Crossing organic agriculture and short supply chains: evolution of the geography of transitional agriculture in France (2010-2020)

Résumé En

In front of decarbonization objectives of agriculture, biodiversity protection, economic farm sustainability and food security, European and French policies, around Farm to fork strategy (Guyomard et al., 2020 ; Moschitz et al., 2021), support a deep transition of agri-food systems. In this context, transformation of agricultural systems become a necessity.We aim to present a geography of farms in transitions, and its evolution between 2010 (Bermond et al., 2019) and 2020. Our typology articulate the mode of farming production (organic or not) with the mode of short supply chains sale (direct sale or not), based on agricultural censuses. We propose a socio-economic characterization of four types of farms (farmer’s age and gender, working group, education level, economic size of farms...). Then, we analyze their location at large scale (based on National Institute of Economic Studies and Statistics’ district, more accurate than NUTS 4). Our mapping shows severals transitions paths over the last decade, opening the discussion on the factors favouring the emergence of one type over another.With our maps, a complex agricultural geography is drawing, articulating economic sectorial factors (local pedoclimate adaptation, public policies …), socio-historical drivers (role of food supply chains, weight of alternative farming networks …) or local factors, between territorial public policies or socio-residential dynamics (urban proximity, housing migrations, socio-economic level of inhabitants, tourism, …). Those results encourage discussing on the potential extension of this typology at the European scale, with the Eurostat data, to test the genericity value of agricultural transition drivers.