Agroecological transition: the work of farmers, advisers, teachers and researchers in question
Résumé
The French Ministry of Agriculture has called for an agroecological
transition that reconciles farming and environment-friendly
approaches. This is perceived as an injunction to change, deemed too
minimalist by advocates of agroecology and too supportive of
environmental concerns by advocates of conventional and industrial
farming. Despite a degree of self-prescription, farmers are not the only
ones defining the content, the organization and the aim of their work:
agricultural training, agricultural development, discussions between
peers, research, and regulations all contribute to its definition. Drawing
on available research, we study the transformations of the work of
farmers and of AKIS actors at play during the agroecological
transition. Our argument revolves around the importance, in the
agroecological transition, of taking into account: (i) local particularities
(situated ecological processes, micro-climates, etc.) and farmers’
singularities (relations to nature), including how AKIS actors’ forms of
organization and intervention are challenged by these particularities;
(ii) the role of AKIS actors in supporting the agroecological transition:
how can farmers’ own discovery of their natural and technical
environment from new perspectives be facilitated? AKIS actors can be
instrumental in this respect; their interventions then become part of the
flow of the farmer’s activities; (iii) transformations of work, in various
respects relating to systemic representations of the activity: the
“doing”, the knowledge applied, and the values and norms to which
subjects refer are changed; and (iv) the production of agronomic
knowledge and the ways in which it is disseminated are challenged.
The prescriptive relationship of science and development towards
farmers is likewise challenged. This review raises many questions
which we put on the research agenda: does the agroecological
transition contribute to reorienting the development of farmers’
activity? Is the agroecological transition conducive to the development
of sustainable farm work? What transformations of AKIS actors’ work
are needed to better support the agroecological transition?
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