The ‘ecologisation’ of European Agricultures. A critical assessment of the ecological modernisation and treadmill of production perspectives

Résumé En

"Ecologisation” is the word chosen by the Ecodevelopment, a French multi-disciplinary research unit, to qualify the current trend of European Union agricultural and rural policies and its effects on agricultural production systems. The first part of the presentation analyzes the process itself, the gradual extension of the sphere of agricultural and rural activities affected by environmentally oriented policies: from the periphery to the core of the agricultural sector, from limited agri-environmental rules to cross compliance. It examines also the alternative between the “greening” (or “green washing”) of the dominant modernised agricultural systems or the process of designing new agricultural production models aimed at fulfilling these new obligations, the alternative between considering environmental demand as constraints or at the contrary opportunities for inventing ecologically based agricultural production, and the consequencies of these policies on social equity for farmers and consumers. The second part of the presentation intents to assess these processes at the light of two theoretical streams of environmental social sciences: Ecological Modernization and Treadmill of Production. The heuristic value and the limits of each of these theoretical approaches are identified. Ecological Modernization is valued for its assessment of innovations in the production and production/consumption systems, but can be questioned on the assertion of the capacity of the capitalist production system to internalize by itself ecologization demands. Treadmill of Production is valued for its interest for the leading part of social movements in building local and global alternative production and consumption systems, but is weaker when taking into account the development of ecologization in public policies. In conclusion, the relevance of choosing the world "ecologization" is discussed as compared with other terms which are propound to designate the trend of European Union agricultural policy: "greening", "multi-functionality", "sustainable agricultural development"…