic products have nothing to hide 2001 Biocoop’s brand « together for more meaning »

1986 Biocoop’s foundation national network Chart

1989–93 creation of 3 regional platforms Increasing competition from conventional retailers

Strong growth And controversies First organic consumers’ cooperatives

1970s

45 shops

1986

Around 70 shops

1989

260 shops

1998

Figure 3 Evolution of Biocoop network since 1986.

2006

Economic crisis

345 shops

2013

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a strong criticism regarding the respect of the core values. While the central staff wanted to support an expansion of the network in a context of increasing competition, with the aim also of sharing costs and achieving economies of scale, some Biocoop members (shop managers or cooperative members) wanted the number of new shops to be limited in order to support a ‘qualitative growth16 of existing shops’. They saw this as being in opposition to classical quantitative growth based on expanding the network (and they were also reluctant to new leaders coming in from outside the network). In order to react to this criticism (while withstanding the main supermarket chains’ competition), Biocoop tried to reaffirm the original values of the initiative, through its communication and through a partial redefinition of its governance and coordination modes. First, it reinforced its communication around its values. In the early 2000s, it created a brand, Ensemble pour plus de sens (‘together for more meaning’), later renamed Ensemble solidaires du producteur au consommateur (‘together united from producer to consumer’17). Since 1998, Biocoop has had its own magazine, Consom’action (first a quarterly and then, since 2008, bimonthly), freely available in all shops. In 2004 a campaign and range La bio je peux (‘Organic products yes I can’) was launched, with a range of cheap organic products, with reduced margins and in cooperation with the suppliers. In 2011, Biocoop launched its first large campaign on the TV, radio, internet and in big cities Notre bio n’a rien à cacher (‘our organic products have nothing to hide’), with the aim of showing the difference with the big conventional supermarket chains.

Adapting governance modes in order to maintain shared values At the scale of Biocoop’s network and since its establishment, shops’ managers, producers, employees and consumers have been involved in the governance through their participation on the board, which was composed of thirteen members in 2016 (nine shop managers, two producers, one employee and one consumer). The producers’ role has to some extent been reinforced over time, in response to some internal critics. There are four ‘colleges’ of shareholders who elect their representatives on this board: a college for shops, one for producers, one for employees and one for consumers. Since 2006, there has also been an ethics committee composed of six Biocoop representatives, shop managers and employees, along with six external partners’ representatives:  producers, consumers and environmental CSOs. Its function is to check that the Biocoop’s founding values are upheld, and to issue an annual report.

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Every two years, a congress of all Biocoop shareholders works collectively on necessary changes and on the future strategy, and regular regional and local meetings are also organized (about three to four times a year). There are commissions for each value chain (e.g. a fruit and vegetable commission), as well as for admission of new shops (with rules based on human criteria ‘first’ and on economic criteria such as a minimum initial capital), and for controlling the shop managers’ commitment, although shops are rarely excluded. All shareholders and especially all shop managers are expected to get involved in some of these commissions and meetings, with a ‘shared time’ system, that is, everyone is expected to devote some time to collective tasks. Biocoop’s management and governance was adjusted over time in order to reinforce some points such as the place and role of producers in the governance, and the importance of local provisioning (see below). Biocoop’s guideline is presented in two parts, which reflects the progress approach defended by the network: the first part presents the charter and the ‘core values’ that describe the commitments of Biocoop shops and shareholders, while the second part presents further ‘recommendations’ which ‘need to be shared by the entire network and re-discussed before being introduced as core values’. These ‘recommendations’ reflect more demanding criteria, such as a minimum wage 10 per cent over the national one, the use of renewable energy in the shops and so on. Despite lasting internal and external critics and controversies, Biocoop as a network has developed a strong adaptive capacity. This has been facilitated by the multilevel and participatory style of governance that is unique in the retailing sector. Regular meetings are held at various scales:  small regions (‘basins’), large regions (four in France) and national, where the main stakeholders (shop managers and, in some meetings, employees, producers and consumers) can interact and compare their views. Of course, some stakeholders consider that there are too many meetings, but most of our interviewees considered that they allowed for a continuous adaptation of the network to emerging problems and difficulties. ‘We talk about problems that we all have. It allows for debate, to see how each of us finds solutions to our problems, and to mutualize these solutions. It allows us to discuss national topics, mainly the new things that are going to be introduced in the guidelines’ (a shop manager). The large number of meetings at all scales and with many producers/suppliers, as well as the strong presence of staff in the shop and their availability to attend to customers (as opposed to supermarkets), allow for feedback along the chain. Strategies are redefined or adjusted at all scales in these meetings, more or less formally of course. The Biocoop guideline is revised regularly, based on this multilevel

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and participatory governance. An interesting feature of this governance and of Biocoop’s modus operandi is its multiple scales and their complementarity: the national scale of the network and tools, the regional scale of some tools, support and meetings and, of course, the local scale of direct interactions with consumers and producers.

Adapting coordination modes between food chain operators The Biocoop network has set up specific modes of coordination, both formal and informal. Most of them deal with the accessibility of organic products to consumers and their fairness for producers, and are formalized in the guideline: • Local provisioning and seasonality (see below); • Possibility to buy products under participatory guarantee systems (if these are agreed by the Biocoop board); • Obligation to offer a range of products called the ‘emblematic range’, that is, products under Biocoop’s brand, considered to embody Biocoop values, and whose inclusion in the range is also agreed by the board; • Obligation to apply maximum prices for Biocoop’s specific ranges; • The margin should not exceed 31.5 per cent; and • Obligation to favour all forms of fair trade (north/south as well as north/ north). These principles have been discussed and reinforced over time, as in the beginning most were informal. An important governance innovation has been the rules regarding local provisioning, aimed at increasing the share of local organic products from what is now called, within the network, ‘peasant organic agriculture’. Shops are required to favour local products, with local being defined as produced or transformed less than 150 road kilometre from the shop, and to buy them directly from producers or Biocoop platforms (i.e. no intermediaries). A person was hired to work on that at the national scale and then in each of the four regions. In 2014, the national rate of local provisioning was 10–11 per cent but it ranged from 5 per cent to 40 per cent at the shop scale. Regarding contracts with producers, most fruits and vegetables marketed by Biocoop through platforms and large producer organizations were under contract, whereas with local producers informal contracts were more common: ‘we have a moral commitment to take at least the same volume the next year, so producers can count on that, they do not want formal contracts’ (a shop manager, 2014).

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Rules regarding seasonality were also established (no out-of-season products, no summer vegetables during the winter months), as well as a list of forbidden products (such as those transported by air). All shops have to inform consumers about seasonality by displaying a calendar. Have these changes in the modes of coordination succeeded in maintaining the shared values and fairness in the repartition of the added value? Network stakeholders, whether shop managers or national teams, would of course claim that this is the case. In fact, they accuse the mainstream supermarket chains of having ‘killed the small producers’, and of now trying to show consumers that they buy local. On the other hand, some producers might be more critical, and some have reported that they were offered better prices by large supermarket chains. The most important challenge that Biocoop faces today is the increasing competition, due to the presence of conventional retailers in the organic sector, and to ‘aggressive’ strategies of other organic retailers, some of which are considered to ‘copy’ some of Biocoop’s ‘good ideas’ and tools. However, Biocoop seems to be recognized more and more for its stronger values in a context of increasing competition by supermarkets on the organic market. As one of the original leaders of Biocoop put it: ‘Biocoop needed logistic tools, platforms, it needed a transport branch, and an estate agent, and it set up all this because it was becoming really necessary; these are tools. And in qualitative terms, Biocoop remains philosophically largely ahead, when for example it refuses to sell water in plastic bottles.’ Maybe one of the reasons for Biocoop’s success and sustainability over the decades has been its ability to set up the necessary tools, sometimes borrowed from the mainstream model, while maintaining its militant values and criteria and translating them into guidelines that apply to all stakeholders, from employees to producers, through shop managers. In other words, the network tries to combine competitiveness (maintain affordable consumer prices in order to resist competition) and fairness (guarantee fair prices/decent wages and conditions to producers and employees), while appearing as the most militant (committed) organic shop network. Biocoop’s 2012–16 strategy was defined as follows: ‘a militant network of shops, farmers and employees, recognized as such by the consumers’.18 While this may appear as a mere process of ‘endogenisation of social critique’ (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999), concrete rules and tools have indeed been set up and adjusted over time. Today, the network has the best results in the organic retailing sector, and is also quite unique at the European scale. Of course, these strategies and claims are contested, and many consider that Biocoop’s values are not strong enough (a

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range of products that is too large, insufficient fairness and margins that remain too high are among the main criticisms). This raises the question of Biocoop’s place in the broader movement of ‘conventionalization’ of organic agriculture described by many authors and actors, a movement by which organic agriculture – and its actors – undergoes the same evolution (concentration, intensification) as conventional agriculture and the dominant agri-food sector, while a minority of actors more in line with the ideals of the organic movement ‘resist’ (Smith 2006). Rather than seeing these processes through the lens of the opposition between conventionalization and resistance, it seems more accurate to speak of a process of ‘re-differentiation’. In this context, Biocoop is trying to establish principles and actions aimed at ‘re-differentiating’ itself, particularly from the conventional supermarket model. It is however still perceived by some as fully part of the conventionalization process, due to its organization into fairly large sales areas comparable to small supermarkets, and into central purchasing systems and remote supply systems.

III. Agreco: Territorial agroecology or conventionalized organic agriculture? Agreco is a cooperative located in Santa Rosa de Lima, in the Encostas da Serra Geral region, in the state of Santa Catarina (southern Brazil).19 This essentially rural region was colonized mainly by German immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is a relatively isolated area, away from any main highway and about 120 kilometres from the state capital Florianopolis. Due to its mountainous terrain, farm mechanization has been limited in most areas (Guzzati 2010). It is also considered an ecological corridor and a strategic area in ecological terms, due to the abundance of water resources. Most farms were ‘family farms’20 with mainly integrated crop-livestock farming systems that produce primarily for their own consumption and sell the surplus. Until the 1960s, the porco macau, a traditional pig breed, was the main product on local farms. It was then replaced by integrated pork and chicken production and to a larger extent by tobacco, which by the 1980s had become the main production, along with coal from the local forest areas. From the mid-1990s tobacco farming began to falter, due to increases in taxes and in investment and input costs, the stagnation of agricultural prices and the increasing requirements of buyers, while coal production started to be threatened by new environmental regulations.

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The region then entered a profound crisis that had both social and environmental effects, with impoverishment of the population and water contamination. In this context, one of the natives of the area, Wilson Schmidt, who had left to study in the state capital and had later become a teacher at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, decided to set up a cooperative. He considered the crisis was a direct consequence of the farmers’ strong dependence on the integrated chains in which they bought their inputs and sold their products (Schmidt 2016). His first concern was for his own family and his main intention was to free his father from this integrated agribusiness (agronegocio integrado). As early as the mid1980s, his father had already started to diversify the farm production and to produce vegetables that were sold in nearby cities. In the early 1990s, his family set up a collective honey production unit, together with a few neighbours. A local yearly event was also initiated in 1991, the ‘Gemüse Fest’ (Gemüse is vegetables in German, the native language of many local families). The conception of this event was strongly anchored in a vision that valued rural development and citycountryside links. Every year the event would bring together people from the region who had left to study and/or to work. One of these was a supermarket chain manager who already bought vegetables from the Schmidt family and suggested that local farmers could produce organic vegetables for his shops. This is when Agreco was founded, in 1996, as a farmers’ association. At the time it consisted of twelve farms, all from the same municipio (municipality) of Santa Rosa da Lima. By 1998, up to 211 farmers in seven municipios, initially producing products that were sold fresh in the supermarkets, were members of the association. Three periods can be distinguished in Agreco’s trajectory:  the period of emergence described above; a period of territorial construction based on an agroecological vision (1996–2009); and a period of conventionalization of this territorial and agroecological perspective (2009–18).

A territorial construction based on agroecological production The foundation of Agreco in 1996 was the start of a process of territorial construction aimed at ‘changing the face of the region’, as this local leader put it. The objectives were to generate economic and social development and to promote environmental preservation and local culture. In 1998, a national programme to support small rural agro-industries (small processing units), Pronaf Agroindustria, was implemented by the federal government, in parallel to an inter-municipal network of agro-industry projects (PIAMER). This led to the development of production for processing. While

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these programmes had been intended to create more than fifty processing units, in total sixteen units were created in the region, to process sugar cane, honey, vegetables, fruits, meat and cereal products. This also led to a professionalization of Agreco, with the recruitment of marketing staff, and the development of thirdparty certification. However, throughout this period (until around 2009), the perspective of territorial construction and continuity with traditional farming remained very present in the discourses of Agreco’s leaders and in the objectives of the projects that were set up. As relates the founder of Agreco, ‘my vision is that we have to produce here, in order to allow some continuity with a longterm process’ (Schmidt 2016), that of the small-scale agriculture of the former European settlers. The PIAMER project itself defined as its main objectives the quality of life of involved families and the sustainable development of the region. In this territorial development perspective, food production and processing was not the only activity that was taken into account. Diverse other initiatives were launched and articulated to the Agreco project in the late 1990s and early 2000s, such as Credicolônia (aimed at facilitating access to microcredit for small farmers), Acolhida na Colônia (an organization aimed at fostering agro-tourism in the area, based on the French experience of ‘Accueil Paysan’), a cooperative of technical advisers and a forum of small villages. The combination of these diverse initiatives allowed rural development to be considered systemically, which is expressed, for example, through a reference to a ‘basket of territorialised goods and services’ (Pecqueur 2001).

A conventionalization of the territorial and agroecological perspective In 2009, based on Agreco, a cooperative was created (CooperAgreco) to increase the capacity to cater for institutional markets (public bidding and public school meal programmes) and traditional retail markets. The institutional market is mainly based on the National Programme of School Meals (PNAE) that favours the purchase of food from small farmers and rural agro-industries, with a price premium for agroecological products; and the national Food Acquisition Programme (PAA), which promotes the purchase of products from family agriculture (see Chapters 6 and 7). In 2012, the CooperAgreco had 177 producers, in nine different municipalities (Weber et  al. 2013). About 44 per cent of these farmers were 100 per cent organic, while 35 per cent produced in both systems (conventional and organic) and 21 per cent were starting the conversion to organic production (Guzatti 2012).

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Today, the cooperative has to increasingly outsource raw products from outside the region, and a large proportion of the tomatoes that are currently processed by the local agro-industries are imported from outside the region. Thus, distant markets put pressure on the organization (through requirements in terms of certification, products aspects, logistics, etc.) and strongly orientate its transformation. In the medium and long term, its presence on the market could be compromised due to a loss of territorial anchorage of the local production and the possible consequences on its external image.

Changes in leadership, governance and participation Some articles take an optimistic perspective on the experience of this cooperative and show its contribution to rural development (Weber et al. 2013), based on the capacity to enhance the competitiveness of this hitherto abandoned region. Our own analysis, however, leads us to consider instead that opting for distant markets threatened the territorial project, due to a progressive and articulated weakening of the leadership, the governance and participation within the organization. Until 2009, the organization had a stable and strong leadership in the person of Wilson Schmidt, a leader who was both from inside and from outside (a characteristic of key actors in rural regions that we also often find in the French context). Above all, he had a very pro-active vision for the future of this region, and a clear view of the role Agreco should play in it. In his discourse, he expressed strong values linked to rural development, solidarity and so on. However, these strong visions and values started to weaken as the size of the organization increased and its orientation towards distant markets was affirmed. Among the staff and members, marketing people became more influential than those in production, which led to an important change in the leadership. From 2009 onwards, the creation of the cooperative in parallel to the producers’ organization, and simultaneously the withdrawal of the former leader and initiator Wilson Schmidt, led to a weakening of the key principles, reflected in the discourses and rules within the cooperative. The governance and internal rules of the cooperative also underwent considerable changes, with, for example, as of 2016, new rules for the payment of certification that were much less favourable to small producers. Finally, participation to the collective structure was weakened over time. If we consider as the philosopher J. Zask suggested, that participation has three meanings (to take part, to contribute to and take one’s part or benefits) (Zask 2011), the two first dimensions of participation were progressively fragilized with

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farmers who became more distant to the collective structure and a weakening of not only the degree of attendance but also the degree of contribution (in ideas, debates, time devoted to collective tasks). Of course, one cannot say that the Agreco and Cooperagreco trajectories did not have positive effects on the local agriculture. There have been positive changes in income and poverty reduction, and the environmental status is probably better than in the mid-1990s when Agreco was created. However, while the Agreco project and the agro-industry projects were initially anchored in a coherent regional development vision, today these processing units rather appear as islets of development.

Conclusion Why is it difficult for farmers to reduce chemical inputs use? In this chapter we have shown the impact of downstream guidance of supply chains through various prescription systems. Thus, while the criteria imposed on farmers by downstream actors do not allow them much room to manoeuvre, the fact of having a certain amount of control over the marketing of their products, particularly through direct sales, does make it possible to green practices, based both on the choice of varieties grown and on the reduction of chemical inputs. Surveys of downstream intermediaries, such as those of farmers, also show that while most stakeholders know that their practices will most likely have to change as a result of regulatory changes, there is little collective perspective on this anticipation. Additionally, they often express a feeling of lack of control over the changes underway, considering that the other levels of the sector are in control of the game. This is an indication of the extent to which many actors perceive the agri-food system of which they are part as ‘locked in’.

Notes 1 A term borrowed from (Rip and Kemp 1998). 2 This interdisciplinary approach was led by an interdisciplinary collective of researchers (sociologists, agronomists, pathologists) within the framework of the ANR Gédupic projects (2007–9) and the European Endure project (2007–10). For a more detailed analysis, see Ricci, Bui and Lamine (2011).

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3 H. Effland. 1981. ‘Un système intensif en Schleswig-Holstein’. Perspectives Agricoles 45: 14–23. 4 For example, the report Pour une agriculture plus économe et plus autonome, de J. Poly (former CEO of INRA) who, already in 1978, had raised concerns about excessive use of inputs and the depletion of non-renewable resources. 5 In 1989, the Renan variety was registered, the first high-yield multiresistant variety of good-quality wheat for baking. 6 Interview with a cooperative representative, 2009. 7 Interviews with millers, 2009. 8 But also, upstream, by the national body representing French flour mills. 9 Haynes I., C. Lamine and J. Buurma. 2009. ‘Pesticide Debate: When Human Health Considerations Take the Lead’, ESRS congress, Vaasa, Finland, August 2009. 10 See focus groups 2009. 11 This system, which was the most widespread one at international level when we ran our surveys, focuses more on company management (bringing product storage areas up to standard, for example) than on production practices. The producers whom we surveyed therefore agreed that its purpose is mainly administrative (Haynes et al. 2010). 12 These are the basic ingredients of pesticides. 13 As producers and marketers told us when we delivered feedback from our surveys and at multi-stakeholder meetings. 14 The 2014 survey of arboricultural practices shows that short supply-chain growers tend to use fewer pesticides (C. Kouchner. 2014. ‘Analyse des stratégies de protection dans un contexte de changement d’espèce fruitière Prunus (pêcher, abricotier) en Rhônes-Alpes: mise en perspective par rapport aux trajectoires et influences du système socio-technique’, Thesis for Agricultural Engineering degree, AgroParisTech, supervised by C. Lamine and S. Penvern, 73 p.) 15 The analysis was conducted under the European Healthygrowth project (2013– 15) on maintaining values in organic value chains. It was centred in the southeast of France, and was based on fourteen interviews held in 2014 with network stakeholders (store managers, local councillors, platforms), organic producers or their groups, the FNAB, and an off-grid cooperative, and carried out with E. Rousselle. The interviews concerned the analysis of various documents (websites, articles, reports, studies on Biocoop and on the organic fruit and vegetable sector, etc.) (C. Lamine. 2015. Biocoop Case Study Report. Project Healthygrowth, 28p.). In addition, the ‘return’ to a series of interviews conducted in 2002 and 2006 as part of my PhD thesis and then within a collective project, to the analysis of developments in this network over a period of fifteen years.

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16 By this they meant that the network should rather support existing shops in order for them to improve not only their activity, that is, their viability, but also their relationships to both consumers and producers, instead of supporting new shops. 17 Like the word ‘militant’, the word ‘solidaire’ is very present in the French context. It suggests a notion of fairness and care, and also refers to a new type of economy and of economic activities or businesses (with specific laws and rules): the social and solidarity economy (économie sociale et solidaire). 18 Rapport d’activités 2014, Biocoop, 32p. 19 This section has been written based on a fieldwork visit and an analysis elaborated with Thaise Guzzati and Valerio Turnes in 2018. 20 Family farms account for 87 per cent of all Santa Catarina farms – one of the highest proportions in Brazil (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE) 2013).

5

Sustainability transitions at the territorial scale in France and Brazil: The role of governance innovations

Between approaches that focus on singular trajectories and processes of changes as have been analysed in Chapter  2, and approaches that deal with transition at the scale of the global food system as they are developed by an large number of studies, the territorial scale offers a complementary, ‘intermediate’ level of analysis of ecological transition processes that is increasingly advocated (Moragues-Faus and Morgan 2015; Wezel et al. 2016; Vaarst et  al. 2017). The notion of a territorial agri-food system used here captures the notion of agri-food system that is transversal to all the chapters of this book, applied to a regional scale. It encompasses not only local farming, processing and distribution actors but also technical advice, regional or regionalized public policies, consumers and local civil society. In fact, this system also includes the various schemes and networks connecting farming, commercialization and consumption (whether through short or long supply chains). These two definitions here facilitate the identification of actors and the study of their interactions, and the possible processes of redefinition of their interdependencies (or lack thereof). The three regions studied are southern Ardèche and the Drôme valley in France and the Serra do Rio region in Brazil. Despite different contexts, all have experienced an intensification of their agriculture and then an ecological transition of at least part of it, and thus a significant reorganization of their regional agri-food systems in recent decades.

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I. An analytical framework to address territorial ecological transitions From an analysis of relocalization dynamics to an analysis of territorial ecological transitions In a context of a lasting competition between the dynamics of globalization and relocalization (Marsden and Smith 2005), many studies within food and rural studies have focused on ‘relocalization’ initiatives (Watts et  al. 2005). These initiatives can fall within different categories corresponding to different definitions of the term ‘local’. In the case of alternative food networks and related literature, the adjective ‘local’ tends to be defined in terms of positionality and proximity between food system actors, and most often by direct links between consumers and producers. In the case of geographical indications (GIs) and their literature, ‘local’ relates to a notion of ‘anchorage’ within particular territories (Muchnik 1996; Bowen and Mutersbaugh 2014). Some alternative food networks aim to link producers and consumers in direct ways, and suggest a possible transition pathway to sustainability based on a radical simplification of agri-food systems’ interdependencies. This may indeed apply for the few consumers and farmers involved in these Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) (and for part of the food which is concerned by them) such as in community-supported agriculture box schemes, community gardens, farmers’ markets and others. However, most of our food is not only produced but also processed, circulated and provided for by a wide diversity of operators other than farmers, all collaborating in numerous and complex interdependencies, which requires the conceptualization of analytically more inclusive transitions (Lamine 2015). Moreover, AFNs are often considered as autonomous objects and are mostly studied in isolation, which causes the interactions with other initiatives to be overlooked. Collective local brands and GIs also aim at developing supply chains and marketing schemes that differ from mainstream food systems (Brunori 2007; Tregear et  al. 2007). As they focus on specific qualities, they may be termed ‘quality food networks’ (Lamine, Garçon and Brunori 2018). These initiatives usually stem from other kinds of stakeholders than those involved in the types of AFNs mentioned above; they are mostly endorsed by producers’ organizations linked to other agri-food chain actors (cooperatives, processors, retailers, etc.) rather than by civil society organizations, as are AFNs. These initiatives (and related studies) mostly focus on specific products, whereas AFNs (and their

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studies) would rather include a diversity of products. They aim at reaching tourists or distant consumers, whereas AFNs rather develop short food supply chains aimed at local or regional consumers (see Table 2). Table 2 Characterization of AFNs, SYAL and territorial agri-food systems approaches

Typical initiatives

Food product qualification process

AFNs

SYAL – localized Territorial agriagri-food systems food systems

Community Supported Agriculture-type box schemes, farmers market, producers shops, etc. Generic/basic products for short food supply chains and local consumers

GIs

Diverse initiatives in a small region

Specific products, mainly for distant consumers

Combine generic and specific products and qualification processes Shared future at the regional scale, reconnection of local agriculture and food

Main common Reconnection between stake producers and consumers

Common agricultural and culinary heritage, material and immaterial patrimony Key concepts of Trust, proximity, social Know-how, corresponding links knowledge, approaches resources Processes Construction of trust Processes under study and of innovative of products coordination modes qualification and territorial anchorage Theoretical Diverse (ANT, Convention approaches economic sociology, theory, territorial etc.) economy

Interdependencies, coordination, commitment Processes of emergence, coordination, alliances Sociology of collective action (and controversies), ANT, transition theories

GIs have long been developed in Southern Europe – since the 1930s in France and Italy, for example – and were developed later on in the Mediterranean region (Pratt 2007) and in other parts of the world, such as Latin America (RequierDesjardins, Boucher and Cerdan 2003). This has led to a wide literature which seeks to understand the way they relate to specific qualities of specific products found in specific territories, in reference to the famous French notion of terroir

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which is so difficult to translate into other languages. In France, these initiatives and dynamics have been amply discussed, especially since the 1990s within an active research community called SYAL (Systèmes Alimentaires Localisés, localized agri-food systems). SYAL are defined as ‘production and service organisations (units of agricultural production, agrifood enterprises, markets and stores, restaurants, services, etc.) [that are linked] by their characteristics and by their relationship to a specific territory’ (Muchnik 1996; Muchnik and de Sainte Marie 2010). When considered more holistically, food systems barely fit into such circumscribed boundaries, but borrow instead from these different models (Lamine 2012, 2015; Garçon 2015; Garçon et al. 2017). Therefore, the suggestion here is to delimit the research object by starting from a defined area instead of specific initiatives as is most often done. This ‘territorial agri-food system’ approach considers from a dynamic and pragmatist perspective the diverse actors and institutions involved in the production, processing, distribution and consumption of food products in a given territory, and their interdependencies (Lamine, Garçon and Brunori 2018). This approach aims at encompassing the diversity of actors involved in the production, processing, distribution and consumption of food products at the territorial scale and involved in agroecological transitions  – in ‘positive’ or negative’ ways (Lamine 2012, 2015). A  key principle is to consider this diversity of stakeholders, institutions and initiatives, without pre-defining their ‘alternativeness’ in a normative way, and to examine their possible complementarities in a process of ecological transition, at the scale of territorial agri-food systems. As the case studies below show, it is often a combination of more alternative and more mainstream schemes that compose the complexity of ecological transitions. As shown in Chapter  1, this approach to agri-food system transitions is systemic, dynamic and pragmatist (Lamine, Bui, and Ollivier 2015). It considers territorial agri-food systems as systems of actors and institutions involved in the production, processing, distribution and consumption of food products in a given territory (producers, food chain intermediaries, public policies, extension, research, consumers, civil society), and study their interdependencies and their dynamics over time. As these actors, who embody the different components of the territorial agri-food system, may have different visions and aims guiding their actions, a pragmatist perspective allows to study together changes in visions and practices as well as controversies. Of course, these actors are at the same time related to other geographical scales through their visions, actions and

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interdependencies. While retracing ‘inter-scalar pathways’ remains a pressing challenge in food studies (Weiler et  al. 2015), the choice of the territorial scale allows us to empirically trace the diverse manifestations of the global scale reflected in actors’ visions, actions and trajectories, relationships and interdependencies at the territorial scale.

The relevance of the notion of rural community in a context of growing urbanization Growing urbanization notwithstanding, for many actors, whether farmers or other citizens, the rural ideal is very much alive, as exemplified by the current trend of a return to the countryside and what some describe as a certain ‘ruralization’ of the urban population, in parallel with the ‘de-ruralization’ of rural populations (Alphandéry and Sencébé 2009). Since the 1970s, the sociology of the rural world, at least in France, has been ‘revamped’: while it continues to study rural social facts, it does so in a way that is less centred on the scale of the village of the previous generation, and focused more on the countryside as a space – equally invested by urban dwellers and ‘rural’ populations – than as a community or society (Alphandéry and Billaud 2009). The rural community is certainly no longer the village as it was studied at the time of Morin, Lefebvre and Mendras. The village as a unit of analysis did not withstand phenomena that prevailed on other scales and raised other questions related to urbanization, labour and leisure migration, increased mobility and the changes induced by the links between the city and the countryside. Thus, the rural can no longer be identified as a space of social cohesion and inter-knowledge; it is becoming a space of desire (Hervieu and Viard 1998) and more broadly of use for urban people. But can it really be said that rural society  – in the sense of a social group tied to a space by a culture, norms and values, defining ways of living and producing in particular  – no longer exists, that only ‘rurality’ subsists, now embodied by ‘qualities’ rather than people (Mormont 2009)? The sharing of values and norms in a locally rooted society, which characterized1 farming society, remains relevant to a revisited notion of rural community that would take into account the diversity of social profiles and practices, even if shared norms and values do not inform ways of living and farming as explicitly as they used to in farming societies. Just as rural areas retain their singularity despite the influence of cities, so do rural communities remain distinct from urban societies. In a methodological perspective, when we are looking at farming and food consumption issues, the small region or ‘life basin’ (bassin de vie) remains a

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relevant scale. In addition to what the actors produce, exchange or eat in that space, that which constitutes a community and society (as understood by Tönnies) remains a relevant subject to study, even in a world where the circulation of people as well as products, norms and values is undeniably accelerating. The three case studies reported here illustrate three different variants of such a territorial approach, with shared principles but distinct researchers’ itineraries and specific analytical tools. In the first case, intensive fieldwork was carried out for four years (in the research of a master’s student and then a PhD student2), and allowed us to carry out a detailed analysis of the archives of some local authorities and local initiatives. In the second case (Ardèche), I conducted about fifty interviews as part of different research projects between 2009 and 2016, along with participant observation – not only as a researcher but also as a local inhabitant – at various events (agricultural or civil society organizations’ general assemblies, local markets and events devoted to organic and local products, and seminars and debates bringing together researchers and local stakeholders). In the third one (Serra do Rio), participant observation also provided the majority of the data, as the PhD student in charge of this case study also worked for a few years in the region as an extension officer, in addition to documentary analysis and series of interviews with key actors.3

II. The Drôme valley The Drôme valley, in southern France, is a small region (about 2,000 km2, and 60,000 inh.) where about 30 per cent of the agricultural land is organically farmed (in 2016). The development of organic agriculture, like that of specialty products, was initially seen as a way to sustain local agriculture, which was threatened by processes of rural exodus, lack of competitiveness and agricultural crises. From the early 1990s, local policies were implemented in the valley with the objective of turning this ‘hinterland of the productivist period’ into ‘a foreland of the quality turn’ (Bui 2015). Based on public programmes and funds, a common project involving the four local producers’ cooperatives was implemented in 1992, with the objective of facilitating transitions towards organic agriculture. This programme supported the investment in new organic collecting and processing equipment within the local cooperatives, as well as specific marketing actions. It supported and highlighted complementarities between the different regional crops (grain, wine, medicinal and aromatic plants) that were often grown on

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the same farms, thus mainly addressing the production side of the ecological transition.

A first phase focused on the production side of the ecological transition The grain and wine cooperatives were initially conventional but gradually increased their organic share. In the early 2010s, the grain cooperative was able to reach a proportion of 60 per cent of organic cereals, mainly owing to a relative (and progressive) convergence between organic and conventional farmers. Organic farmers have increasingly been participating on the cooperative’s administration board since the 1990s, and the co-presence of conventional and organic farmers on this board has led to internal debates and sometimes controversies over the difficulties and even the raison d’être of this organic transition, which in turn have gradually led to a realignment of values among conventional and organic farmers. Another factor which has allowed for increasing the organic share is more prosaically the fact that the cooperative could find outlets for its organic products, through its own activities or its links with regional processors (production of animal feed and grain mills). Of course, these two factors are linked, because in its economic strategy the cooperative translated its members’ will to redefine their interdependencies with the other actors, in order also to redefine the share of added value and increase its territorial anchorage. Thus, in 2003, this grain cooperative merged with the distribution cooperative and invested in a seed station to control access to inputs. It then invested in an organic livestock feed factory to secure outlets for its members’ diversified crops, and in the production of organic eggs to enhance the value of this livestock feed. All these businesses were located in the region, and this ‘regional vertical integration’ ultimately contributed not only to structuring an entire organic grain industry (development of the infrastructure, farming networks and input distribution networks) but also to its relocation. This ‘ecological transition’ of the cooperative  – organic collection increased from 30 per cent in 2009 to 60 per cent in 2013 – was therefore made possible by the convergence of interests of the conventional and organic farmers within the cooperative, and by more traditional strategies involving business alliances (to increase the volumes collected) and vertical integration (to preserve value added), which allowed the cooperative to remove the barriers that usually prevent the development of organic farming in the cereal industry (Bui 2015).

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In contrast, the local wine cooperative appears to have more difficulties in reaching such high levels of organic production (it is about 20 per cent organic today). One of the main reasons for these difficulties it that it produces a very specific sparkling wine (Clairette de Die) for which the organic market is much more limited than for grain in general – even though it might increase as the organic flat wine market did. This seems to make it difficult for the cooperative to compensate for the price premium granted to organic producers. Another reason is linked to the power relations among the cooperative’s members, and the fact that organic growers are a minority in the assembly and on the board, in contrast with the grain cooperative.

A consumption turn in the territorial ecological transition process In both cases, local consumers are not directly involved in the projects of these cooperatives, nor are their food practices questioned. As is the case elsewhere, the potential or actual role of consumers is more present in civil society arenas and, specifically in this small region, in the local consumer cooperative’s discourses and actions. This cooperative, created in the 1980s, has brought together up to 700 consumers in a small region corresponding to the upper Drôme valley. While its position regarding product sourcing was initially focused on environmental arguments, it has gradually turned towards more local procurement, and in the last few years has increased the share of local producers in its purchases by up to 25 per cent (Bui 2015). More recently, other initiatives have emerged in civil society, such as a consumer organization created in 2009 from a consciousness-raising initiative launched by a group of parents (advocating for local and seasonal products in school meals). It set up a community procurement platform, based on the claim that school canteens wishing to purchase local products faced logistical barriers (Bui et  al. 2016). The organization soon obtained the support of the local authorities that shared a common objective  – fostering local procurement  – which allowed it to launch a feasibility study. Its leaders met with local farmers who were interested in working more on their local market, and other inhabitants who were interested in local sourcing for their own consumption. Together, these inhabitants, farmers and members of the organization decided to develop what had collectively been acknowledged as the missing tool to structure local food chains: a procurement platform. A second organization was then created to implement this procurement platform, which was launched in 2011. Its board was composed of consumers and farmers, and the business rules and sourcing

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practices were defined according to collectively established criteria, such as lower margins on local and small-scale farming products in order to offer local farmers higher prices and at the same time encourage customers to buy these products. This initiative involved various actors representing the different components of the food system, and it set up innovative coordination modes. By 2016, this platform worked with more than thirty local producers and diverse local purchasing groups, nurseries and primary and secondary schools. More than half the meals served in the Drôme valley’s primary school canteens were prepared with products supplied by this platform, mostly produced by local farmers. In other words, this initiative significantly impacted local production, distribution and consumption patterns.

The combined role of agricultural actors’ initiatives, civil society ones and public action The fact that these diverse initiatives are not just isolated and effectively impact local production, distribution and consumption practices in a coordinated way, is partly because they take place within a larger territorial project: the ‘Biovallée’ project set up in 2005 by the local authorities and focused not only on agriculture and agri-food chains but much more generally on urban planning, transport, ecological building, and so on. The interesting feature of this project is that it was driven by an ecological perspective based on the idea of closing ecological cycles. This perspective allowed issues like urban or agro-industrial waste recovery in local agriculture to be addressed. Even though concrete actions regarding food and agriculture focus mainly on local food procurement strategies and may seem to remain within a ‘mere’ relocalization paradigm, they take into account the issue of the reconnection between local agricultural systems and local diets, at least through the issue of seasonality – in public food procurement for example, where local seasonal products are to be favoured. This project is often presented as a success story (see e.g. IPES-Food 2018): a small region which has brought together so many different stakeholders around a common goal of sustainable agriculture and has raised the share of organic from 15 per cent to nearly 30 per cent in a few years. However, over time many controversies arose over this project and among local stakeholders. Some of them, including pioneers in organic farming, considered that local politicians had hijacked or usurped a dynamic that had been launched and maintained (and still is) by others, well before them. Some also feared that such a dynamic might have unexpected consequences such as higher land and housing prices. More

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generally, many local stakeholders felt that this ‘Biovallée’ project came ‘from outside’ and did not really include them. In this context, the inclusion of civil society organizations and of citizens in general seemed an important challenge. It is indeed necessary, in order to initiate a network or a rural web (Marsden 2013) involving not only local authorities and civil society organizations – as in the initiatives described above about food procurement – but also agricultural institutions and economic actors, thereby allowing these diverse actors to build a shared vision for the territory (Lamine 2012). This is what a more recent version of the regional project, focused on more restrained area, from 2015 onwards, aims at. This territorial trajectory has to be analysed in light of this small region’s specific characteristics: the strong presence of self-aware actors and innovators, as well as specific demographics, with the coexistence of local populations, newcomers and former ‘neo-rurals’ who have been there for at least a generation and who brought with them not only skills to develop relocalization strategies but also connections to distant outlets, including international markets  – especially in the case of the plant industry (Duffaut-Prévost 2015) – that also play a role in guaranteeing farm viability. Another particular feature of this Drôme valley region concerns the local governance of the territorial agri-food system, based on a combination of a long-term strategy and a more tactical one, aimed at seizing opportunities. This echoes one of the key networking features of ‘sustainable communities’:  a combination of bottom-up and top-down planning framed within supportive policy (Blay-Palmer et al. 2013). This ability to combine long-term vision and short-term opportunism has been a skill exemplarily developed in this small region, within its local institutions, for more than thirty years. In particular, the region has managed to obtain unexpectedly high levels of European funding, which is not the case of the following case study. The context dependency is therefore relatively high and the case clearly not necessarily reproducible elsewhere.

III. The Southern Ardèche case4 Southern Ardèche (France) is a rural region which, like the neighbouring Drôme valley, has a strong cultural identity linked not only to its history (historians underline the role of religious wars and of the presence of Protestantism in the region as key to understanding its dynamics) but also to its more recent reputation as an alternative region that has attracted neo-rurals since the 1960s (Rouvière

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2015). The region has undergone a heavy loss of agricultural land and farming population: a decline of 33.5 per cent in farm numbers from 2000 to 2010 at the scale of the whole Ardèche département.5 Today, the local agriculture appears quite diverse, and about 15 per cent of the farms are organically run. A variety of initiatives have developed over the decades, often launched by newcomers in interaction with local farmers and inhabitants, as well as by agricultural actors and public rural development programmes, especially in the 1990s and 2000s (see the timeline in Figure 4). The current structure of local agriculture is the result of a profound reconfiguration process. This region used to be orientated far more towards fruit production, which had been a successful agricultural industry from the post-Second World War period to the 1990s. There was a well-organized supply chain based on local actors – the local fruit cooperative used to be the largest one in Europe – and high levels of recognition of the quality of local fruit. In the early 1990s, this sector collapsed as it lost its competitiveness in relation to new specialized regions both in France and in Spain (that had recently entered the European common market), which had more favourable climate conditions for fruit production. In this context of crisis, many farms stopped their activities, while those that strived to remain in the fruit market had to undertake profound changes in their production and marketing strategies. Some diversified their fruit production, in order to supply more varied and more direct outlets, while others turned to different products, such as wine, the production of which was ‘relaunched’ through quality schemes in the same period (see below), or to organic farming which would allow them to get better prices and contracts for their products. Some also included processing and direct sale operations, or even non-farming activities such as ecotourism, and many farms indeed combined these different strategies.

Alternative food networks

Quality food networks

Context

Fruit 'golden era' Until the 1980s Picodon GI Wine GI

Collective initiatives Initiatives by local authorities Consumer-producer initiatives Social-justice CSOs

Fruit crisis → diversification strategies Strong rural development policies 1990s Wine re-launch process

Less public support 2000s

2010s

Goutez l’Ardèche

Progressive quality segmentation Chestnut PDO Progressive extension of the ‘Goutez l’Ardèche’ brand

First producer shops

Alternative wine makers networks New producer shops Village farmers’ markets School food procurement AMAPs Deliveries and buying groups Solidarity boxes Social gleaning

Figure  4 Timeline of the diverse kinds of initiatives emerging in the Ardèche case study.

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Quality food networks Since the early 1990s onwards, local farmers’ groups with the support of agricultural extension services and public rural development programmes have tried to develop strategies in order to enhance the value of their products through GIs. In this region, wine and chestnut are the two main products today concerned with GIs (Picodon goat cheese has also had one since 1983, but many producers sell directly without the GI). As both grapes and chestnuts have to be processed, the success of these initiatives depends on the involvement of processors. In the case of the wine sector, the different local cooperatives worked together in the ‘re-launch process’ of local vineyards, through the creation in 1994 of a union of these cooperatives. This union has led to economies of scale, coordination efficiency and a standardization of local wines, as well as to segmentation strategies, with a diversity of wines of different qualities, including organic ones. More recently (since the 2000s), other wine producers who wanted to keep the singularity of their wine and closer links to consumers have created, either individually or through small collective networks, and outside of these cooperatives, their own wine-making infrastructures. In doing so, they have often joined the ‘natural wine’ (‘vin naturel’) movement that is gaining importance in France (Barrey and Teil 2011). This shows the recomposition that occurs over time between more institutionalized and more alternative forms of organization. Similar processes of qualification and recomposition can be witnessed in the chestnut supply chain, with a similar ‘re-launch process’. This has been strongly supported by public programmes, through the involvement of public research in the genetic improvement of chestnut tree cultivars (Dupré 2002), and the involvement of agricultural extension services and local authorities in the organization of the chestnut sector. Here, the Regional Natural Park (PNR des Monts d’Ardèche) plays a strong role, as chestnuts constitute one of the main crops produced in the mountainous area it covers. While the large processing firms6 have supported the creation of a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) for Ardeche chestnuts (obtained in 2006) and devoted a part of their processing activities to this regional production, many smaller chestnut producers have started or continued processing their own production in much smaller processing units, as in the wine sector. These food quality initiatives have contributed to the dissemination of new visions for local agriculture and its revalorization, around what could be coined a ‘quality turn’. However, despite the fact that they make not only consumers but

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also food chain actors more sensitive to local products, they have little direct impact on local inhabitants’ food practices and diets, which consist of more than just wine and chestnut. In the meantime, other types of initiatives have emerged in the region, seeking to develop the local production of more basic food products such as vegetables, meat, dairy and fruit, and their valorization on local markets, and to reach a larger part of the local population. In 1994, the local chamber of agriculture, in conjunction with the chambers of trade and crafts and with once again the support of public funds, initiated a collective brand named Goûtez l’Ardèche (‘taste Ardèche’), a pioneering initiative at the time. The brand encompasses a wide diversity of local products (400 references today) from the whole département of Ardèche, which are sold in all sorts of outlets, ranging from local grocery stores to large supermarkets, and are also served in local restaurants, which is of key importance in this very touristic region (more than 120 local businesses involved today). The local chamber of agriculture and the local organic producers’ organization have also supported the development of organic production by supporting farmers’ conversion, especially since the late 2000s. Even the fruit cooperative, despite its economic difficulties, has invested in several initiatives:  a producers’ shop aimed at marketing local products (both organic and conventional), created in 2007, and a new activity and diversification opportunity for its members, focused on organic vegetable production. Whereas initially it sold only fruit, in 2008 this cooperative also started selling organic vegetables, following a request from a large organic wholesaler. In order to encourage some of its members (fruit farmers) and other farmers in the region to grow these crops (namely zucchini), it then entered into collective reflection with this wholesaler and the chamber of agriculture, responsible for providing technical support to farmers. Despite mobilizing various actors in the agri-food system (farming, extension services, commercialization), for farmers this project ultimately presented the same drawbacks as long supply chains: stringent physical quality criteria that required increased vigilance and daily picking, and uncertainty surrounding selling prices and volumes (Lamine and Cambien 2011). In contrast with the case of the Drôme grain cooperative, this partially ‘failed’ experiment also exemplifies a difficulty that cooperatives transitioning to organic farming regularly face when organic farmers’ interests are not (yet) properly represented in the governance of the bodies, and the organization is not sufficiently autonomous or does not manage to establish satisfactory alliances to redefine interdependencies (particularly downstream in the supply chain).

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Alternative food networks’ initiatives In parallel to these ‘institutionalized’ initiatives, diverse civil society and farmers’ initiatives have flourished in their efforts to valorize local products for local markets:  producers’ collective shops since the mid-1990s, local box schemes aimed at establishing fair prices and contracts between producers and consumers, such as Associations pour le Maintien de l’Agriculture Paysanne (AMAPs) since the late 2000s, farmers’ deliveries and farmers’ markets in the 2010s (Figure 4). These farmers’ markets are organized in many villages on a weekly basis during the summer season, most often initiated by local inhabitants and/or farmers with the support of the municipalities. Among these diverse grassroots initiatives, the collective farmers’ shops are noteworthy in that they introduce new modes of marketing based on collective involvement. The shops are run by the farmers, who all know one another and the products, and each of whom has to spend half a day every week there. This allows customers to always have a direct link and access to farmers. Six were created in this small region between the mid-1990s and 2016. Most often, they are established by neo-rurals but also involve local ‘traditional’ farmers who find new outlets and diversification opportunities in the context of agricultural crisis described above. Agricultural extension services and local authorities have sometimes supported these grassroots initiatives, even though most of them have been developed without much institutional and technical support. These initiatives have strongly contributed to the processes of legitimization of a new conception of local agriculture (and of its functions) which is, complementarily to the above one focused on certified quality through GIs, focused on the recognition of peasant agriculture and the promotion of direct producer–consumer links. These initiatives (and this perspective) have also impacted more conventional actors over time as some local supermarkets (not all) have increased the share of local products in their purchases. Since the late 2000s, many schools have also reoriented their procurement towards more local and organic products. In addition to all these visible initiatives and networks, a number of informal networks also play a key role in agricultural transitions, although that role is often not acknowledged. Only long-term ethnographic work on a regional scale may bring these to light. For example, while in an AMAP a single-market gardener must theoretically be able to provide the wide variety of vegetables required for the weekly boxes, some market gardeners swap produce with one another to ensure that they can provide consumers with complete boxes. Other market gardeners, due to organizational difficulties associated with their mix of their

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supply chains (both local customers and remote operators), opt for streamlining and partial re-specialization, and thus also organize themselves informally to centralize their products and redistribute them, often with farmers who have more experience with long supply chains (Lamine and Cambien 2011). These initiatives are also coordinated in a variety of ways, since they combine local organization and adjustments and comply with quality criteria peculiar to long supply chains. This longitudinal analysis of the last twenty-five years’ dynamics shows that the articulation of private initiatives (emerging in both alternative and conventional networks) and civil society ones with territorial public policies as well as the establishment of new modes of coordination and governance that allow interdependencies within the territorial agri-food system to be redefined appear as key factors supporting farms’ resilience and the territorial agri-food system’s transition, as had also been demonstrated in the neighbouring Drôme valley.

The rise of social justice issues However, this transition raises social justice issues. Recently, several civil society organizations have started to tackle social justice issues and to work on consumers’ access to local quality food as well as farmers’ access to land, agricultural knowledge and support. This was based on growing criticism that most initiatives mainly reached the wealthier and/or most committed consumers – whether locals or tourists in the summer season – and excluded poorer social groups. They furthermore failed to address farmers’ main difficulties (especially those of small farmers). Among a wider diversity of initiatives that have emerged recently (since the late 2000s and early 2010s), three that focus on more vulnerable groups, whether consumers or farmers, are worth mentioning here. The first one involves a local box scheme, which is part of a national network of social insertion enterprises that market vegetables produced by formerly unemployed people. These individuals work on two-year contracts, during which time they are supported in developing their own future professional projects. Operating within a national project, this scheme also develops ‘solidarity boxes’ that are delivered to local poor families, in interaction with local social services and with an educational programme on diet and food-related practices. The impact of this initiative on families’ eating habits and on their conceptions of quality food and their links to their territory has yet to be assessed, along with

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the possible extension of this programme to more households. Today, it reaches only about twenty-five families in the small town of this ‘solidarity economy’ structure (in addition to the dozens of boxes that are sold at regular prices to local households who can afford them). The second initiative was launched in 2015 by a local farmers’ organization, based on the finding that about 30 per cent of the local fruit and vegetable production is not marketed because the products are too small, too ripe or because the harvest period is limited due to work organization constraints. A ‘gleaning project’ was developed with the support of local social institutions and local farmers, where low-income households go into the fields with the farmer, harvest the remaining fruits and vegetables and also take part in cooking or processing workshops.7 Other initiatives focused on farmers’ access to agricultural knowledge and support as well as farmers collective initiatives focused on on-farm seed production. They aimed at setting up appropriate ways to support current or future farmers who are not adequately assisted by the conventional agricultural services because of their constraining rules and frames, and their lack of adaptation to these profiles, and was based on innovative tutoring networks between experienced farmers and new or future ones. These diverse pioneering initiatives were financed through public funds that have recently been redirected to other priorities in a context of political change at the larger scale of the new Auvergne-Rhône Alpes region. This shows the fragility of such initiatives, due to their dependence on public support. For the same reasons, a local network aimed at creating farm incubators in order to facilitate young farmers’ access to land and training has not yet succeeded in creating such innovative structures, in contrast to the Drôme valley region where such a project has benefited from strong support from the local authorities (Bui et  al. 2016). Although such initiatives reach only a limited number of local consumers and farmers, they should nevertheless be considered as social experiments aimed at tackling social injustice issues, and are likely to be a basis for future dissemination. This case study shows the importance of the articulation of diverse initiatives and territorial public policies, and of the establishment of new modes of coordination and governance that allow interdependencies within the territorial agri-food system to be redefined in order to better support farms’ resilience and sustainable transitions. It furthermore also shows the complementary role of alternative and conventional initiatives and networks. Our dynamic and pragmatist stance enables us to understand how dissatisfaction over quality

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food networks such as GI initiatives on the one hand, and the criticism and controversies over social justice issues on the other, led to the launching of new initiatives to tackle these issues. This has taken place through ongoing ‘redifferentiation’ processes (Lamine 2015b) resulting from the confrontation of alternative and conventional networks. In operational terms, these results call for the articulation of these different initiatives and forms of support in efficient modes of governance within a coherent territorial agri-food project.

IV. The Serra do Rio region in Brazil The Serra region (Rio de Janeiro) is a rural region (pop. about 600,000 inh.; area 2,700 km2) characterized by its small-scale farms and production systems, as well as its marketing systems that over time specialized in vegetable production to supply the nearby metropolitan area of Rio. Several family farming and organic farming organizations have developed diverse initiatives since the 1980s aimed at supporting agroecological transitions.8

Socio-productive arrangements locked in the conventional model From the 1950s onwards, a combination of factors led to a profound transformation of the Serra regional agriculture:  the urbanization of the metropolitan area of Rio, the improvement of road access, new market intermediaries and public intervention linked to credit and extension services. Until then, there were two main types of farms:  very large fazendas owned by Portuguese descendants, mainly run by tenant farmers with five to thirty families per fazenda, and much smaller family farms owned by German and Swiss descendants who had settled from the early nineteenth century. Starting in the 1950s, the process of farm division started to accelerate, due to inheritance processes on both types of farm. This overall reduction of farm areas strongly contributed to the intensification of production, in which market gardening appeared as a good option, considering also the proximity of Rio and of its market (with the population of Rio increasing from about 1.7M inh. in 1940 to 5.5M in the 1990s and 12M today – for the metropolitan region or ‘grande Rio’). In the nineteenth century, some large fazendas of the region had already started to produce fruits and vegetables to supply the Rio market, based on slave labour. This land fragmentation also resulted in a decrease in the traditional practice of pousio (slash-and-burn), in combination with the establishment of conservation

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areas and environmental regulations, which in turn led to an increasing use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The improvement of transport infrastructure also significantly contributed to this specialization: a railway line was built in the 1870s, and roads were built from the 1930s onwards, facilitating the transport of vegetables to the city of Rio and to other towns nearby (Rio is about 70 kilometres from Petropolis, 100 kilometres from Teresopolis, and 140 kilometres from Nova Friburgo, the three main towns of the region, respectively, 300,000, 180,000 and 190,000 inh.). Transport was also facilitated between the different production areas of the Serra region. From the 1950s on, some farmers and traders started to specialize in the transport and marketing of local products. This process was reinforced with the creation of the CEASAs (Centros de Abastecimento or supply centres) in the early 1970s, under a public programme of the military regime that aimed at structuring food supply across the country in order to improve the supply of urban centres (Belik 2000). This improvement in infrastructure, especially from the 1950s to the 1980s, facilitated not only the marketing of local agricultural products but also the access to external chemical inputs. The same places that were set up for product marketing also became key places for input marketing. In 1977, the government set up a CEASA supply centre in Nova Friburgo, which soon became the major hub were the production of the nearby rural areas would be marketed. By the early 1980s, about half of the municipality’s production was marketed through this supply centre, until its decline in the 1990s. This process gave a key role to private intermediaries, and also generated asymmetrical relations with the farmers, who were then strongly dependent upon them. In other parts of the Serra, the farmers themselves and/or small- or medium-sized traders set up private ‘markets’ or hubs where the production would be brought and packed before being transported to the urban centres. Farmers’ access to chemical inputs and pacotes tecnologicos (‘technological packages’), as well as to mechanization, was facilitated by public access-to-credit programmes in the green revolution era of the 1960s and 1970s (Grisel and Assis 2015). The fast mechanization of farm and ploughing work led not only to huge gains in productivity but also to serious environmental consequences due to erosion of the slopes (that used to be ploughed by oxen following the contour of the land, whereas tractors could only plough perpendicularly). The introduction of hybrid seeds and plastic greenhouses further contributed to this intensification and specialization process that allowed farmers to produce all year long.

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In the 2000s, many farmers relied on the Programa Nacional de Fortalecimento da Agricultura Familiar (PRONAF, national programme to support family agriculture, initially set up in 1995) to access to credit, both for investment and for input purchases. All these factors contributed to strengthening new ‘productive arrangements’ based on a strong dependency on a diversity of external inputs (credit, seeds, chemicals, fertilizers, marketing operators, etc.). The role of public extension services was also key to this process, as they were everywhere in Brazil, through the municipal teams that were established by the regional public extension enterprise in each municipality. Their mission in the 1960s and 1970s was the diffusion of the famous ‘technological packages’ of the green revolution. The private input providers also played a major role in the dissemination of intensive models and techniques, especially since their employees often came from rural families and were well established in the area. In the 1980s, new agricultural programmes were set up in the main towns, through a regional programme called ‘Corridor Agricola’ to train rural youth – a majority of whom would later work as agricultural advisers, especially for the local input providers. The fact that this new intensive ‘productive arrangements’ could easily replace the traditional ones was also because the latter were made unsustainable by new environmental regulations. As early as 1939, a national park (Parque Nacional da Serra dos Orgãos) was created in the region, the third to be created nationwide, followed by a regional park as well as environmental protection areas. The regulations enforced in these areas – with prohibition of the traditional pousio technique – led to strong controversies and a strong farmers’ aversion to environmental issues (Rego 2008). Besides the urbanization process of the Rio region and its combined effects on consumer demand and on the reduction of agricultural areas in the regions that were closer to Rio, the retailing sector was also profoundly restructured. Supermarket chains established their own circuits to buy their fruits and vegetables, while the public supply centres (CEASA) supplied mainly the open markets. In 2010, the Serra region produced 90 per cent of green vegetables in the state of Rio, and the 2011 tragedy – when torrential rains and landslides killed more than a thousand persons9 and destroyed a large part of the agricultural production  – made the dependence of the Rio urban area upon this local production explicit. It also brought to light the consequences of intensive agriculture (erosion) and led some researchers to explore the effect of more ecological practices on the resilience to such phenomena. Yet several years after the tragedy, the practices on local farms had not really changed in that direction.

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The convergent trajectories of all the regional sociotechnical systems progressively led to the lock-in mechanisms that marginalized alternatives – as described in Chapter 4. This led to a perception by local farmers of external and chemical inputs as inescapable. A large majority of the farms of the region are indeed ‘conventionally’ run, even though there are significant differences, from 1 per cent to 13 per cent of organic farmers depending on the municipalities (Palm 2018). However, many local conventional farmers also found that their productive model was becoming increasingly unsustainable, due to the increase in external costs and their inefficiency in pest and disease control.

The emergence of agroecological transition processes Despite the systemic lock-in effects described above, many initiatives had already emerged in this small region in the 1980s and 1990s, in a larger context where at the national scale, ‘alternative agriculture’ movements tried to support small farmers in their resistance to the green revolution schemes (Lamine 2017). One of these pioneer initiatives was the Coonatura, a consumers and producers cooperative (cooperative of ‘natural ideas, products and solutions’) founded in Rio in 1979 and aimed at promoting ecological actions and products. One of its members moved to the Serra region where as early as the late 1970s he had taken part in the first project focused on biodynamic agriculture and that had not lasted for long. He would first only bring his own products to Rio through a much longer journey than would be today, due to the state of roads and public transport at that time, and then persuaded a few neighbours to join him in this initiative. These producers collectively invested in an appropriate vehicle and in the early 1990s this system included thirty-five farming families and nearly 2,000 consumers. In parallel, in the same period (the early 1980s) a few young people from Rio had settled in the Serra and started to produce ‘naturally’  – some after having trained in agronomy and taken part in ecological agriculture groups at the university. But by the mid-1980s, they were still relatively isolated from one another and did not really constitute a network. Thanks to a national meeting on alternative agriculture (Encontro Brasileiro de Agricultura Alternativa (EBAA)) that took place in the region in 1984, which brought together many researchers and activists from all over the country, contact was established between these local actors, who shared their experiences. Soon afterwards they decided to launch a local farmers market together in the centre of Nova Friburgo. The municipality then urged them to constitute a legal entity, which became the

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first local organization of organic farmers (Abio). They drew up guidelines for farming practices, based on the principles of the international organic movement International Foundation for Organic Agriculture (IFOAM), in a period when there was no organic certification in Brazil. A farmers commission was created that would visit the different farms and evaluate their compliance with this guideline. From then on, this commission and the farmers market itself provided key spaces where farmers would discuss their practices and exchange their experiences. In 1994, the two organizations Conatura and Abio created the Gloria market (Feira da Gloria) in Rio, which has since then been an important place for the marketing of local products. This was based on a previous experience of such an organic open-air market in Porto Alegre, which also shows the circulation of ideas and initiatives across states and organizations. Previous studies of these dynamics and local organic farmers’ trajectories showed that many of them had other sources of income, which allowed them to experiment with new techniques and ‘work as an avant-garde of the diffusion process of organic farming’ (Assis et al. 1996), especially since over 73 per cent of them had a high level of education. These dynamics were also supported by some initiatives and projects carried out by public institutions. From the 1990s on, some agroecological experiments were carried out on a local experimental station that had been created in 1988 (Pesagro-Rio) and also trained local farmers in alternative techniques. In 1993 an experimental station devoted to agroecological practices was created by the UFFRJ, the Embrapa and Pesagro-Rio in Seropedica (between Rio and the Serra region), and became an important place of training, research action and exchange for regional agroecological farmers. Like in other territories, it is important to mention here the role of some actors who served as go-betweens or intermediaries between local farmers and the city and/or the world of public policies and universities. This is the case of a member of Abio, a researcher in the UFFRJ who, from the late 1980s on, focused her work on these processes of change towards organic farming in the Serra region.

Conventionalization trends and alternative ways Due to the increasing interest in organic products among city consumers, some supermarket chains started to look for organic vegetables and fruits in the mid1990s, and Coonatura invested in this new outlet. However, this led the cooperative to financial difficulties, to bankruptcy and finally to takeover by Horta Organica, a new organization devoted to this kind of supply chain. Although it proved to

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be more efficient in terms of logistics and management, the pressure put on it by the supermarket chains also led to its failure after a few years. Meanwhile, some larger farms had developed direct links with supermarket chains in Rio (Sítio do Moinho, Fazenda Vale das Palmeiras), as well as internet ordering systems. Yet the conditions remained quite unfavourable for organic producers (who would keep only about 30 per cent of the product value), even for these larger ones. The only experience that seems to have continued until today is that of a local farm that would supply supermarkets in the nearby town of Nova Friburgo (Palm 2018), allowing for more proximity between this producer and her consumers. From the early 2000s on, two of the main actors on the regional organic landscape – a former farmer who had moved to the city of Rio and the abovementioned university teacher  – took an active role in the newly created organic group (GAO), aimed at discussing the then emerging national organic regulations. It was only in 1999 that organic agriculture started to be regulated in Brazil (the first law was enacted in 1999), although exportation to Europe already required a certification. For this reason, and like other organizations in other Brazilian regions, the Abio had become a certificatory organization in 1994. In liaison with the Ecovida network, that was very active in southern Brazilian states (see Chapter  6), this group contributed significantly to the inclusion of participatory guarantee systems in the law, which became effective in 2007. In the same year, the Abio decided to create a Participatory Guarantee System (PGS), which allowed local farmers to escape the cost of the third-party certification and to develop knowledge exchange. The number of members in Abio then increased from 74 in 1998 to 137 in 2010 and 591 in 2017, due to this new certification scheme and the development of organic markets, both in the main towns of the region and in the city of Rio (Fonseca 2009). This movement amplified in the 2010s with the creation of the Circuito Carioca de Feiras Orgânicas (Rio Organic Markets Circuit) that was created as a result of negotiations between organic producers (through the Abio and thanks to the spokespersons or intermediaries) and the municipality of Rio. In 2018, there were twenty-one organic markets in the city (Palm 2018). This expansion of organic farming relied both on the conversion of local farmers and on a new generation of neo-rurals who, in contrast to those of the 1980s, often had no income source other than agriculture and seemed much more involved in collective dynamics for access to land and for marketing. Like the previous generation, they however shared the wish to ‘cultivate the rural way of life’ (as one of them reported; see Palm 2018). Research and extension institutions also contributed to the local dynamics, first in the late 1990s through

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an inter-institutional project called Rede Agroecologia Rio (Rio agroecological Network), that brought together the university, the Embrapa, the extension institution EMATER (EMpresa de Assistência Técnica e Extensão), the alternative agriculture organization ASPTA and the local organic association Abio. This project allowed the development of the local production of organic inputs, which was one of the major lock-ins in the development of organic production. Meanwhile, local conventional input providers also started to market some organic inputs, and one of them specialized in these products – also with the aim to reach conventional farmers, in a larger context of increasing concern about the use of chemical inputs. The public agronomic research institute Embrapa created a research and training network aimed at local farmers, and from 2008 on, two Embrapa researchers specialized in organic farming started to work in the region on a permanent basis, while the region became a major area for students’ work. From 2009 on, the EMATER technicians started to implement the Programa Rio-Rural (regional rural program), with incentives for family farmers and support to agroecological practices. The programme really started to grow after the climatic tragedy of 2011, as specific measures set up for farmers who had suffered from the events also encouraged collective dynamics. Between 2014 and 2017, a large project involved about 700 farmers from the area, based on a programme of the MDA, (Ministry of Agrarian Development, which no longer exists; see Chapter 6), that focused not only on organic farmers but much more broadly on the development of agroecological practices among local conventional farmers. The local municipalities and local public EMATER extensionists also strongly contributed to easing the access of local organic farmers to the public accessto-food programmes PAA and PNAE (see Chapters  6 and 7) that from 2009 took on major importance in the outlets of some agroecological farms and the diversification of conventional ones. In this region, several aspects allow us to assess an agroecological transition at the scale of the territorial agri-food systems, as we have done in the French cases above. This transition that succeeded to a phase of specialization in conventional vegetable production, which had started in the 1950s, reflects the sharp increase of the number of organic farmers, even though the average share of organic farmed areas is much smaller than in the French cases (about 2.5 per cent, although with significant differences between the different municipalities of the region) and specialization remains strong. The development of farmers’ organizations for marketing and of smaller groups for knowledge exchange, the involvement of research institutions as well as the inclusion of consumers

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in local farmers’ markets and the negotiations carried out with the different municipalities to create and maintain these markets, all attest to a transition that impacts the different components of the territorial agri-food system. These different components are often involved in multi-partner projects that bring together research institutions, extension services, alternative agriculture movements, farmers’ groups and sometimes municipalities. Like in the above cases, it is a combination of collective action (emerging from the agricultural world, from civil society and from the public actors) and governance innovations (these multi-partner projects, the public procurement programmes, etc.) that concretely makes farm transitions possible. Of course, many actors remain outside these dynamics, and conventional agriculture still prevails on the agricultural landscape, but these signs bear witness to the systemic change underway.

V. The relevance of the regional scale for studying ecological transitions These three case studies show the complementarity between initiatives that emerge from the alternative networks and some that emerge from the so-called conventional world, all of which contribute to ecological transition pathways at the scale of territorial agri-food systems. Highly alternative and small-scale innovations such as box schemes or collective points of sale, which reflect strong societal expectations and are developing with some success, afford real change in the coordination and risk-sharing between actors, since they lead to a joint redefinition of the farming, distribution and consumption system. These innovations thus signal a possible evolution of practices within the agri-food system, but de facto affect only a small part of the actors of this system, of local farming and of everyday food consumption. They contribute to both exploration and radical criticism, which pushes other actors to ‘shift’ their views and even their actions. Conversely, potentially larger-scale projects might also contribute to ecological transitions when they manage to articulate the different links in the supply chain, from farming to the various processing outlets, as in the case of the Drôme grain cooperative, whereas other experiences have encountered setbacks when trying to change coordination methods to share risk and value more equitably between actors in the industry. As these cases have shown, rather than highlighting an opposition between ‘dominant’ or ‘conventional’ actors and ‘alternative’ (or niche) actors, as is often

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the case, our reasoning on the scale of the territorial agri-food system shows their complementary roles in the exploration of different paths, and in the critique and stimulation of the latter with regard to the former. Hence, the importance of analyses that include the full range of actors and organizations concerned by farming and food consumption issues, without predicting their ‘alternative’ status. In addition to the effects of combining ‘conventional’ and ‘alternative’ types of initiatives (and sometimes hybridizing, as in the case of informal networks of producers, in which there is an overlap between conventional and organic), a combination of ‘top-down’ dynamics (essentially under institutional impetus) and ‘bottom-up’ dynamics (stemming rather from private or collective initiatives by farming professionals or civil society) is also noteworthy. The three regions thus present a different mix between these two types of dynamics, in different national contexts. In the Drôme valley, organic farming has long enjoyed significant institutional support (local authorities, Département, Region, Europe). Since 2009 it has been part and parcel of a larger regional project, led by the two main inter-municipal authorities, to make the valley a model eco-territory, actually integrating a variety of themes in addition to farming and food consumption (Bui 2015). In southern Ardèche, while by comparison public policy support appears to be more fragmented, it has made it possible to support initiatives set up by agricultural stakeholders such as the Chamber of Agriculture. Private initiatives or initiatives from ‘alternative’ farming associations and civil society around the production and commercialization of local products (including organic product) are also appearing to be decisive and some of them have also been supported by public funds through the European Leader program, despite public support is weaker than in the Drôme valley. Finally, in the Serra do Rio region, the transition process was mainly driven by organic farmer organizations, often without public support, although from the 2000s new programmes by the Lula governments to support family farming and school meals aided these farm transitions through extension programmes and public procurement programmes. The political changes that took place in Brazil in 2016 and 2018 have however raised questions as to the sustainability of these transitions. Reasoning at regional level entails first defining the territory concerned, and therefore drawing its borders. Yet the relevant territory for addressing farming and food consumption issues head-on does not necessarily have such fixed boundaries as an administrative territory, for example. In some cases, as in the two French cases discussed here, there is relative coherence between the administrative territory (inter-municipalities or pays in France) and the

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territory in which people live and work, be they farmers, agri-food or advisory actors or consumers, largely because of the natural limits associated with the local topography (valleys and mountain areas). In the Brazilian case, the region under study encompasses several such ‘living areas’. In any case, the various actors’ territories of action can be very different. It thus seems important not to stick to the boundaries of administrative territories in the analysis, for this can de facto exclude actors involved in local dynamics surrounding farming and food consumption issues. Rather than drawing boundaries, it is important to formulate ‘territorial hypotheses’ (Garçon 2015) which, through a collective construction process, can be ‘tested’ in terms of regional agri-food projects. This work also raises questions about the trajectories of ‘territorial resilience’: why is the fabric of some more specialized regions’ agri-food systems crumbling while that of the Drôme and Ardèche territories (and others) is holding up, on their small scale, despite otherwise alarming agricultural statistics in both cases? These two small regions had no other choice – due to their topography, natural constraints and a crisis surrounding the only ‘intensive’ model present (fruit farming)  – but to maintain or sometimes recover a degree of diversity. It could also be said that over the ‘long-term’ duration of the last century, some small regions seem to have managed to maintain a certain reversibility in their farming, agri-food and  – more broadly  – social trajectories. Thus, some small areas of Ardèche jumped on the fruit train in the late nineteenth century (literally and then figuratively, when trucks replaced refrigerated trains  – historical factors in the development of local fruit production), thus beginning the ‘golden age’ of fruit farming, and which had succeeded the ‘silk cycle’, the main source of farming and industrial employment for many decades. But when this ran out of steam due to the accumulation of a variety of factors in the 1990s, the reversibility that had remained or been maintained on the farms, in the sociotechnical system and in the region, allowed farming not to perish completely, even though urbanization (and the conversion of farmland into constructible land, depending on amendments to urban planning documents), as elsewhere, provided a major way out for farmers. There was a wine growing industry to convert, quality products to exploit, innovative local actors, a relatively dense social fabric and strong links to neighbouring cities. This suggests that the interpenetration between the urban and rural worlds, and between the farming and non-farming worlds, is a factor of resilience  – and not only of disintegration – of regional agri-food systems and more generally territoires de vie.

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Of course, the regions studied here are particular, insofar as they share a set of characteristics that not all rural territories have: they are attractive spaces, which have always welcomed people from elsewhere as well as ‘returning’ people, and they are sufficiently accessible from the main roads to allow for dense trade and traffic, yet far enough from the major cities to create their own dynamics, particularly cultural dynamics – unlike spaces that have shifted from rural to peri-urban. Finally, they are regions with quite a strong identity and image.

Notes 1 As per the Mendrasian interpretation inspired by the works of R. Redfield, see Deverre (2009). 2 Tual (2011); Bui (2015); both supervised by C. Lamine. 3 Juliano Palm, co-supervised by C. Schmitt (UFRRJ) and C. Lamine. 4 This section is based on a recent article that contrasts this case study to an Italian one, in order to discuss the territorial approach (Lamine et al. 2018). 5 http://rhone-alpes.synagri.com/portail/07-les-cles-de-l-agriculture. 6 This sector is characterized by the presence of historical operators, as three processing firms have been in the region for about a century and transform not only local chestnuts but also and mainly imported material, due to the insufficiency of the local production. 7 See http://civamardeche.org/Glanage-social. 8 This section is based on the work carried out with J. Palm within his PhD work (UFFRJ, Rio). 9 And even several thousands according to civil society organizations.

6

The process of political construction of organic agriculture and agroecology in Brazil and in France: Alliances and controversies

Even if the social structure of French and Brazilian agriculture is very different, in both countries, farming is at the heart of controversies and social struggles between its ‘dominant’ forms and ‘alternative’ forms, between a ‘large’ and ‘small’ agriculture, categories that are themselves quite heterogeneous.1 Connected to these controversies and social struggles surrounding economic, environmental and social issues, in both countries public policies have recently been forged based on the notion of agroecology. In Brazil, pressured by social movements, agroecology has imposed itself progressively in the public policies related specifically to family agriculture, starting in the end of the 1990s, in a context where organic agriculture’s institutionalization was still weak, while in France it has been construed since 2012 by the government as an all-encompassing frame of reference, that concerns all of agriculture, in a context where organic agriculture had been institutionalized since the early 1980s. Starting from these commonalities and differences between the two countries, the objective here is to explore the processes of politicization (encompassing both political construction and policy construction) of organic agriculture and agroecology. This chapter retraces the trajectories of politicization in both countries, with in Brazil a zoom on the case of Paraná, a Brazilian state that is interesting not only as a pioneer in the development of alternative agricultures but also because the construction of a state agroecological policy was launched there before it became generalized at the scale of the whole country, despite it was strongly dampened due to political changes at the state level. The argument developed in this chapter is that in Brazil as in France, the process of politicization

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of agroecology results from interactions between different social worlds: social movements, the academic world, the agricultural world and public policy, drawing different conceptions, sometimes conflicting, of agroecology. This chapter will show that the power relations and alliances between social worlds that participate in the politicization of organic agriculture and agroecology take shape differently in the two countries. In these conceptions and controversies, two points prove to be crucial: the type of farming and farmers that are targeted and the consideration of issues of reconnection between agriculture, environment, food and health at the scale of the agri-food system, beyond simply technical farming practices. The majority of works on the politicization of organic agriculture concern, logically, countries where it has been institutionalized quite early, such as European countries (Michelsen 2001; Piriou 2002; Smith 2006; Darnhofer, D’Amico and Fouilleux 2018), the United States (Guthman 2004), Australia and New Zealand (Lockie and Halpin 2005). Similarly, most works on the politicization of agroecology concern, logically, countries where agroecology has been advanced as a frame of reference for public action: other than Brazil and France that we discuss here, several other Latin American countries, starting with Cuba, Equator, Venezuela and, more recently, Argentina and Uruguay. In English-speaking countries, however, the politicization of agroecology is still poorly studied by the social sciences  – this politicization is effectively only timidly emerging in Europe (aside from France) and the United States (Levidow 2015). In the Latin American context, agroecology is treated principally as a proposition of peasant social movements, which has led some authors to characterize it as ‘populist political ecology’ or ‘agrarian populism’ (Bernstein 2014; Jansen 2015). Regarding organic agriculture, most studies have attested the same basic trend from a social movement, to a political recognition, to a codification in laws and regulations and a progressive insertion in the global market, even though they might introduce details or nuances to this temporal phasing. More precisely, the institutionalization process is most often described through a series of phases that correspond to (1) the emergence of social movements emanating from pioneer farmers and sometimes consumers; (2) the development of marketing initiatives and the increasing support and demand of consumers; (3) the creation of labels and the elaboration of laws and public programs; (4)  the conventionalization process whereby organic agriculture progressively undergo similar processes of concentration and capitalization than conventional agriculture; and (5) the subsequent controversies and adjustment processes of organic actors – a phase

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that is much less addressed. The key effect of alliances between different social groups (farmers, consumers, policy makers) and claims (environmental issues, health, products quality, organic agriculture as a way to maintain family and/or extensive farming) has been addressed through a relational approach that allows understanding the diversity of trajectories in European countries (Darnhofer, D’Amico and Fouilleux 2018). Regarding agroecology, due to its relatively recent emergence, less studies have addressed its institutionalization process. In Brazil, much more works have explored the influence of social movements on the development of forms of ecological agriculture in general and agroecology in particular (Brandenburg 2008; Petersen, Mussoi and Soglio 2013). Altieri and Toledo (2011) have analysed the institutionalization of agroecology in Brazil and identified three processes that explain it, that is, the reorientation of social movements defending family farming and alternative agriculture towards agroecology, the arrival of agroecologists to key positions in the federal and state governments and the formation of a new generation of agroecologists that would become professors and researchers in universities and research centres (Altieri and Toledo 2011). While these authors deploy a positive vision of the processes of interaction between social movements, the academic world, the agricultural world and public policy, that make the ‘agroecological revolution’ (to use their terms) a ‘success story’, I will explore here rather the controversies and power relations that these processes of interaction reveal. In France, where the process of politicization of agroecology is more recent, research subjects stemming from the cognitive analysis of political policies (Muller 2000b) are beginning to appear (Arrignon and Bosc 2015). This approach also influenced recent work in Brazil, which analyse the role of the ‘agroecological forum’ in the processes of political construction for family agriculture and more recently for agroecology (Niederle and Grisa 2013; Flexor and Grisa 2016; Schmitt 2016). I will emphasize not so much the processes of stabilization of a public action referential seen as a single cognitive, normative and instrumental framework as in the cognitive analysis of political policies (Muller 2000a) – but the debates and controversies that precede and then accompany these processes of public policy construction. The process of politicization of organic agriculture and agroecology indeed goes beyond the question of public policy construction, even if this policy is the most visible result of the state of these alliances and controversies. I  will thus analyse the controversies, power relations and alliances at play in the two countries, and will show how different, sometimes conflicting, conceptions of agroecology are elaborated and confronted.

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I. Pathways of politicization of ecological agricultures in France It is only recently that agroecology has arrived at the forefront in France, while the ecologization of agriculture had taken a number of other forms over the decades. As early as the 1950s and tied to the first critics of agricultural modernization emerged networks of farmers defending extensive agriculture models (namely in livestock farming) based on the notion of autonomy (Deléage 2004), while at the same period, organic farming movements were also progressively forming (César 2003). Connected to this early structuring, organic agriculture experienced an early process of institutionalization (Piriou 2002), and was defined in 1980 in a Loi d’Orientation Agricole (‘law of agricultural orientation’) while an organic label was concretely established in 1985.

Controversies over organic agriculture This relative precociousness (in comparison to Brazil, in any case, where this institutionalization of organic agriculture dates from the turn of the twentyfirst century) can explain the current diversity that characterizes French organic agriculture, accentuated by the coexistence of various theoretical sources (Besson 2007) and diverse networks. It can also explain the richness of debates and controversies. Like in many countries, over time critics and controversies developed opposing an organic agriculture qualified by some as ‘conventionalized’ (Guthman 2004), for having followed the same tendencies of concentration, enlargement, specialization and a growing use of external inputs as conventional agriculture, and an organic agriculture sometimes called ‘resistant’, today often qualified as ‘peasant’, and related to mainly small farms that are generally more diversified. This opposition is notably visible in debates that touched organic circles during periods of translations and revisions of European regulations, in 1999 for the elaboration of French organic certification standards resulting from the 1991 European regulation, and then in 2006 and 2008 during the revision of this regulation, that led to the current regulation in place (Lamine 2017). During the 1990s, the elaboration of the French regulation led to intense controversies within the world of organic agriculture and with the French administration. A  key issue was then how the previous framing of organic practices set up in the French law of 1980  – that appeared stricter and more

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‘demanding’ than the European regulation  – could be taken into account. As related a key actor of these debates, then coordinator of the French federation of organic farming, ‘the European regulation on animal production was a step backwards in comparison to the French regulation, on a number of points such as the share of conventional feed that is admitted and the prohibition of enclosed or hors-sol (off-ground) – as actors would call it – animal breeding. We succeeded in imposing the possibility to have stricter national regulations’ (interview, 2002). This national organic farmers network then launched a consultation with its farmers members and carried out an analysis of the diverse guidelines that existed in France, in order to work on the future French regulation. This consultation was organized through the regional organic farmers groups and allowed to introduce key elements that were not imposed in the European regulation, such as feeding autonomy or prohibition of enclosed breeding. However, as some guidelines such as the Nature et Progrès one were much stricter, some organic actors still felt unsatisfied with the result of this process and maintained their own guidelines and brands. Some organic organizations also strongly criticized the new forms of third-party certification for being purely formal and technical, in a context where since 1980, the evaluation of the guidelines was done in France by a mixed commission composed of farmers and consumers. Some indeed maintained more participatory certification processes and, later on, played a key role in their diffusion in key alternative food networks such as the AMAPs. However, in the years 1999–2000, the main argument in favour of third-party certification was to avoid the frauds that were quite important at that time, especially with imported products. Along with the type of certification, what many actors criticized was the fact that this supported a vision of organic agriculture that was coined by some as ‘substitution organic agriculture’, whereby organic input would replace chemical ones without any systemic change. These actors would in these years, and still today, promote a conception of organic agriculture that they consider more ethical and more systemic. This echoes the debates that took place in the United States along the 1990s, where most controversies also dealt with the framing of organic agriculture only through the definition of prohibited and allowed inputs versus through a more holistic vision, including its social dimensions (Goodman 1999). These controversies and the increasing demand of consumers not only for healthy products but also for more ecological forms of agriculture led to a profound change in the way organic agriculture is defined in the European regulation. Whereas in the first European regulation of 1991 (CEE/2092/91),

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organic agriculture was defined as an agricultural and market segment, in link with consumers demand, in the next regulation established in 2007 (CE834/ 2007) it was defined as a public good, with the environmental and rural development dimensions put at the fore front. Whereas organic products (and the organic market) were first in the 1991 regulation, it is organic production which was mentioned first in the 2007’s one. Organic agriculture is viewed in this revised regulation as an encompassing system that pays a double societal role: answer to consumers demand and provide public goods through ecological practices, preservation of natural resources, level of biodiversity, animal welfare rules and rural development. This inversion in the priorities from the first regulation to the second one is not only the sign of an increasing legitimation of organic agriculture but is also concretely the result of a long trajectory of negotiations at the European scale as well as of experiences and debates within the diverse organic networks, and of their involvement in diverse arenas of debate and collective action often bringing together organic farmers, consumers and institutions involved in rural development. However, as the 2007 new regulation was considered by many organic actors as much less ambitious than the previous one, some of them decided in 2009 to set up a new collective qualification approach through a more demanding label and guideline called ‘Biocohérence’. Biocohérence, which gathers diverse networks (FNAB, Bio Bourgogne, Bio Consom’acteurs, Biocoop, Pronatura, Démeter France and others) claims a ‘real criteria of differentiation with the industrialization and the banalization of the organic sector’,2 and more demanding social and environmental criteria. From 2015 on, a new sequence of debates and controversies started in the context of a new revision of the European regulation, where civil society appeared much more present and new concepts also arose such as that of general interests of ecosystemic services. In a context where the support of the French government not only to conversion to organic farming but also to organic farmers already in place was questioned, the national federation of organic farming claimed that these support schemes were a way to acknowledge the environmental services rendered by organic agriculture (such as water quality, biodiversity preservation, development of ecological infrastructures, employment and the production of healthy products)3 and to pay for these services. Through such arguments, these actors also claim a reframing of the costs and benefits of organic farming, which gives way to a strong controversy over the ‘performance’ of organic farming within the academic world (Lamine 2017). In France, this has given way to vivid debates over this notion of economic, environmental and social performance,

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and to a growing acknowledgement of the ‘positive externalities’ of organic farming (Dalcin et  al. 2014). At the European level, the new regulation was eventually adopted in May 2018 (CE 2018/848) for an application starting in 2021. One of its main advances has been to open the way to group certification, as was advocated by the IFOAM and most European organic organizations, and had already been integrated in Brazilian’s law (see below).

The emergence of agroecology in France Until the beginning of the 2000s, the notion of agroecology barely appeared in debates on organic agriculture. And yet it was in social movements close to organic farming that it began to make its appearance, such as in the texts and projects inspired by the farmer and philosopher Pierre Rabhi (Bellon and Ollivier 2013), who has characterized himself as an agroecologist since the 1980s and became very popular in France from the 2000s on. For Rahbi, agroecology is ‘a technique inspired by nature’, inviting us to ‘conceive the whole environmental context in which is implicated a true ecology’,4 which distinguishes it from the organic approach. Subsequently, the notion was employed in networks associating producers and consumers close to organic farming, tied to the development of alternative participatory certification approaches that could replace third-party certification (e.g. AMAP networks, Nature & Progrès). Nature & Progrès had started already in the late 1980s to take an interest in the international development of agroecology and officially adopted agroecology in the early 2000s by modifying its slogan and relaying in its journal the position statement of Altieri and Nicholls, in link with the debate on conventionalization, around the idea that agroecology could ‘save’ organic farming (Altieri and Nicholls 2003). In November 2008 in Albi, the organization was also the co-initiator of an International Agroecology Congress, the first of its kind to rally the French agroecological movement. Starting in around the 2010s, networks that defended rather ‘peasant’ agriculture than organic agriculture (like the Confédération Paysanne farmers union and the CIVAM) also adopted the notion (Lamine 2015).5 For these different movements, agroecology brings together dimensions that organic farming does not sufficiently include in its official definition – ethical and political dimensions tied to the defence of an agricultural and alternative development model that is a part of a larger societal vision – as well as the inclusion of the agri-food system and food issues, beyond agricultural practices. In the academic world, it is only at the end of the 2000s that the notion of agroecology took hold, the works and orientations of agronomic research

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institutes (mainly INRA and CIRAD) having evoked it just sporadically up until then (Wezel et al. 2009; Bellon and Ollivier 2013). It is particularly academics invested in conservation agriculture, especially in Brazil, who first used the notion of agroecology. At the INRA, some labs adopted the term starting in the mid-2000s, but it is the 2010–20 orientation document that marked the entry of the notion in the scientific priorities of the institute. Agroecology was then officially defined as a new science at the crossroads of agronomy and ecology, although different visions quickly aroused within the institute. An interesting feature of this emergence process of agroecology in France, in comparison with the Brazilian case, is that until about 2010, there were very few interactions and alliances between scientific networks and social movements on this issue.6 In public policy, agroecology made its official debut in 2012. Previously, French agricultural policies drew from various models  – beyond organic, institutionalized as early as 1980 as has been described above  – seeking to respond to growing societal demands for reduced environmental impacts. The instrument of public action known as the ‘agri-environmental measures’, established by the Common Agricultural Policy starting in 1985, was the most enduring. But, in addition to the fact that these measures were for a long time restrained to particularly ecologically sensitive areas (such as wetlands or water catchment basins), they only involved agricultural practices, to the detriment of other elements of the agri-food system. The multifunctionality of agriculture, along with its specific policy instrument in France, the Territorial Farm Contract (1999–2002), that proposed precisely a more systemic vision, did not survive the government change over of 2002. Later, in 2007–8, the Grenelle de l’environnement, an unprecedented moment of concertation between diverse groups of stakeholders, proposed as a compromise between farmers’ interests and societal expectations of ecologization the concept of agriculture with ‘High Environmental Value’, translated into the certification of farms but largely remaining in the shadows despite the recent hopes of using it as an instrument of recognition for agroecological engagement. This attempt elicits in fact similar controversies to those related of ‘responsible agriculture’ (Agriculture Raisonnée), a model proposed starting in 1994 by the agricultural profession, but that did not impose any significant changes beyond simply adhering to already existing regulatory obligations. Furthermore, these multiple paradigms – there are also eco-agriculture, ecologically intensive agriculture and others – sought to have farmers change their agricultural practices, without addressing practices of other players in the agri-food systems or even taking into consideration this scale of reflection (Deverre and de Sainte Marie 2008).

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In this context, at the end of 2012, the recently elected socialist government decided to put into place the frame of reference of agroecology, through a programme called Produire Autrement (‘produce differently’) and proposed a legislation promoting ‘the economic and environmental dual-performance’ of agriculture.7 This time, it was not only a matter of constructing a compromise between the interests of farmers and societal expectations and thus reconcile agriculture and society but also to attempt to reconcile or in any case include the different currents within the agricultural sector. We can note that this institutionalization of agroecology, a notion that was up to this point relatively absent from the vocabulary of French agricultural policy, seems abrupt at first glance, but was in fact prepared by the shift mentioned above not only in agronomic research but also in certain agricultural circles, in the preceding years.

Controversies and redifferentiation processes Agroecology very quickly became the object of controversies and of processes of both appropriation and redifferentiation. The launch of the government project provoked a series of questioning and critics from the ‘conventional’ agricultural sector, which felt threatened. ‘The most timely issue of the moment is not agroecology’, criticized the president of the FNSEA, when the new governmental programme was launched (France Agricole, 28 March 2013). Nonetheless, this term, defined and diffused as all-encompassing in order to recruit as many stakeholders as possible, did not elicit a significant contestation from the profession and after a few months, it had entered most agricultural syndicates and cooperatives’ discourses. Indeed, one of the main policy tools of this new policy (the Groupement d’Intérêt Economique et Environnemental or GIEE, Environmental and Economic Interest Group), set up in 2014, called less into question the dominant practices than concrete objectives like the one announced in 2008 to reduce by 50 per cent the use of pesticides, for which the government attributed certain concessions8 to the agricultural profession. As for peasant and alternative agriculture movements, they unified right from late 2012 in response to the governmental programme and to discussions on the agricultural law that was then in preparation, in an alliance called the ‘Collective for Peasant Agroecology’, regrouping among others the organizations that had come together at the Albi conference in 2008 and the movements of P. Rabhi (see above). This collective would voice, in the form of open letters, of a caravan or in a meeting at the Assemblée Nationale in April 2014, its opposition to what it considered to be a hostage-taking of historical agroecology and a vision that was

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‘too farming practices’ oriented, preaching a ‘dual-performance’ (economic and environmental) at the expense of broader sociopolitical dimensions that for them truly represented agroecology. The collective asserted: ‘we also fear that the social project agroecology represents is in the process of being hijacked, in favour of an approach that would settled for prescribing more ecological agronomic techniques to an unegalitarian model that continues to be founded on capitalistic profit’ (Collectif pour une Agroécologie Paysanne 2014).9 They would thus denounce the usurpation of agroecology – that these stakeholders consider to have been forged precisely in their own alternative sphere – by the government, with the goal of reinforcing a conventional programme of ‘ecological modernisation’, exemplified for them by conservation agriculture or ecologically intensive agriculture. The oppositional strategy would then be combined with a redifferentiation strategy. For these social movements, it is a matter of defining which agroecology they defend. Peasant agroecology is then pushed to the fore, ‘in order to distinguish it from the communication campaign of the Ministry of Agriculture that brandishes the flag of agroecology with the sole goal of better camouflaging the offensive blitz of industrial agriculture towards the commodification of nature and a bioeconomy … Peasant agroecology is above all else a tool of societal transformation’.

A focus on a specific policy instrument of the agroecological policy Soon after the national agroecological policy was launched, a first policy instrument was set up, through a call entitled Collective Mobilisation for Agroecology, in May 2013. It was aimed at financing over three years, farmers or multi-actors groups that would develop agroecological approaches. If the framing was that of the ‘double performance’, namely ecological and economic performances, this call also aimed at supporting ‘collective territorial ascendant approaches’. The call was prepared by a working group composed of a few officers of the Ministry of Agriculture, which had long planned such a policy instrument in a larger rural development perspective and grasped the opportunity to gain support within the new agroecological framing, researchers and members of public agencies and foundations. One of the main challenges that this group and the call addressed was that of opening the range of projects and organizations that could be supported, beyond the institutionalized actors of agricultural development. The call was thus open to more alternative organizations and even to non-agricultural ones (such as the AMAP movement), and, which was an institutional innovation, open to farmers group as such, while usually government funds would only be attributed to development and extension

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organizations. In the call, the reality of the farmers’ demand was one of the key criteria of evaluation. This came along with another innovation which was the possibility for farmers belonging to these groups, to be refunded for the time they would spend in training their colleagues or managing the projects. ‘What motivated us, was to support projects that had been thought and were led by farmers collectives’, said one of the ministry agent in charge of this programme in a seminar that was organized in May 2015. Of course, institutionalized agricultural organizations were much more used to setting up such projects (and used to the ‘projectification’ mode in general) and some participants of the initial working group feared that more alternative actors would have difficulties in accessing to this program. However, the ample mobilization of these actors and the structuration of the evaluation process opened the way to quite a diversity of profiles among the beneficiaries. The evaluation process was conceived in order to avoid a stranglehold by the incumbent actors. This was based on multi-actors committees set up at the regional and national scales, which would involve experimented agricultural development agents, agricultural education specialists, civil society organizations, local authorities representatives, government officers and researchers. It also relied on the establishment of selection criteria that focused on the collective dynamic at stake and on the diversity of organizations to be supported. The programme was conceived as an experimental platform for the GIEE (Environmental and Economic Interest Groups), a new legal entity type that was then in construction (see above). Most of the 103 groups that were funded through this first programme between 2013 and 2017 indeed chose to transform into GIEEs. What did this programme generate in terms of actual agroecological ‘mobilization’? An analysis of the composition of the 103 beneficiary groups shows that besides the traditional actors of agricultural development (chambers of agriculture and cooperatives in France, see Chapter  3), other less traditional entities have been funded, such as farmers groups that were involved in diverse forms of ecological agriculture, from conservation agriculture to organic farming, alternative agricultural and rural development organizations, original partnerships between farmers and municipalities as well as newcomers in the landscape of agricultural development such as specialized consulting groups. It is interesting to notice that these actors articulate in their discourses the main objectives of the call which was to favour farmers’ collective initiatives, with a justification of their own role: ‘we are lucky to have very committed farmers, who are the actors of their own changes … but they are overwhelmed by their daily word and it is important to

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be accompanied.’ Other actors such as cooperatives or alternative movements recognized the relevancy of the call in other ways, by putting forward the fact that it corresponded to the collective modes of innovation and decision that they had always favoured and implemented. As the projects had to involve other partners, it is also interesting to analyse who were these partners. Research institutions, marketing operators, local authorities as well as rural development and agricultural organizations were among the most frequent partners. Almost all collectives sought support outside the agricultural space, through these partnerships, in order to build their legitimacy outside the existing incumbent systems of actors of agricultural development. However, environmental and local civil society non-agricultural organizations were much less present than could have been expected. A  qualitative analysis of sixteen of these projects also showed their changing perimeter, as the range of involved farmers would often change over the three years. What is also interesting to see is that although many of these actors were not previously involved in agroecological practices as such, they found this new frame was coherent with their own priorities. As a member of an alternative agricultural organization put it: ‘When we applied to the call, we thought well is not it agroecology that we are already doing, we have a systemic approach, we already were in agroecology, a modest and peasant form of it.’ However, agroecology as such was not often mentioned in the text of the candidate projects. When it was, this was often to ‘tick the good boxes’ of the call. In contrast, the agricultural models previously adopted by the groups were much more present, such as organic agriculture, peasant agriculture, conservation agriculture and so on. Some groups would claim a ‘natural’ convergence with already legitimate models (such as organic farming), while for others, agroecology appeared as a support point for ‘intermediate’ models in search of legitimacy, such as soil conservation agriculture, that also have a more controversial ‘ecological’ dimension than more established and legitimate models like organic farming. These models correspond to different visions of the agroecological transition and different objectives within the projects. Some groups adopt a more technical vision (adopting a particular practice, a particular technical itinerary, recomposing technical itineraries with a defined sustainability objective) and emphasize the double environmental and economic performance, while others adopt a more procedural vision (exchanging on practices, accompanying new entrants, collective learning). However, these different visions converge on the notion of autonomy, which is perhaps the most shared in the end.

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II. The politicization of agroecology in Brazil In Brazil, the trajectories of organic agriculture and agroecology are quite different and even structured the opposite way than in France, in the sense that agroecology expands in this country before organic agriculture (Figure 5).

An institutionalization of ecologically based agricultures that encompasses organic agriculture and agroecology During the 1970s and 1980s, the principles of organic farming were introduced into the country in a few scattered places and initiatives, with references mainly linked to biodynamics and natural agriculture, while the largest part of the alternative movement (see below) did not mention this mode of production. The 1990s saw the increasing institutionalization of the nascent organic agriculture in some states like Sao Paulo and a trend that has been assessed as a conventionalization one, with retailers and intermediaries leading the market and small producers seeing their economic sustainability threatened (Blanc 2009). The commercialization or organic products has now expanded into Brazilian agribusiness sector (Dalcin et al. 2014)

1970

1980

Types of farming

Development of the experiences and movements of alternative agriculture

Social movements

FASE, ASPTA Alternative agriculture symposia (EBA) Lutzenberger ecological manifesto (1976)

Policy making

Scientific networks

Agronomists organizations’ Conferences

1985: 1st projects about family farming within Embrapa

1990

2000

2010

Development of Organic Farming 1994: 1st commissions on certification

1999: 1st law about Organic Farming 2003: law introducing agroecology

2011 PNAPO (National policy of agroecology and organic farming)

Creation of ANA and ENA (agroecological symposia)

Articulation of claims (agroecology, food security, family farming)

Creation of MDA, family agriculture Pronaf program

Sustainable development projects for assentamentos Rural extension integrates agroecology

Key role of CONDRAF and CONSEA, and of PAA and PNAE programs

1995: Congress about Sust. Agric and agroecology

Creation of ABA (scientific society of agroecology)

Key role of CBAs

and Forums

Figure 5 The trajectory of organic agriculture and agroecology in Brazil. Source: the author.

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At the same time and under the influence of farming and rural social movements (from 2000 on), the diversity of ecologically based agricultures progressively happened to be recognized. If the first commissions about the certification of organic products were created in 1994 by the government, the first regulation dealing with organic agriculture was passed in 1999 as a ‘normative instruction’ (IN n°007/99) which only officialized third-party certification. In 2003, a law was passed which recognized all sorts of ‘ecologically-based agricultures’  – considered as leverages for the development of small-scale agriculture – and explicitly included not only agroecology but also participatory certification, under the pressure of social movements (Bertoncello, Bellon and de Abreu 2008) and based on the experience of the Ecovida network in the South of Brazil (Byé, Schmidt and Schmidt 2002).

From alternative agriculture to agroecology: The key role of social movements Agroecology appeared first in the rhetoric of organizations from the civil society dedicated to the support of small-scale agriculture. These had emerged for the most part in the 1980s, under the dictatorship, as a countermovement to the modernization process supported by the dictatorial state (Brandenburg 2008). Locally, and especially in the south and south-east of Brazil where the process of agricultural modernization as well as its criticism were more intense, projects seeking to promote alternative technologies for small-scale agriculture were initiated and backed by NGOs often with ties to organizations connected to the principal churches (namely, Catholic and Lutheran), and the FASE (Federation of Organisations for Social Assistance and Education). The latter was at the initiative in 1983 of the Project for Alternative Technologies (PTA) that was from 1989 on coordinated by the network AS-PTA (Support and Services for Alternative Technologies Projects), which brought together diverse NGOs. One of the main spaces of expression of these social movements was the EBAAs (Brazilian Encounters of Alternative Agriculture) that would be held beginning in 1981, first at the initiative of agronomist members of the FAEAB (Federation of Associations of Agronomists of Brazil) and progressively joined by diverse student and union movements. The apparition of agroecology in Brazil can be formally traced back to the years 1994–5 (with, e.g., a conference organized by the journal Agricultura Sustentavel in 1995)  even though some key actors link it to the stays of several Brazilian researchers in Cordoba in the late 1990s. However, other key actors report that

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these theories were already discussed in the 1980s and that M. Altieri, probably the most cited author in Brazilian scientific literature about agroecology, had been invited in several universities at that time.10 The key actors I have interviewed in 2009 said that ‘social movements have adopted agro-ecology as a political banner in order to give scientific legitimacy to their vision of family farming’. In other words: ‘we used to talk of alternative agriculture until the emergence of a theoretical and strategic basis, i.e., agro-ecology’ (Lamine and de Abreu 2009). Over time, alliances were forged at a national level between the world of social movements (dedicated to the support of ‘alternative’ agriculture and occasionally to the development of producers/consumers initiatives, as was the case in Paraná, see below) and the academic world. On one hand, the empirical experiences of alternative agriculture organizations contributed to academic debates, and on the other, theoretical references were progressively tested by these organizations through on-farm experiments. Slowly, agroecology became a shared model within the main organizations working for alternative agriculture and agrarian reform in the country. Indeed, in 2000 during its 4th congress, the MST (Landless Workers’ Movement) adopted agroecology as a political orientation. In 2002, the creation of the ANA (National Articulation of Agroecology) and the organization of regular National Encounters of Agroecology (ENA, in 2002, 2006 and 2014) contributed to this convergence of social movements. Indeed, it was in these spaces that union organizations like the CONTAG11 (National Confederation of Agricultural Workers) and the FETRAF (Federation of Family Farm Workers) also eventually positioned themselves in favour of agroecology, even if it did not necessarily resonate with the identity of their respective ‘bases’ (Picolotto and Brandenburg 2015). Indeed, in the visions and demands of these farmers and workers organizations, the question of the ecologization of productive models remains less of a priority than that of inequalities in access to production factors (land, credit and inputs). This chronology shows that even though the transition from alternative agriculture to agroecology might seem rather continuous and natural in Brazil, it is actually the result of a series of reconfigurations and interactions of various organizations and key actors in the scientific networks, in the social movements and in policymaking.

Agroecology enters public policies It is these demands that were at the heart of the social struggles that led to the creation in 1996 of the PRONAF (programme of differentiated credit for family agriculture) and then in 1999 of the MDA (Ministry of Agrarian Development),

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in a context of acute rural exodus and inflation where family agriculture was seen as needing to be supported for its capacity of absorbing rural labour force and provisioning the domestic market, that led certain authors to speak of a first generation of family agriculture policies, stemming from a distinctly agricultural frame of reference (Grisa and Schneider 2015). The MDA was indeed created to respond to the demands of family farming organizations, which, in contrast to the French case, institutionalized the coexistence of two ‘frames of reference for the sector’ (Muller 2000a), since this new ministry coexisted from that point onwards with the Ministry of Agriculture whose policies are dedicated to ‘largescale agriculture’. The election of Lula in 2002 led to the entry of individuals promoting the notion of agroecology in state agencies (both at a federal and state level), who were indeed situated at the interface between the academic world and social movements (Lamine and de Abreu 2009). As such, in the early 2000s, the alliance already established between peasant social movements (and sometimes environmentalists or consumers) and the academic world was extended to an alliance with public managers working towards the construction and establishment of policies dedicated to family agriculture, which led to the incorporation of agroecology into these policies. In this same period, training and research programs focused on agroecology were developed in universities and research institutes, under the influence of these political reorientations in favour of agroecology, as well as groups and networks of research and development in agroecology, bringing together researchers, students, technical advisers and farmers, called nucleos de agroecologia. In parallel, the public organizations of agricultural development and extension services (EMATER) created agroecological groups and programs. In 2004, the National Policy of Technical Assistance and Rural Extension was launched, in which the term agroecology appeared for the first time to frame the priorities of agricultural extension services. In this Brazilian trajectory of agroecology, the most recent step (until the 2016–18 political changes) is the formulation of broad national politics oriented towards agroecology and organic farming. Previously, agroecology was only present in family farming policies (carried by the MDA), and organic agriculture was addressed only through questions of certification, carried by the ‘classic’ Ministry of agriculture. It is in 2012 – the same year as in France – that the National Policy of Agroecology and Organic Production (PNAPO) was launched, that was to be rolled out into a national action plan and into regional policies at the state level.

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The first national action plan (PLANAPO  – National Plan of Agroecology and Organic Production, 2013–15) had four main lines of actions: production, use and conservation of natural resources, knowledge and commercialization consumption. Intended to coordinate policies and programs previously led by different ministries, this national plan foresaw 125 actions, and a budget of 8.8 billion reals (€2.4 million) – the majority dedicated to credit. Despite the limited portion dedicated to actions of development and extension, some of these actions allowed for true progress, namely in regards to the access to seeds and traditional varieties for family agriculture, coordination of agroecological networks (nucleos), women’s access to training, farmers’ access to the food programmes PAA and PNAE (see Chapter 7) and finally through the programme Ecoforte, seeking to support regional collective initiatives. The second plan (2016–19)12 foresaw 194 actions and innovated with the addition of two new themes, one seeking to guarantee access to land and the promotion of ‘ethnodevelopement’ and sociobiodiversity, and the other focused on the recognition of sociocultural identity, the reinforcement of social organization and the guarantee of the rights of indigenous peoples and traditional communities. However, it was dampened by the 2016–18 political events.

Controversies and connection of agroecology and food and nutritional sovereignty and security Despite the incorporation of agroecology in family agriculture policies, at the national level, the concentration of resources attributed to family agriculture in the south of the country and in classic productions (soy, maize, coffee and wheat) reinforced criticism and controversy. This criticism was expressed in particular in the CONDRAF (National Council for Sustainable Rural Development), the joint body bringing together government actors and social movements created in 2003 (see Chapter  7). The principal criticism from agroecological networks and certain peasant organizations was aimed at the fact that the loan system for family agriculture accentuated productive specialization, the dependence on the financial system and agri-food businesses, the degradation of ecosystems and the disconnection of peasant cultures and means of subsistence. Faced with these criticisms denouncing the productionist and modernizing vision of family agriculture public policy, the government began to adapt these politics, seeking to better take into account the diversity of family agriculture and include the poorest farmers. This led to the construction of new policies with more social ambitions but also more ecological ones, such as ‘green lines’ and specific calls for projects.

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Despite these reorientations, several social organizations continued to question the capacity of public politics dedicated to family agriculture to carry a truly alternative ambition of rural development. Rallied around these criticisms, new alliances were forged between social organizations and the academic world that had increasingly produced scientific works supporting these critiques (Gazolla and Schneider 2013; Sambuichi et al. 2017). These works reported on the growing socio-economic vulnerability of family farmers, which remained strongly dependent on credit and external inputs, and on the exclusion of poor farmers. They affirmed the need to rethink public policy so as to truly address the need of an articulated and joint transformation of production and consumption models, that is to say the notion of reconnection between agriculture and food. This led to a reinforcement in the articulation between support of family farming, the right to healthy and adequate food and agroecology through a convergence of claims (see Chapter 7). This convergence rested on an enlargement of the circle of mobilized stakeholders:  from within social movements, the inclusion of traditional communities13; from within the academic world, other disciplines than agronomy, such as health, nutrition, ecology or the social sciences; and finally, from within public policy bodies, services implicated not only in agricultural issues but also health, education and the environment. These enlarged alliances led to the launch of a new generation of public policies for family farming refocused on issues of food security (Grisa and Schneider 2015). Emblematic of this generation of public policies is the creation of the programme of public purchasing of family farming products (PAA, Food Procurement Program) in 2003, and the restructuration, in 2009, of the National School Food Programme (PNAE) that from that point forward advanced local sourcing, a priority to agroecological products, to more vulnerable producers, to food education and to traditional food patterns. These new or redefined food policies clearly placed agroecology in the foreground (Grisa et al. 2011).

III. Paraná: A pioneer dynamic that is hindered by state scale political changes In the south of the country, Paraná was a pioneering state in the emergence of both alternative agriculture movements, as several associations were created there in 1980s,14 and agroecology, as the first Brazilian encounter of alternative agriculture (EBAA) was organized in Curitiba, its capital, in 1981.15 In Paraná,

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as in Brazil in general, these alternative agriculture organizations hired young agronomists who had often been implicated in Groups of Ecological Agriculture that were created in agronomy universities. One such group was created in 1981 in the federal university of Paraná, with certain students promptly putting actions into place with producers and supporting the launch, in 1989 in Curitiba, of the first organic market (feira verde), one of the first initiatives in Brazil to make ecological food visible and accessible. These markets would then multiply and the creation of the AOPA (Association of Organic Producers of Paraná) in 1995 allowed them to obtain official recognition and financial support for their actions around organic farming, under the framework of the Paraná Rural programme (1989–97).16 Several years later, in 2000, activists at the interface of civil society and the academic world, and of public policy, created an organic consumers association that since then maintained strong connections with the organic movement. In Paraná, agroecology also entered the universities and research centres quite early on. The IAPAR, regional institute of agronomic research, put into place a research programme in agroecology in 2004. Training courses in agroecology were put into place in public education starting in 2003:  for technicians, in the technical school of UFPR (Federal University of Paraná) in cooperation with social movements; and for farmers, with a specific curriculum entitled ‘foundations of agroecology’ put in place in public agricultural courses and in ‘rural family centres’ (a network inspired by the French Maisons Familiales Rurales, bringing together around forty centres of Paraná). Diverse nucleos (groups) of agroecology in universities were created at the same period, and several universities created programs focused on agroecology and articulating it with rural development. In terms of agricultural development, from the mid-2000s on, the EMATER (organization of regional agricultural development) demonstrated its ambition to make agroecology the ‘new technological matrix’ of the institution.17 Paraná is distinguished from other states by having since 2005 an institution entirely dedicated to agroecology, the CPRA (Centre for Agroecological References in Paraná) that brings together researchers and extension agents of several institutions. This training centre of agricultural development and agroecological research, the only of its kind in Brazil, developed trainings and actions with farmers, in particular relating to commercialization, permaculture and pastoral and agroforestry systems. However, it did not get much support and funds from the last state governments and in 2019 it is threatened to close.

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In Paraná, an agroecological state policy had been elaborated well before it was at the national scale. With many diverse initiatives that had been developed over the years, and in a favourable political context at the state scale, starting in 2007 the idea emerged within the CEDRAF (State Council of Regional Development and Family Agriculture, a joint body bringing together political administrations and civil society, that is the regional equivalent of the national CONDRAF), to conceive a programme of organic and agroecological agriculture. This led to the construction of a dedicated commission, also a joint body, that was responsible for elaborating this programme. The technical team and other contributors to this work were fairly diverse:  in the technical core team were people from universities, research institutes and administrations tied to agriculture and rural extension; in the ‘collaborators’, aside from other experts, were people from the environment and health issues, and several civil society organizations (such as Rede Ecovida,18 AOPA  – the above association of organic producers that has since become the Association for the Development of Agroecology – and the MST). Between 2008 and 2011, a series of meetings were organized and led to the publication in 2011 of a document Programa Paraná Agroecologico (Agroecological Programme for Paraná) that developed five principal lines of action: rural extension, research, production, marketing and legislation.19 This text is characterized by a strong concern for scientific justification, and by the public display of a participatory and consultative approach, that is the result of its process of elaboration at the crossroads of social movements, the academic world and public managers. Despite this programme was never supported by the following state governments (from 2011 on), and financial support was very limited; some important achievements have been the regular conferences organized by regional research and extension institutions, which broadly bring together all of the players implicated in agroecology in Paraná  – researchers, farmers, extension agents, public managers (three have taken place since, in 2014, 2016 and 2018). Social movements also continued to organize their own events such as the Jornada de Agroecologia (Agroecology Day), which takes place every year since 2001. The mobilization of non-governmental organizations (farmers, consumers and extension organizations) also allowed a diversification and expansion of marketing initiatives, such as feiras (open-air agroecological fairs) and box schemes (respectively, twenty-one and forty in Curitiba in 2018). Paraná was also a pioneer in what relies to the application of public food programs, since in the country it was the state that most quickly put into place

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this reorientation of the PNAE towards family farming and agroecology (see Chapter 7). However, due to the political context and the lack of support from the state government since 2011, the state of Paraná, once a pioneer in the elaboration of an agroecological ambitious policy, has not yet formalized its State Plan for Agroecology and Organic Agriculture (as planned by the national law) in 2019, despite the active work of both social movements and public institutions members within the commissions that are devoted to these issues, such as the CEDRAF state council.

IV. What does the confrontation of the Brazilian and French cases teach us? The Brazilian and French pathways of politicization of agroecology prove to be quite different, in link with, of course, not only their socio-historical contexts but also the alliances that formed, the governance modes put in place and, as we will see below, the types of farmers included in the public schemes, and finally the way to articulate agriculture and food issues. In Brazil, this pathway is characterized by a historic continuity with alternative agriculture movements opposed to agricultural modernization and was propelled by social movements and peasant movements, before public policies in the 2000s took agroecology as a model for family farming. Family farming is a category of public action that was created in the 1990s and a social group which still represents the large majority of Brazilian farms. Still, the internal heterogeneity of this category remains largely underestimated  – indeed, it encompasses both subsistence farming and market-oriented farming, in highly different proportions depending on the state and region. In France, family farms (i.e. farms where the main workforce are family members, usually the couple) were the principal target of the policies of agricultural modernization from the early 1960s on, and are in no way exclusive to the domain of ‘alternative’ farming. Moreover, social movements of resistance to agricultural modernization were in part institutionalized in organic farming networks and in alternative agricultural networks that would refer to sustainable or peasant agriculture. It is fairly late, and namely in reaction to the appropriation by the government of the notion of agroecology in 2012, that these networks positioned themselves on the topic of agroecology by promoting the notion of peasant agroecology.

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Different alliances between the academic sphere, social movements, the agricultural sector and public policy In both countries, these trajectories of politicization of agroecology are characterized by different interactions and alliances between different social worlds, being the academic sphere, social movements, the agricultural sector and public policy. Civil society plays a fairly different role in the two countries. In Brazil, it is namely peasant movements that are active in the defence of small, family farming and of traditional communities  – ‘non-agricultural’ citizen movements seem for the moment to be less active and alliances between the peasant world and consumers are rather rare, even if they begin to emerge particularly in some states such as Paraná, with the growth of short supply chains. The academic world also plays a more important role in Brazil, and in Paraná as in Brazil more broadly, we can note the important role of agronomists trained in the 1970s–80s, that to a certain extent ‘rebelled’ against the ‘green revolution’ in their early careers both within university networks and political ones, and today are engaged with agroecology. We can observe notably alliances between certain academic circles, some public managers and peasant movements. These alliances were able to form through strong social interactions and mobility between these different social worlds, which we can see both in the diverse structures of governance put in place and the professional and activist careers of stakeholders. In France, civil society seems more active than in Brazil on environmental and food issues, through alliances between social movements related to the peasant world and citizen-consumers (with the often cited case of AMAPs, for example). These alliances were reinforced since the launch of the government programme on agroecology in 2012). These alliances are accompanied by controversies in which are forged and confronted different visions of agroecology. In France, it is the arrival (late, compared to Brazil) of a dedicated public policy that elicits processes of appropriation and ‘re-differentiation’ around this notion, because as opposed to the governmental agroecology and that appropriated by large cooperatives or the dominant farmers’ union, social movements defended from that point on a ‘peasant’ agroecology. In Brazil, we can identify different visions of agroecology (more technic-oriented vs. more systemic and social), and social movements focus on repeatedly reaffirming the social stakes that agroecology must embody, tied to access to land, traditional knowledge and sociobiodiversity, that appear much more present than in France.

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Different modes of governance In both countries, the forms of governance put in place are fairly different. In Brazil, different joint bodies of governance were created in link with family farming policy (CONDRAF), food security (CONSEA) and later on in link with the agroecological policy launched in 2012, with the National Committee of Agroecology and Organic Production (CNAPO). These bodies allow for – or at least, allowed until the recent political changes – agroecological movements and peasant organizations to participate in the implementation of public policies and, of course, to express their criticism, namely in regards to policy visions that they consider to be tied to the productivist and modernization paradigm. Still, the organizations invited to join these bodies are just one part of the vast diversity of the active social movements. In Paraná, for example, those that were invited to join the process of elaborating the agroecological programme in the late 2000s were organizations focused on land access and agrarian reform (the MST), and associations of producers organized principally for marketing issues (Rede Ecovida and AOPA), while a host of rural communities organizations and more isolated agricultural figures were indeed excluded, quite numerous in Paraná as elsewhere. In France, the governance modes established with the agroecological programme put in place in 2012 prove to follow a relative continuity of the classic premise of joint management à la française (between the national government and the agricultural sector represented by the principal farmers union), even if this premise was made a bit more flexible by the presence of alternative farming stakeholders that previously had little or no voice. What is more, in Brazil, the new agroecological policy was accompanied by the creation of an inter-ministerial commission (CIAPO) that envisioned an inter-sectorial coordination (agriculture, environment, health, social, education, technology, Indian issues, land ownership) of the National Plan of Agroecology and Organic Production (PLANAPO). In France, such an inter-sectorial objective is still lacking, and the agricultural sectorial perspective still predominates.

The types of farmers and the vision of agriculture and food reconnection in debate What types of farming and farmers are implicated in these policies? In France, the agroecological programme put in place in 2012 sought to incorporate and rally the agricultural community in all its diversity and not, as in Brazil, only family and peasant agriculture that was incidentally the pathway of entry of

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agroecology into Brazilian public policy. Indeed, in Brazil the type of farms targeted by agroecological public policies are defined by very precise criteria that are of a social nature (family labour force, amount of area under cultivation, yield), while in France, agroecology is defined in public policy in an allencompassing manner, by the type of agricultural practices supposedly aligned with a ‘systemic’ vision around the premises of autonomy and competitiveness (as is expressed in the agricultural law of 2014). This permitted a multitude of different forms of agriculture, and of professional networks, to claim to be a part of the new paradigm, from conservation agriculture to organic farming, through integrated protection management and many other models. In contrast, in Brazil, given the issues of social struggle and social justice that agroecology has embodied over the course of its trajectory, until now the spokespeople for ‘large-scale agriculture’, whether they be from the agricultural community, academia or public organizations, have preferred other models over agroecology that are more compatible with a priority given to productivity, such as integrated agriculture or, more recently, low-carbon agriculture. Nonetheless, in recent years, stakeholders that come from different social worlds and political spaces than those previously observed in this process of politicization of agroecology started to take part in this process. Indeed, organizations of large-scale ‘corporate’ agriculture seek more and more influence in the elaboration of policies and norms relating to organic agriculture, whose market is growing rapidly, in a political context where, with the political changes seen in 2016 and 2018 and the elimination of the Ministry of Agricultural Development (dedicated to family farming and supporting agroecological policies), the Ministry of Agriculture, responsible for these issues, is gaining power and leverage. This could lead in the future to a weakening of the place given to participative modes of certification defended by the social movements associated with agroecology, in the face of third-party certification modes, under the influence of the growing strength of large-scale structures of the organic market. Finally, to what extent is the question of reconnection of agriculture and food – that is today at the heart of the ambitions of many agroecologists (Francis et al. 2003) – taken into consideration in the two countries? In Brazil, we can say that this reconnection issue is strongly present in public policy, with the observed shift in family agriculture policies towards the question of food and nutritional security (in particular through policies of public purchasing and school food procurement). The notion of a systemic vision applying not just to agricultural systems (as in French governmental visions of agroecology) but also to food issues and access to food is very present in official Brazilian texts.

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In Paraná for example, the regional programme of food security (PESAN, 2012– 15) affirms the necessity to consider with a systemic vision the relationship between poverty, food production and food security, while in symmetrical way the regional agroecological programme also articulates the agricultural question with the concerns for health and food security. On a national level, the first orientation of the national policy of agroecology and organic production (PNAPO) is ‘the promotion of food and nutritional sovereignty and security and a right to healthy food in adequate quantities’.20 In France, if political texts and discourse on agroecology brings to the fore the question of consumption and/ or production sectors, it is rare that they evoke explicitly the whole agri-food system. Also, the issue of food, that is at the heart of citizen expectations and public debates, as seen for example in school food procurement initiatives and in the renewal of short-circuit chains, has remained paradoxically the missing link of French agricultural policies for decades, or at least a poorly articulated one (as is, symmetrically, the issue of the agricultural model for food policies).

Conclusion Let us conclude with a common thread between the French and Brazilian situations, that is, the fragility of these public policies, totally dependent on national electoral contingencies. In Brazil, the political crises that led to the destitution of the president Dilma Roussef in 2016 also led to the elimination of the Ministry of Agricultural Development, and the resources devoted to family agriculture and agroecology were strongly reduced. The recent election of Jair Bolsonaro will undoubtedly lead to an even greater weakening of these policies. In France as well, a number of players announced the end of agroecology as a frame of reference following the national 2017 elections, even is the minister of agriculture in place in early 2020 demonstrates a certain desire of continuity. In both countries, if agroecological policies seem fairly if not very fragile, it is not only due to these political instabilities but also due to the opposition of a large portion of the agricultural community, that of ‘large-scale agriculture’. Nonetheless, in France the latter was brought into the process of politicization of agroecology, thanks to an all-encompassing and flexible definition of it, in contrast to Brazil where, historically, it is the ‘peasant’ world of family agriculture that was engaged and active in the process, which lead to the world of ‘large-scale agriculture’ to defend other models or to attempt, in recent years, to influence public policy relating to organic agriculture.

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Another commonality between the two situations, that remains to be investigated in the future, is the increasing influence of the territorial scale: in France, this has been translated into the recent implementation of a policy relating to ‘Territorial Food Projects’, which seeks to articulate agriculture and food at a local level, while territorial development remains a powerful demand of Brazilian social movements. By contrast, the question of women and the place of women in family agriculture and in rural communities is by far more debated in Brazil than in France.21

Notes 1 This chapter has been adapted, for what concerns agroecology, from an article published in French within a special issue about Agroecology in France and Brazil (Lamine, Niederle and Ollivier 2019). The analyses are based on a series of diverse documents (legal documents, public reports, meeting minutes, commissions, forums, etc.), a series of comprehensive interviews in Brazil and in France with stakeholders engaged in the politicization of organic agriculture (in France) between 1999 and today and of agroecology between 2012 and 2016 and ethnographic observation of different types of arenas, in Brazil and in France (conferences and meetings on organic agriculture and agroecology organized by academic and/or institutional stakeholders, meetings of commissions treating organic agriculture and agroecology in the two countries). 2 As is said on the Biocoop website, http://www.biocoop.fr/Partenaires/BioCoherence, accessed 29 September 2015. 3 http://www.reporterre.net/Le-gouvernement-flanque-un-coup-de, accessed 1 August 2015. 4 Manifeste pour La Terre et l’Humanisme, 2008. 5 This belated and hesitant adhesion of the Confédération Paysanne comes after the positioning of la Vía Campesina, under the influence of its South American members (Thivet 2014). 6 At the agroecology conference held in Albi in 2008, only three or four researchers participated alongside principally associations and farmers. 7 Ministry of Agriculture, Document de présentation du projet de loi d’avenir pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et la forêt: un nouvel élan pour notre agriculture, 2013. 8 Downward adjustment of reduction targets, deletion of amendments on neonicotinoids and so on. 9 Collectif pour une agroécologie paysanne, 2014. Pour une Agroécologie Paysanne. Communiqué de presse, 27 January 2014. https://www.legrandsoir.info/ communique-pour-une-agroecologie-paysanne.html (accessed 25 February 2020).

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10 Indeed, I found a reference to M. Altieri in a master dissertation presented in 1987. 11 It should be noted that the ‘Marcha das Margaridas’, organized annually by CONTAG and its Women’s Office, played a major role in the ‘pressures’ that led to the launch of a national agroecology policy in 2012 (see infra). 12 See http://www.mda.gov.br/sitemda/sites/sitemda/files/ceazinepdf/PLANAPO_ 2016_2019.pdf, accessed on 29 July 2016. 13 Indigenous communities, quilombolas, fishing communities and so on, which had difficulty accessing support schemes for family farming. 14 ASSESOAR (Association of Study, Orientation and Rural Assistance), the ASPTA of União da Vitoria that is a part of the national network of AS-PTA (or the Foundation for Rural Economic Development of the Centralwest Region of Paraná). 15 In Curitiba was also organized, in 1985, the first Brazilian congress of biodynamic agriculture. 16 Programme financed by a loan from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development to the state of Paraná. 17 In 2007, EMATER set up an internal study and working group in agroecology, made up of seventeen technicians and a dedicated thematic field, bringing together fifty technicians, supporting a total of about three thousand farmers and seventy groups. 18 A network initiated in 1998 that organizes product development (certification and marketing networks) in all three states of southern Brazil. 19 See http://www.iapar.br/arquivos/File/zip_pdf/agroecologia/documentos/ pragroecologicoacoes.pdf, accessed on 29 July 2016. 20 art. 3º du Décret nº 7.794/2012. 21 Two themes that were, for example, strongly debated at the recent Brazilian agroecology congress in Brasilia in September 2017. We can note that the march of the margaridas in 2011 (Guétat-Bernard and Prévost 2016) was partly behind the launch of the Planapo 1.

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Sustainable agri-food systems and social justice: Crossed lessons from the Brazilian and the French experiences

Many actors and authors in Brazil analyse the contemporary food situation as the combined result of the processes of agricultural industrialization through the so-called green revolution and of globalization, which deprived famers and consumers alike of their real freedom of choice (of how to produce, circulate and consume food). To address this profound food crisis, structural changes are needed (Machado, Oliveira and Mendes 2016). In this respect, these authors (and others) endorse the criticism formulated by food regime theorists and other critical scientists, although they give it a specific Brazilian emancipatory touch that is partially linked to the influence of Paulo Freire’s emancipation theory, whereby stakeholders should be protagonists of their own story and take part to the construction of appropriate initiatives and policies. As we have seen in Chapter 6, Brazil has been pioneer in the construction and experimentation of public policies that articulated agriculture, food, environment and health as well as a strong concern for social justice. France has been pioneer in the construction and experimentation of public policies that addressed rural development and ecological transition at the regional and territorial scale with a strong concern for local development and territorial justice. What can we learn from these two different trajectories and framings? In this last chapter, I will first trace the process of affirmation of the concept of food and nutritional security in Brazil and the way it integrated the concern for social justice, with a focus on the processes and outcomes of the ambitious Brazilian food access programmes, and finally, based on the French experiences of ecological transitions at the territorial cases that have been related before, I will discuss the territorial scale as appropriate to address the reconnection between agriculture, food, environment and health.

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I. The affirmation of the concept of food and nutritional security in Brazil as an outcome of a convergence of social movements actions and claims From the early 1990s, new public policies and policy instruments were set up in Brazil, mostly under the pressure of actors from civil society who were active in the field of food and nutritional security.1 A  first national policy for food security was initiated in 1991 and the National Council for Food and Nutritional Security (CONSEA) was established in 1993. This was the outcome of a long historical struggle against hunger, of which Josué de Castros (former head of the FAO and author of a book entitled ‘Geography of Hunger’ in the early 1950s) was one of the first leaders. De Castros showed the links between the underdevelopment in the north-east of Brazil and the prevalence of hunger among its rural populations. Another key collective actor of this struggle, also in the early 1990s, has been the Movement for Ethics in Politics, whose national campaign ‘Citizen action against hunger and in favour of life’ led to the downfall of president Fernando Collor in 1992 (Pinton and Sencébé 2019). However, under the Cardoso government (1995–2002), this theme of food and nutritional security lost ground on the public agenda, while the actors from the civil society also lost spaces to act in favour of the construction of policy instruments. The CONSEA was literally stopped in its tracks during these years. Despite this context, civil society actors continued their struggle. A delegation of NGOs, government members and researchers from various fields took part in the ‘World Food Summit’ in Rome in 1996, at the request of the Brazilian parliament. This delegation was the starting point for the creation of the FBSSAN (Brasilian Forum of Food and Nutritional Sovereignty and Security) in 1998, which was instrumental in the revival of the CONSEA under the first Lula government.

The turn of the Lula era Food and nutritional security were put back on the public agenda when the PT (Labour Party) government came to power in 2003. The CONSEA was relaunched and obtained substantial autonomy to define its modus operandi, which allowed for a multi-sectorial and consultative approach. It soon became a key arena for the elaboration of public policies and the articulation of policy agendas, such as that of food and nutritional security, family agriculture and agroecology (Pinton and Sencébé 2019). In the beginning of the first Lula

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government’s term, the Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) project was set up, with the objective of ensuring that the human right to food was effectively upheld. The set of structural policies that were implemented within the Fome Zero project aimed primarily at improving the income of the most disadvantaged populations and at improving the offer of basic food. A new ministry (MDS, Ministry of Social Development and Struggle against Hunger) was created in 2003 to coordinate the many programmes under this new policy. Based on a diversity of prior experiences at the municipal or state scale, it strongly developed the potential of institutional markets (especially public schools and hospital procurement) to meet the needs of these vulnerable populations, seeking to promote food products and practices that would respect regional particularities and at the same time strengthen family agriculture and regional economies. But the aim was also to directly reach families and households, which led to the creation of the PAA (Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos or Food Acquisition Programme) in 2003, a key social programme of the Lula era that has been significantly undermined in the post-2016 period of political change. This programme has been described as one of the indicators of a third generation of public policies for family agriculture (see Chapter 6), with a reference framework based on the construction of markets for food security and environmental sustainability (Grisa and Schneider 2015). The PAA was mainly based on food distribution to socially vulnerable households. Another key programme of the Fome Zero project was the famous bolsa familia (family grant), which was and still is the most important measure of direct transfer from state to poor populations ever implemented in Brazil. These different policies and the Fome Zero programme as a whole allowed Brazil to step off the world hunger map in 2013. Another major change was the 2009 reform of the PNAE (Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar or National Programme for School Food) that had existed since 1955, with a new obligation to devote at least 30 per cent of the federal funds for school food to products from family agriculture. Moreover, both the PAA and the PNAE rules provided for a better price (up to 30 per cent more) for organic and agroecological food products, and also favoured regional products (Schmitt 2016). A national policy for food and nutritional security was set up through the institution of the SISAN (National System for Food and Nutritional Security) in 2006, and the first PLANSAN (National Plan for Food and Nutritional Security) in 2012. Meanwhile, in 2010, the Human Right to Appropriate Food (DHAA) had been included in the federal constitution. Suggested by members

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of the CONSEA, the notion of appropriateness aims here at including political dimensions such as culture, gender, ethnicity and biodiversity (Pinton and Sencébé 2019).

The conquest of a convergence of claims These advances are the result of the combined efforts of various social groups that forged alliances in order to articulate their respective claims, and found forums to express these converging claims in the new governance spaces that had been created or reactivated in the same period by the PT government, mainly the CONDRAF for family agriculture and its equivalent the CONSEA for Food and Nutritional Security. These joint bodies reflect a turn to strong participation as they have been framed and structured through the key principle of parity between civil society and government. This principle underpins all the public policies that deal with family agriculture, agroecology and access to food, at all the diverse levels, from federal to municipal, through regional (state). It has allowed for innovative forms of communication and negotiation and for civil society to play an increasing role in the implementation of these public policies. Three main groups can be identified in the debates that led to the formulation of innovative policies articulating support to family farming, food security and agroecology. The first group consisted of the organizations and actors involved in the food and nutritional security debate that had been ongoing since the 1980s (Schmitt and Grisa 2013) and had led to some innovative policies at the regional (state) level. Most of them were social scientists and nutritionists, whether from academia, from public institutions or from civil society organizations. In 1998, they had founded the FBSSAN (Brazilian Forum of Food and Nutritional Sovereignty and Security). The second group was linked to family agriculture and also emerged in the 1980s, the era of the green revolution, in order to have this social category (of farmers) and their particularities recognized. They were mainly farmers’ movements such as the well-known MST (Landless Movement) and other farmers’ unions, but academics and advisers with mainly agronomy and social science backgrounds were also very present in this group. The third group, which also emerged in the 1980s, was composed of organizations and actors who initially focused on the notion of alternative agriculture and progressively adopted that of agroecology, as has been described in Chapter 6. Like the second group, it was composed of a diversity of profiles:  farmers, advisers and practitioners of rural and agricultural development, academics and diverse social movements, that since 2002 had had a common platform called

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the ANA (National Articulation of Agroecology), although various national agroecology meetings had taken place already since the early 1980s, already during the dictatorship (see Chapter 6). If these groups could articulate their claims thanks to the new governance spaces that had been created in the Lula era, this convergence of their claims progressed in different ways. First, family agriculture, a category recognized politically and institutionally in the 1990s, was progressively also recognized as a means to promote the access to food and a fairer agri-food system (Grisa and Schneider 2015). Second, the alliances with the agroecological movement strengthened the convergence with sustainability and ecological claims (which initially were not at the forefront within family agriculture movements). Associated with the transnational exchanges between farmers’ social movements, the progressive affirmation of the food sovereignty vision within the peasant movement La Via Campesina at the international scale (Wittman 2011) and the increasing place in the debates of the notion of agroecology as an appropriate vision for agriculture, Brazilian social movements also increasingly advocated in favour of a combination of family farming, agroecology and food and nutritional security. The CONSEA appears as the key arena where this convergence could concretely influence public policy making and thus be translated into laws and policy instruments (Pinton and Sencébé 2019). In the early period corresponding to the re-democratization phase following the dictatorship era (from the mid1980s on), it was mainly a place where experiences at the regional or local scales were shared between participating actors. In a second phase, corresponding to the institutionalization of the national food and nutritional security policy (in the mid-2000s), this council involved more civil society activists who succeeded in reframing the debate. This illustrates the capability of social movements to influence the political agenda. This capability relies on the existence of alliances between different social groups that both represent the different social worlds considered legitimate in the definition of public policies (i.e. civil society, family farmers movements, the academia and, of course, the policy makers and institutions themselves) and articulate the different claims (food security, family agriculture and agroecology). The articulation of these claims allow for a greater legitimacy than each (group and claim) would have achieved separately. Interestingly, the main theme of the CONSEA national conference in 2015 was Comida de verdade na cidade e no campo (True food in the city and in the country), thus clearly linking the access-to-food and right-to-food issues to farming and environmental ones. The

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preparatory documents and the debates held during this national conference aimed at establishing new bases for a production and consumption model respecting the principles of food sovereignty, sustainability, climatic and social justice and social participation (Pinton and Sencébé 2019). An analysis of the role of social movements in the elaboration of public policies focused on food security shows that this issue appeared as an ‘obligatory point de passage’ for diverse social groups and social movements defending their own categorical rights (i.e. landless movement, family farmers, rural youth, rural women, indigenous people, slave descendants, etc.). Agroecology later on appeared as a central operator of the convergence of different social movements involved in food security issues (Pinton and Sencébé 2019). The same could symmetrically be said when analysed from the perspective of agroecology, where food security and sovereignty may also appear as a central operator of the convergence of different social movements linked to agroecology. However, the process of convergence was long and by no means straightforward. For example, the MST had long maintained quite a productivist view of family farming (where access to technology, equipment and inputs was a key claim and a key process in the assentamentos settlements), until the early 2000s when it adopted agroecology as its new line (see Chapter 6).

Social justice as a cognitive operator of convergence of claims From the mid-2000s, these issues could be articulated thanks to the debates taking place in key arenas that initially were devoted mainly to one of them (food security, family agriculture and agroecology) but increasingly integrated other issues in their debates and claims. Social justice appears as one of the cognitive operators of this convergence, as it is common to all three claims and areas and can be used to connect them. For example, favouring family agriculture and agroecology in policies devoted to food security allows for the inclusion of socially vulnerable farmers and helps them to adopt more sustainable agricultural practices, both as providers of food products for the national programmes and as consumers of their own products (or of those of their farmers’ networks). Social justice is an encompassing notion that in Brazil also relates to the key issue of access to land. At the national scale, the key arenas where this articulation could be forged are the CONSEA (for food security), as explained above, the CONDRAF (National Council for Family Agriculture) and the ANA (National Articulation of Agroecology). While the first two are official bodies that function on the basis of equal representation established in

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the democratization process (they are composed of two-thirds of civil society members and one-third of government representatives), and whose function is to take part in public policy making, the ANA has no such legal and institutional function. It is an independent organization that brings together various social movements and rural/agricultural organizations as well as academics. The National Policy for Agroecology and Organic Production, established in 2011, created a body of joint, equal representation for agroecology (similar to the CONSEA for food security and the CONDRAF for family agriculture) through the CNAPO (National Commission for Agroecology and Organic Production) but its more recent emergence prevented it from playing the same kind of role as the CONSEA and the CONDRAF. The non-official status of ANA, which might appear to be a weakness in comparison to the two other key bodies, might also turn out to be a strength in the current period of political turmoil (see below). These three key arenas devoted to food security, family agriculture and agroecology (CONSEA, CONDRAF and ANA) progressively articulated the three issues of food security, family agriculture and agroecology in their debates. An important thing to bear in mind here is that all these bodies also exist at the state scale, thus allowing for a regional and decentralized articulation of their claims. However, all of them had to resist the pressures of the agro-industrial sector (in Brazil called agronegocio or agrobusiness2) which, for example, would recently oppose the health ministry’s publication of a new version of the national food guide denouncing the negative effects of industrial food on health, in a context where obesity strongly increased in Brazil in the last decades and where the debate over the responsibility of ‘ultra-processed food’ in this situation has grown since the late 2000s (Louzada et al. 2015). It seems indeed that the agronegocio lobbies and actors are reinforcing their position. This was evidenced at the COP21 Paris conference where they supported the notion of an ‘agribusiness for the future’ (Aubertin and Kalil 2017). Their opposition to the social movements’ framing of food security was clear as early as the 1990s, when the main agronegocio organization (ABAG, Brazilian Association of Agribusiness) published its founding book entitled Food Security:  The Agribusiness Approach (Pinton and Sencébé 2019). Most authors rightly insist on the role of these alliances and arenas in their capacity to articulate not only claims but also the organization of social criticism and controversies, on the one hand, and the elaboration and assessment of public policies, on the other. These are two roles that are generally attributed respectively and separately to social movements and government bodies3 (Pinton and Sencébé 2019). Beyond these arenas, another important tool used by political

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activists is that of cartas politicas (political letters) that are written and published during every congress and forum in order to put pressure on the government and society at large. Finally, another key feature of Brazilian governance, especially in comparison with the French case, and which is less commented, is the notion of inter-sectoriality. Besides the joint representation bodies described above, that articulate civil society and government, for the same three issues of food security, family agriculture and agroecology (and organic agriculture), interministerial organs have been provided for by the law, both at the national and at the regional scale. These organs involve the different ministries concerned by a given issue. For example, the inter-ministerial chamber of family agriculture and agroecology brings together fifteen different ministries and state agencies that deal with agriculture, social development, agrarian reform, environment, indigenous people and many other issues that are considered as relevant in the construction of these ‘sectoral’ policies. The inter-ministerial chamber for food and nutritional security, created in 2007 (i.e. four years after the CONSEA, its ‘participatory’ equivalent), brings together seventeen ministries. These interministerial bodies also strongly contributed to the articulation of food security, family agriculture and agroecology in public policies.

Food procurement programmes as a basis for a reconnection between food security, sustainable agriculture and social justice in Brazil Brazil’s first public food policy, the PNAE (National School Food Programme), was set up in 1955. It underwent a first major change in 1994 when its management and implementation was transferred from the state level to the municipalities, giving them more autonomy in the choice of the products and thus allowing a reorientation towards local products and more ecological ones in some cases. The second major change was the 2009 law that made it mandatory for a minimum of 30 per cent of the food served in schools to be from family agriculture. At national level, this programme reached 42  million public school pupils and cost 4.15 billion Reais (about 1 billion Euros) in 2017. In Paraná State, the programme concerns 1.1  million pupils, 2,340 schools in the state’s 399 municipalities, and a total budget of 117 million Reais. In 2018, more than half of the volume of food came from family agriculture (13,300 tons, out of a total of 23,800 tons), which made Paraná the Brazilian state with the biggest proportion of food in schools sourced from family farmers. The food is bought from 150

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different cooperatives and farmers’ organizations, accounting for nearly 22,000 family farmers (about 8 per cent of Paraná’s family farmers) (FUNDEPAR 2018).4 The share of organic products in family agriculture rose from 6 per cent to 14 per cent between 2011 and 2018. The volumes have been significantly reduced from 2015, due to the cuts in funding decided by the federal government. In Paraná, the state took over and compensated for this reduction of federal funds in order to maintain the programme. This allowed it in 2018 to almost reach the level of 2014 for the overall volume, and to go beyond it as regards family agriculture and organic products. At the scale of this state like at the national scale, this situation is the result of a long process of work with all the stakeholders. The first step was to bring together the administrations respectively in charge of agriculture and education at the state level. Meetings were organized in the different regions between these administrations and their staff, to familiarize them with the new rules set by the 2009 law and the public procurement processes to be implemented. The person, then in charge of the coordination of the school food programme at the state secretariat for education, explained: ‘before 2010, the state secretariat for education had never bought perishable food, and never bought from cooperatives or farmers’ organizations. Some schools would sometimes directly buy some products from local farmers, but these were isolated and non-institutionalised experiences’ (interview, 2016). The second step was to estimate the production that was available statewide, which was done with the technicians of the EMATER (the state extension agency). This led to acknowledgement that it would be impossible to buy the same products in all regions. There was a wide diversity of products, along with strong regional particularities, and certain products would not be available in some regions. Therefore, flexibility in the categories of products to be bought appeared necessary, within an overall framework designed to ensure the nutritional quality of the meals. The third step was taken in 2010, to develop an electronic tool for the submission of bids. A  manual processing of these bids was impossible, due to the number of municipalities and schools, the products’ seasonality and the classification criteria imposed by the public order. The cooperatives and farmers’ organizations submit their bids on this electronic tool and the state secretary then classify these offers according to the criteria. Paraná was also a pioneer in implementing this kind of tool. A recent upgrade of the tool allows the cooperatives and farmers’ organizations to geolocalize the schools in order to build realistic bids. These criteria were established based on the national

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regulation but an adaptation had to be made as the national law sets different priorities: for example, local origin or organic products; assentados (farmers set up through the agrarian reform), indigenous or quilombolas (rural communities from slave origin). ‘All was priority, and we had to prioritise the priorities’, which was done through establishing local origin as the first criterion, the type of farmers as the second and the organic mode of production as the third, which was subsequently incorporated into the national legislation, as the above interviewee explained. Many adaptations had to be made in order to adhere to the key principles of fairness and equity. For example, some cooperatives would set up an office in a municipality where they wanted to deliver products, without having members there, which led the requirements to change and include an assessment of the number of farmers of the cooperative actually present in the municipality. Other cooperatives would try to register a few farmers belonging to the priority categories (assentados, indigenous and quilombolas) in order to submit their bids, which led to a new rule of at least 50 per cent of priority categories in the cooperative, a rule that was also later on included in the national legislation. What is the impact of this system for the cooperatives and their farmers? One of the cooperatives that deliver fruit products to the state schools reported that it had enabled the farmers to convert from coffee production (that was in crisis) to a diversified fruit production and for many of them to organic production, and the cooperative to invest in a processing unit. In more general term, the public market appears to be more secure and allows farmers to plan their production. However, some cooperatives have become largely dependent on this outlet and the reduction of the programme funds from 2015 on has put some of them in difficulty. As the same cooperative director related in 2016, the public markets first allowed farmers to secure their production and develop a range of products, but the second step was to diversify the outlets and find new markets in order to reduce this dependency on public markets. The school food programme deals not only with volumes of products but also with the nature of these products. The way they are associated with educational activities is key to the effectiveness of this programme in terms of food practices and perceptions. In the case of Paraná, an important principle has been to respect regional particularities. For example, the type of feijão (beans) that is favoured differs according to the region. Regional lists of products have been created, and flexibility has been offered to the schools, to choose between a more nutritious savoury ‘lunch’ (which is the case, e.g., in areas where children often do not have a real meal in the morning) and a lighter sweet ‘lunch’.5 The programme supports

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the implementation of educational activities – often carried out by specialized NGOs with the support of other public administrations  – that have led for example to the creation of school gardens with the support of the EMATER technicians. This policy is also strongly articulated within the state’s larger Food and Nutritional Security Policy (the federal state equivalent of the national policy described above), and the actors in charge of the school food programme also take part in the Regional Council for Food and Nutritional Security (the participatory body that is the state-level equivalent of the national CONSEA described above) and in the Inter-ministerial Chamber for Food and Nutritional Security (the inter-sectoral body that brings together all the state secretaries that have a connection with the issue, like its equivalent at the national scale). Even at the municipal scale, there are local School Food Councils with seven members from civil society, school staff, parents, pupils and local authorities, which gives civil society and families a formal possibility to take part in the implementation of these programmes.

The fragilization of these advances in a context of political turmoil With the political crisis that followed the destitution of President Dilma Roussef in 2016 and led to the election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018, the situation described above has been a subject of intense debate. In the first period of this crisis, these joint representation bodies became arenas of resistance to the conservative forces that were back in power, as described in the case of the CONSEA (Pinton and Sencébé 2019). However, in January 2019, soon after the election of Jair Bolsonaro, the CONSEA was simply closed down (like the Ministry for Agrarian Development had been in 2016; see Chapter 6) through a ‘temporary measure’. This not only triggered demonstrations against the government’s decision but also led to a worrying weakening of the social progress and benefits that had characterized the Brazilian situation from the early 2000s until recently. The robustness of the innovative governance system is thus more fragile than could have been expected. By contrast, the independence of an organization like the ANA might appear as a strength in this new context, as there is no risk of it being abolished through an authoritarian measure by any government. The ANA could indeed become one of the key areas of resistance in the near future. Of course, it is not the only one. Regarding food security, the PENSSAN network (Research Network in Food and Nutrition Security and Sovereignty6), created in order to promote

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interdisciplinary debates about these issues throughout society, and the FBSSAN forum (see above) are another two of these resistance networks. Soon after the announcement that the CONSEA was being closed down in January 2019, the PENSSAN network wrote a public letter to denounce this measure and reaffirm its commitment towards the ‘human right to food, Food and Nutrition Security and Sovereignty, and social justice’.7 The fieldwork I have conducted in the state of Paraná since 2010, as well as that undertaken by other colleagues in other Brazilian states,8 suggests that one of the key factor of resilience might be the proximity between state secretaries’ staff and social movements within the state councils devoted to food and nutritional security, family agriculture, agroecology and organic agriculture. In the case of Paraná, this proximity, combined with relentless social pressure, allowed for the regional programme of school food procurement to be maintained and even reinforced over the last years (see below).

II. The territorial approach: Facilitator of the reconnection between agriculture, food, environment and health with a concern for social justice The decentralization undertaken both in Brazil and in France in the implementation of agricultural and food policies has been based on the shared conviction that lower scales (states and municipalities in Brazil, and regions, inter-communalities and the various intermediary scales of the administrative geographical organization in France) allow for more participation and more adaptation to regional particularities. Of course, this conviction, like that of a necessary ecological transition, is in no way ‘natural’ and is the result of these lasting processes of advocacy, controversies and debates that we have described in Chapter  6 about agroecological and food policies. In continuity with Chapter 5, which investigated sustainable transition pathways in three French and Brazilian territorial agri-food systems, I will focus in this last section not only on the reconnection between agriculture, food and the environment, which was the focus of these cases, but also on their articulation to health and social justice. In the case from Southern Ardèche, health and social justice appeared as key arguments that have been introduced by civil society actors, and illustrate the processes of ‘re-differentiation’ in a context where the notion of (agro) ecological transition is now endorsed by a wide diversity of actors composing the territorial agri-food systems. Brazil is once again exemplary from the point

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of view of this integration of health and social justice issues, as the case of the Curitiba Metropolitan Region (CMR) shows.

The case of the Curitiba Metropolitan Region The CMR comprises twenty-nine municipalities around the city of Curitiba, capital city of Paraná State (South of Brazil), one of the richest in Brazil. In 1950, the rural population accounted for over 50 per cent of the total population of the CMR. Since the 1970s, there has been an inversion, with around 85 per cent of the population now living in urban areas and 15 per cent in rural areas (IBGE 2015).9 However, in the green belt of Curitiba, many small farms still produce fruit and vegetables, mainly for local markets. Family farms account for about 78 per cent of rural businesses and 68 per cent of the land surface in the CMR. Since 2000, environmental protection policies and new agroecological production initiatives have been implemented. Around 47 per cent of all organic producers in the state of Paraná are concentrated in the CMR (MAPA 2016).10 Over the last twenty years, there has been a significant increase in the diversity of food policies and initiatives in the CMR, with emphasis on short food supply chains. As an example, the number of organic markets grew by 250 per cent between 2006 and 2016 (Santos and Darolt 2016). The analysis of the transition to more sustainable systems points to a combination of factors, such as the institutionalization of organic production (Law 10.831 / 2003); federal and state policies to promote family farming, agroecology and food sovereignty (such as the state agroecological programme set up in 2011; see Chapter 6); a Farmer’s Factory programme aimed at supporting the creation of small processing units and commercialization; school procurement programmes (see above); agroecological training (through the Ecovida Network and a public agroecological support centre; see Chapter 6); participatory certification processes; technical assistance and rural extension (through state institutions); research and training networks; new premises for short food supply chains (fairs, stores, CSAs, restaurants and a permanent Organic Fair founded in 2009 in Curitiba); and integration with long food supply chains (supermarkets). These different factors relate to the different components of the agri-food system which supports the argument that it is the combined changes in these diverse components that allow a transition of the agri-food system as a whole. However, to what extent do these changes include the actual social diversity of producers, consumers and agri-food chains workers? Whereas many visible initiatives such as the permanent Organic Fair or the diverse weekly agroecological fairs may appear to be oriented essentially towards

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wealthy consumers, other initiatives try to reach more diverse social categories and vulnerable households, following a principle of social justice. For example, the municipality of Curitiba has set up an open-air market with controlled and limited prices, aimed at these categories, as well as community gardens in some poorer areas. At the universities, nucleos de agroecologia (agroecological networks composed of teachers and students, which cooperate with farmers’ groups) have also developed agroecological fairs in less privileged areas, as have some civil society organizations, one of which has adapted the French AMAP concept to the Brazilian situation. Health is also a key issue that has been articulated to that of agriculture, food and environment, based on extensive involvement of nutritionists – from the university, from the state administration or from civil society organizations – in the implementation of the school procurement programme. Like the cases presented in Chapter  5, the Curitiba case shows the effect of a diversity of initiatives originating from networks of ecological and family farmers, associated with a strong articulation between the different components and actors of the agri-food system (production, technical extension, public policies, food industry and marketing or consumer initiatives). In contrast with the French cases, farmers networks and public policies play a larger role here (especially through agroecological networks, institutional purchases and family farm policies as well as municipal specific policies), while the mobilization of the ‘non-agricultural’ civil society remains weaker and consumers’ organizations are less involved than they are in France (Lamine et al. 2018). The Brazilian experience suggests that the reconnection of agriculture, food, the environment and health with a concern for social justice relies on several articulated factors. First, it requires (a) the involvement of all components of the agri-food system:  farmers’ groups, extension organizations, processing sector, marketing initiatives, civil society, university and public education at large, and of course public policies; and (b) a shared, inter-sectoral governance articulating the public institutions in charge of agriculture, food, health, social affairs and the environment, at the various geographical scales where public policies are made and applied. Second, it is strongly dependent upon (c) the presence of an active civil society able to play a role in both innovation – in terms of agri-food reconnection – and social criticism and vigilance with regard to the above. In all these respects, the territorial scale of an urban area like the metropolitan region of Curitiba, or of a small rural region, is more appropriate than larger scales. However, this reconnection also involves national policies that have to be respected everywhere in order to guarantee territorial equity and social justice – as in Brazil until the recent political turmoil.

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These are arguments that relate to social processes and have been studied through sociological analysis. More broadly, an interdisciplinary perspective also showed that the territorial scale is appropriate to tackle this reconnection of agriculture, food, the environment and health (Lamine, Magda and Amiot 2019).

Towards a territorial socioecological approach to reconnection Some studies have suggested that the territorial scale of a small region (of diverse spatial sizes depending on the local ecological and social characteristics) may be an appropriate analytical scale to address agri-food systems transitions.11 The territorial scale has been explored through the notions of foodshed (Kloppenburg, Hendrickson and Stenvenson 1996), regional food systems (Clancy and Ruhf 2010; Kneafsey 2010) or territorialized food systems (Bowen and Mutersbaugh 2014). However, these authors do not particularly address ecological transitions. In link with the extension of agroecological approaches from agricultural to food systems (Francis et al. 2003; Gliessman 2007), recent studies have suggested to tackle agroecological transitions at the scale of territorial agri-food systems. A recent conceptualization of ‘agroecological food systems’, based on the extension of the main agroecological principles from the scale of agricultural systems to that of agri-food systems (Vaarst et  al. 2017), calls for a strong integration of social and ecological dimensions at the scale of ‘city-region food systems’. However, this approach, based on a concentric perspective, sees the processes related respectively to ecological and social dimensions as spatially disconnected. For example, in this approach, biodiversity and sources of natural regulation are mainly outside consumption areas, while these provide potentially recyclable waste for production areas. This concentric perspective does not seem fully relevant in more rural territories where production areas are intertwined with ecological systems and with consumption areas. The concept of ‘agroecological territories’ has also been suggested in order to describe places where a transition process towards sustainable agriculture and food systems is engaged (Wezel et  al. 2016), based on a combination of agricultural science, landscape ecology and social science. This approach takes social processes as central, with arguments such as the need for ‘embedded’ food systems and stakeholder support. Food systems are defined as sociotechnical networks linking people, natural elements and artefacts that interact with food issues. However, despite the authors rightly underline the problem of scale mismatches between ecological and social processes, they do not suggest to rely on the functional links between these ecological and social processes.

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This is precisely where lies a key argument in a favour of the territorial scale: it is the scale of direct interactions between ecological processes and social processes, the scale at which both types of processes could be articulated in order to support the reconnection of agriculture, food, environment and health. The territorial scale should allow the empirical exploration of the diversity of interactions between ecological and social processes (as well as economic and health ones) within the agri-food system under study and the identification of those that need to be built to support sustainable transitions within this system. Observations at the territorial scale could allow for the measuring of ‘feedback loops’. Feedback loops may be, of course, not only ecological ones (Sundkvist, Milestad and Jansson 2005) but also social and health feedback loops, such as those linked to the implementation of new public policies or initiatives. An example is changes in public food procurement. Public policies that favour changes towards more local and ‘ecological’ products, along with changes in meal composition, would enhance ecological processes (linked to agroecological practices), health processes (through the effects of diets and product quality on health) and social processes (social access to quality food, relationships and collective learning processes between farmers, teachers, pupils and families). A recent analysis, also based on a Brazilian case, of the effect on the local biodiversity of both agricultural policies (focused on family farms and agroecological practices) and food policies (public food procurement schemes) appears to be a good example of these potential interactions between ecological, health and social processes (Chappell, Moore and Heckelman 2016). A second main argument in favour of the territorial scale is that it allows the identification, and possibly the involvement in the research process, of the diverse actors involved in the interrelationships between agriculture, food, environment and health. The territorial approach advocated here would combine a transformative perspective where the aim is to bring researchers and actors together in the process of thinking and possibly implementing possible transition pathways, and an analytical perspective. Indeed, taking into account the ecological, social and health processes together as active principles of the organization and transition mechanisms of agri-food systems should rely on the collective (transdisciplinary) analysis of past, current and future transitions at the territorial scale. This would allow for a collective understanding of the biological (ecological and health) dimensions of possible changes in food practices and of the social processes of transition mechanisms. The challenge is to share an appropriation, by the different disciplines and actors, of the ecology of a territory and the interplay of ecological and social processes within

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the territorial agri-food system. This can rely on the extension of the notion of ecological literacy, which defines the ability to understand the organizing principles of ecological systems and their links to sustainable transition processes, to that of socioecological literacy. In contrast to studies carried out at the global or national scales, at the territorial scale, this is facilitated by the fact that people share a community of fate: the future of their landscape, of the local farms and of the local and cultural food practices. This territorial approach can be combined with microscale approaches (in order to study changes in agricultural or consumption practices at the level of individuals or to address biological health processes or biotic regulation processes) and with macroscale ones (global economic and environmental change). In order to better address ecological processes, the territorial scale serves as a mesoscale where processes at smaller scales can be taken into account. In order to assess social processes, the territorial scale allows us to identify empirically the different institutions and actors that are involved in agri-food system transitions, their visions, values and power relationships and—from a more transformative perspective—to involve them in collective interventions or experimentations. It also allows us to trace empirically the multiple manifestations of the larger and global scales that are reflected in actors’ and networks’ trajectories and relationships at the territorial scale. However, retracing the diversity of the ‘inter-scalar pathways’, from the very small to the very large, remains a pressing challenge.

Notes 1 This section was elaborated based on the lasting partnership with Brazilian colleagues and particularly through discussions held during research stays of Brazilian students whom I hosted in France in 2017 and 2018, namely Terena Peres (UNB) and Juliano Palm (UFRRJ). 2 Although this term refers to the corporate and incumbent agrofood sector at large, it is politically supported in parliament by the so-called Banca Ruralista that crosses all political parties and has always been in a majority in parliament. This has compelled even the most progressive governments to compromise with this political force and to restrain their ambitions in terms of access to land or support for family agriculture. 3 In the case of the CONSEA this is organized through the ‘tables of controversies’ that include diverse stakeholders (social movements, members of parliament, experts, etc.).

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4 FUNDEPAR means Instituto Paranaense de Desenvolvimento Educacional. 5 What is called lunch is actually served in the middle of the morning or of the afternoon as school time is only half day. 6 It is interesting that this network has added the notion of food sovereignty in its name and claims, which is not present in the names of the national laws and bodies dealing with this issue. 7 http://www.agroecologia.org.br/2017/05/09/resista-sociedade-civil-se-une-emmovimento-contra-temer-e-ruralistas/, accessed 8 March 2019. 8 Such as the work undertaken by a group of Brazilian and French researchers about state agroecological and organic agriculture policies in 2018 (Gueneau et al. 2019). 9 IBGE is Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatistica. 10 MAPA is Ministério da Agricultura, Pecuária e Abastecimento. 11 The arguments of this section are developed in a recent article elaborated within an interdisciplinary perspective with an ecologist and a nutritionist (Lamine, Magda and Amiot 2019).

Conclusion

The question of the ecological transition of agriculture is, like many environmental issues, a proper contemporary issue: it came to the fore only from the moment when the environmental impacts of an agriculture that had become increasingly dependent on chemical inputs began to be denounced  – which may be associated with the publication of Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, in 1962. Of course, even in the midst of the agricultural modernization era, many farmers were practicing forms of ecological agriculture – various organic farming movements appeared in the first decades of the twentieth century and largely pre-dated its institutionalization in the 1980s. But once this issue of the environmental impacts of agriculture had been constructed as a ‘public problem’ (Cefaï 2013) by resorting to the rhetoric of general interest and common good – which were explicitly integrated in the European organic legislation, for example – the various models of ecological agriculture that have emerged over the decades had to position themselves in relation to the input reduction issue, and then, often cumulatively, in relation to other issues that subsequently also emerged in debates, such as climate change or health. This book, by exploring a diversity of perspectives on the processes of ecologization at work in conventional agriculture, in organic agriculture or more recently in agroecology, is an invitation to recognize the complexity of these processes. They unfold at the same time at the level of farmers’ trajectories, through changes not only in practices but also in the conceptions of their work and professional identity, at the scale of farmers’ networks through collective dynamics, at the scale of food chains through the redefinition (or not) of the interdependencies at work, at the scale of territorial agri-food systems and at the scale of public policies and programs (and in many other public spaces). Certainly, the ecologization of agriculture is not just about well-constructed regulations or motivated farmers. It engages a variety of actors belonging to

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different social worlds. Above all, of course, the agricultural and agri-food world, from the farmers themselves, to the advisers who accompany them or prescribe inputs or practices, to the economic operators who buy, process and market their products. Second, it involves public policies that regulate and encourage changes in practices in more or less inter-sectoral perspectives. Third, the social movements that, often in interaction with certain agricultural networks, put forward new visions and experiment with new practices of ecologization. Finally, the scientific world, which is mobilized in these ecologization enterprises, first and foremost not only by public decision makers in the construction or implementation of public policies but also by the agricultural worlds and finally by civil society. The social fabric of the ecologization of agriculture therefore appears as a set of complex and intertwined processes that play out at the crossroads of these four social worlds: the agricultural world, public policies, social movements and the scientific world. At the scale of the agri-food system, defined as a system of actors, rules and devices involved in the production, processing, distribution and consumption of food products, it is characterized by interdependencies that block or promote ecologization processes. This agri-food system, which may seem like a very abstract entity, has been tackled at the scale of a ‘chain’ like wheat or fruit, or at the territorial scale. However, a systemic approach is not sufficient, because it masks not only individual change mechanisms, that can be better tackled through an approach focused on farmers’ trajectories, but also power relations and controversies and conflicts. This is why it is also important to analyse the diversity of visions and the debates and controversies around these processes and paradigms of ecologization, which has been done here starting from the case of organic agriculture and addressing the current movement to institutionalize agroecology. Agroecology is an ecologization paradigm. Moreover, when compared to earlier models or paradigms, such as organic farming, integrated pest management, sustainable agriculture, agricultural multifunctionality and many others, agroecology may engage a larger diversity of actors in the agrifood system and in these four worlds. It is indeed considered and adopted by many as an all-encompassing model, as is the case of the French national policy introduced in 2012; while in Brazil it is much more linked to a specific part of the agricultural world, that of small family farmers. It is actually this relative ‘openness’ that gives rise to diverse and contrasted visions and hence debates, controversies and redifferentiation processes that contribute to the larger process of ecologization.

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This journey across French and Brazilian situations has involved the revisiting of surveys encompassing a variety of actors belonging to these different worlds (farmers, agri-food actors, consumers, researchers, advisers, public decision makers, etc.) and the observation of diverse arenas anchored in one or the other of these worlds but also often at the interface between them. This itinerary also leads to a theoretical proposal aimed at tackling jointly the ecologization of agriculture and food. This combines a dynamic and systemic approach to ecological transitions, and a pragmatist approach that jointly analyses actors’ conceptions and possible changes in practices, as well as how they change over time and through various social interactions, debates and controversies. These perspectives form and articulate a systemic approach, which allows us to analyse how the interdependencies between the different scales that make up the agrifood system may be transformed. Complementarily, the analysis of arenas of debates and controversies over models and paradigms of ecological transition is necessary to unravel the complexity of argumentative processes, not least those of redifferentiation among rival ecological models and paradigms. This book also suggests that a diversity of research postures is necessary to tackle ecologization processes. An analytical posture allows an understanding of the complexity of processes and systems and helps to identify mechanisms favouring transitions (or impeding them) at different scales. This requires what may be called a ‘complex-system approach’ (Popa et al. 2015), whether the analytical scale is focused on the farm (as in Chapter 2) or the larger scales examined in the following chapters. A transformative posture works with the agri-food system’s actors in order to build the research questions within a perspective of collective inquiry, or even to experiment with specific transition mechanisms through place-based experimentations (Marsden and Farioli 2015). The goal is to set up a research process that creates collective responsibility among actors (scientists, citizens/ consumers, farmers, business people, institutional actors, etc.), all of whom represent not only the different components of the agri-food system but also the ‘extended-peer community’ (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993) in the research process. Indeed, despite possibly diverging views, these actors have a ‘shared future’ or ‘common destiny’ within agri-food systems seen as potential ‘communities’. The goal is thus to set up a research process that allows for reflection built on these shared futures or common destinies. This perspective, which, of course, is much more feasible at the territorial scale than at the scale of the global food system, offers an alternative to the neoliberal tendency to place responsibility on individuals by relying on network initiatives and market tools, which has

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remained a central feature even of alternative food networks and leads to wellacknowledged processes of social exclusion (Goodman et  al. 2011; Agyeman and McEntee 2014) as well as territorial inequity. Both perspectives should of course be interlinked within a transdisciplinary perspective involving not only diverse disciplines but also the diverse actors of the food systems under study. The premise is that transformative action needs to be preceded and accompanied by critical thinking and reflection. This allows us to analyse diverse social processes of inclusion, exclusion and power relationships that could impede or facilitate agroecological transition processes (Johansson and Lindhult 2008). For example, unequal and invisible power relations need to be revealed before they can be transformed. This analyticalcritical role is central to the professional identity of sociologists, as it is the basis for the scrutiny of relations of power, diverse path dependencies and the controversies characterizing the social system under study. Within a transformative and transdisciplinary perspective, this analytical work contributes to acknowledging, within the extended-peer community, the variety of values and interests involved (Popa, Guillermin and Dedeurwaerdere 2015) and fosters a collective understanding of lock-in effects and transition processes within food systems. The aim is to generate a collective ‘intelligibility’ of the situation and processes at play (Hazard et al. 2017). Indeed, a key element of a transdisciplinary perspective is to favour collective knowledge building and thus contribute to food democracy. This relies on a ‘post-normal’ view of science (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993), within which the plural legitimate perspectives of the extended-peer community are included in the construction of knowledge and/or solutions. In other words, enacting ‘engaged’ rural sociology1 requires us to combine a critical account and a transformative posture at the scale of extended peer communities.

Note 1 This expression refers to Philip Lowe’s invitation to define rural sociology as an engaged science (Lowe 2010).

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Index accommodation, notion of 69 Actor-Network Theory (ANT) 2, 3, 13 advisory systems and collective dynamics 55 knowledge production and circulation and 68 collective knowledge 70–1 innovations 68–9 situated knowledge 71–3 spatial and social proximity effects and 62 conventional farmers’ view 62–5 links to society 67–8 re-differentiation processes 65–7 transformations in 55–6 access 58–61 ecologization and 56–7 organic advisory networks development 57–8 affordance 69, 73 n.3 agricultural modernisation 132, 142, 149, 175 and sustainability transition at farm scale and 29, 39, 42 at food chain scale and 75, 78, 79 agriculture raisonnée model 29, 53 n.2, 136 agri-food governance 16–17 agrifood system 1, 9, 18, 76, 176, 177 significance of 14–15 sustainable (see sustainable agri-food systems and social justice) agroecological territories, concept of 171 agroecology 3–4, 176. See also individual entries alternative food networks (AFNs) 2, 102–3, 114–15 just sustainability and 18 notion of 10 territorial agri-food systems and 103 Altieri, M. A. 131, 135, 143

arboriculture 98 n.14 modernizing 83 ASPTA (Brazil) 123, 142 assemblage theories, significance of 21 n.2 Associations pour le Maintien de l’Agriculture Paysanne (AMAPs) (France) 59, 67, 70, 114, 133, 138, 150, 170 Beck, U. 76 bifurcation, notion of 35 Biocoop 86–91 biological control 33, 34, 59 ‘Biovallée’ project 109–10 bolsa familia (family grant) (Brazil) 159 Boltanski, L. 2, 3, 8, 92 Bourdieu, P. 2, 26 Brazilian Encounters of Alternative Agriculture (EBAAs) 120, 142, 146 Brazilian Forum of Food and Nutritional Sovereignty and Security (FBSSAN) 158, 160, 168 Callon, M. 3, 13 cartas politicas (political letters) (Brazil) 164 Centros de Abastecimento (CEASAs) (supply centres) 118, 119 certifications 9, 25, 122 alliances and controversies and 132, 133, 135, 136, 142, 144, 152 sustainability transitions and 84, 95, 96 Chateauraynaud, F. 15, 54 n.11, 65, 69, 73 n.3 CIRAD 136 Circuito Carioca de Feiras Orgânicas (Rio Organic Markets Circuit) (Brazil) 122 CIVAM 82, 135

204

Index

civic food networks. See alternative food networks (AFNs) civil society and government, parity between 160 collective identity 61 collective knowledge 70–1 Collective Mobilisation for Agroecology (2013) 138 Common Agricultural Policy (France) 136 Confédération Paysanne (France) 39, 56, 135 convention notion of 8 theories, significance of 9 conventional agriculture 30. See also individual entries conversion, notion of 37 COP21 Paris conference 163 crop protection, significance of 45–7 De Castros, J. 158 Deleuze, G. 73 n.3 Dephy-Fermes network 60, 61 de Schutter, O. 53 n.9 Descola, P. 49 Dewey, J. 15, 60 diffusion of innovation, theory of 33–4 distancing, phenomenon of 67–8 Drôme valley (France) 106–10, 125 dynamic approach, to transitions 2 dynamic mapping of sociological approaches, to transitions 7–13 ecological agriculture and consumers 83–5 ecological and environmental approaches, difference between 20 ecologization process 24–5, 46, 56–7. See also farm scale, in France new organic farmers and 27–8 pathways 32–6 robustness and reversibility of 29–32 transition to organic 25–7 Ecophyto government plan (France) 53 n.7, 60 Ecovida network (Brazil) 122, 142, 148, 151 emancipation theory 4, 157 embodied knowledge 72 encapsulated knowledge 72

environmental heritage 52 ESR model 45, 46 European regulations, on organic culture 133–5 family farming 4, 17, 117, 125, 160–2, 169 alliances and controversies and 131, 143, 144, 146, 149–52 farmer bakers (paysans boulangers) and regional supply chains 81–2 farmers (French). See also individual entries anticipators and time biders, comparison of 48–9 change pathways and 25–7 as early adopters/pioneers 34 as followers 34 identity, changes in 36–9 as laggards/sceptics 34 and nature 49–50 from artificial elements to natural processes 50–1 responsibility towards environment 51–2 new organic 27–8 with progressive and robust transitions 30–1 reticent 31–2, 40 with reversible transitions 31 and uncertainty 44–9 farmers’ autonomy 39–40 farm pathways and resilience 40–4 farm scale, in France 23–4. See also ecologization process; farmers (French) feira verde (organic market, Brazil) 147 Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) project (Brazil) 159 Food Acquisition Programme (PAA) (Brazil) 95, 146, 159 Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) 4, 20, 158 food chain scale, sustainability transitions at 75 lock-in mechanisms 76–8 ecological agriculture and consumers 83–5 farmer bakers (paysans boulangers) and regional supply chains 81–2

Index

205

interdependencies and redefinition 85–6 wheat case study 78–81 food democracy 16, 18, 178 food governance 16–17 food justice 11, 17–19 food regime theories, significance of 8, 13, 14 food sociologists 7–8 food system, notion of 8 Freire, P. 4, 157 French pragmatism 14–15 Friedmann, H. 1, 8, 18 fruit production 32, 34–5, 75, 83–5, 166, 169 advisory services and collective dynamics and 59, 60, 63–6 sustainability transitions and 111, 113, 116, 117, 126

International Foundation for Organic Agriculture (IFOAM) 121, 135

Geels, F.W. 2, 13, 77 geographical indications (GIs) 102, 103, 112 Gliessman, S. 171 GlobalGAP 84 Goodman, D. 2, 9–12, 18, 133, 178 greenhouse tomato production, significance of 32–3 ‘green order of worth’ 3 Groupement d’Intérêt Economique et Environnemental (GIEE) 137, 139

McMichael, P. 1, 8 Malassis, L. 8 marginalization, of alternatives 78–81 Marsden, T. 7, 9, 12, 14–17, 66, 102, 110, 177 Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA) (Brazil) 143–4 Ministry of Social Development and Struggle against Hunger (MDS) (Brazil) 159 modulation capacity 69, 73 n.3 monoculture grain crops 29–30 multilevel perspective (MLP) approach 2, 5, 13, 76, 77, 90–1

Healthygrowth project 98 n.15 Human Right to Appropriate Food (DHAA) (Brazil) 159 InPACT (France) 72–3 INRA 80, 136 insurance strategy 46 integrated pest management 29 integrated production 35, 37, 58, 63, 64, 69 integrated protection 61, 68, 70, 77, 80, 152 sustainability transition at farm scale and 30–9, 47, 48, 51 change pathways and 30–2 regularity and cleanness and 38–9 yield loss and 38 Inter-Ministerial Commission for Agroecology and Organic Production (CIAPO) (Brazil) 151

just sustainability 17–19 knowledge production and circulation 68 collective knowledge 70–1 innovations and 68–9 learning processes for situated knowledge 71–3 ‘Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) (Brazil) 143, 160, 162 Latour, B. 3 local box scheme 115–16 local specialization, significance of 9 Lowe, P. 37, 38, 178 n.1

National Articulation of Agroecology (ANA) (Brazil) 143, 161–3, 167 National Committee of Agroecology and Organic Production (CNAPO) (Brazil) 151, 163 National Council for Food and Nutritional Security (CONSEA) (Brazil) 151, 158, 160–3, 167, 168, 173 n.3 National Council for Sustainable Rural Development (CONDRAF) (Brazil) 145, 151, 160, 162, 163 National Encounters of Agroecology (ENA) (Brazil) 143 National Plan for Food and Nutritional Security (PLANSAN) (Brazil) 159

206

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National Plan of Agroecology and Organic Production (PLANAPO) (Brazil) 145, 151 National Policy for Agroecology and Organic Production (Brazil) 144, 153, 163 National Policy of Technical Assistance and Rural Extension (Brazil) 144 National School Food Programme (PNAE) (Brazil) 95, 146, 149, 159, 164–5 National System for Food and Nutritional Security (SISAN) (Brazil) 159 Nature et Progrès (France) 87, 133, 135 neo-rurals 28, 110, 114, 122 nucleos de agroecologia (Brazil) 144 organic agriculture and agroecology, politicization of 129 in Brazil 141 controversies 145–6 farmer types and food reconnection in 151–3 governance modes in 151 institutionalization 141–2 Paraná 146–9 public policies 143–5, 150 social movements 142–3, 150 in France 132 agroecological policy instrument 138–41 agroecology emergence 135–7 controversies 132–5, 137–8 farmer types and food reconnection in 152, 153 governance modes in 151 social movements and public policy in 150 organic farming/culture 25–8, 45–6. See also individual entries advisory networks development 57–8 conventional farmers’ view of 62–5 European regulations on 133–5 re-differentiation processes within 65–7 organizations of regional agricultural development (EMATER) (Brazil) 123, 147, 155n.17, 165, 167 Paraná (Brazil) 129, 143, 164–5 as pioneer dynamic 146–9

Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) 122 path dependency 75, 77, 178 peasant agriculture 66–7, 73, 91, 114, 130, 161 alliances and controversies and 135, 137, 144, 145, 149–51, 153 sustainability transition and 30, 36, 44 Peasant agroecology 138, 149 pesticide reduction 24 in arable crops 29–32 Petrini, C. 12 Piaget, J. 69 pivot points. See bifurcation, notion of ‘post-productivist compromise’ 9 pousio technique 119 practice theory 13 pragmatic sociology 2–3, 13 Produire Autrement programme (France) 137 Programa Paraná Agroecologico (Agroecological Programme for Paraná) (document) 148 programme of differentiated credit for family agriculture (PRONAF) (Brazil) 119, 143 Project for Alternative Technologies (PTA) (Brazil) 142 Pronaf Agroindustria 94 quality food networks 10, 102, 112–13 Rabhi, P. 26, 53 n.1, 135, 137 rationalization farm pathways 42–3 reconception approach 46 Rede Agroecologia Rio (Rio agroecological Network) (Brazil) 123 re-differentiation process 14, 62, 93, 117, 150, 168 controversies and 137–8, 176 within organic farming 65–7 Regional Natural Park (PNR des Monts d’Ardèche) 112 regional programme of food security (PESAN) (Brazil) 153 repeasantization 36 Research Network in Food and Nutrition Security and Sovereignty (PENSSAN) (Brazil) 167–8

Index resilience 40–4, 53 n.10, 115, 116, 119, 126, 168 risk aversion, notion of 60 robustness and reversibility, of ecologization process 29–32 rural development 40, 111, 112, 157 advisory systems and 55, 57 alliances and controversies and 134, 138–40, 146, 147 dynamic and pragmatist approach and 2, 4, 5, 9, 11 sustainability transitions and 82, 94–6 rural sociologists 7–8 Serra do Rio (Brazil) 117 agroecological transition processes 120–1 conventionalization trends and alternative ways 121–4 socio-productive arrangements 117–20 Silent Spring (Carson) 77, 175 Simondon, G. 47, 69, 73 n.3 situated knowledge, learning processes for 71–3 Slow Food 12 social justice. See also sustainable agrifood systems and social justice focus on 11, 18 issues, rise of 115–17 social movements 3, 17, 30, 87, 176 alliances and controversies and 129–31, 135, 136, 138, 142–52 sustainable agri-food systems and 160–3, 168 social worlds 3, 6 n.1 sociobiodiversity 145, 150 socio-ecological systems 13, 53 n.10, 171–3 socio-economic orders 77, 146 sociotechnical system 21 n.3, 29, 33, 75–7, 120, 126, 171 baker farmers and 81–2 building of 86–93 niches 13 significance of 76–7 wheat cultivation and 78–81 solidaire, notion of 99 n.17 ‘solidarity boxes’ initiative 115 Southern Ardèche (France) 110–11

207

alternative food network’s initiatives 114–15 quality food networks 112–13 social justice issues rise 115–17 spatial and social proximity effects and legitimization 62–8 State Council of Regional Development and Family Agriculture (CEDRAF) (Brazil) 148 Strauss, A. 6 n.1 substitution paradigm 45 sustainable agri-food systems and social justice 157 in Brazil convergence of claims conquest 160–2 food and nutritional security 158 food procurement programmes 164–7 Lula era 158–60 political turmoil 167–8 social justice 162–4 territorial approach 168–9 Curitiba Metropolitan Region case 169–71 socioecological approach 171–3 Sustainable Development Goals 2 (SDG2) 1 sustainable diets 20 Systèmes Alimentaires Localisés (SYAL) (localized agri-food systems) 103, 104 systemic approach, to transitions 2 systemic vision, notion of 152–3 territorial ecological transitions 101 Drôme valley (France) 106–7 civil society and public action 109–10 consumption turn 108–9 regional scale relevance for 124–7 relocalization dynamics and 102–5 rural community notion and urbanization and 105–6 Serra do Rio (Brazil) 117 agroecological transition processes 120–1 conventionalization trends and alternative ways 121–4 socio-productive arrangements 117–20

208

Index

Southern Ardèche (France) 110–11 alternative food network’s initiatives 114–15 quality food networks 112–13 social justice issues 115–17 territorial equity 5, 170 Territorial Farm Contract (1999– 2002) (France) 136 Thévenot, L. 2–3, 8 Toledo, V. M. 131 transition management (TM) approach 13 transition studies 13, 14

turning point. See bifurcation, notion of United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 1, 17 United States 11, 130 Van der Ploeg, J.D. 2, 9 wheat, case study of 78–81 Zask, J. 96 Zero hunger 1