A multi-actors and transdisciplinary research for organic and local food systems

Since the 1990s, organic farming (OA) has shown a steady increase in terms of surface area, number of farms and number of consumers. In a troubled environmental context – reduction in biodiversity, pollution and climate change – coupled with growing questions about food quality, organic farming offers a reassuring alternative to citizens worried about the future of the planet and their health. But what is organic farming? What are its principles and different forms? Do they address current social issues? What resources are being deployed for its development, and on what assumptions?

Today's success is the fruit of those who practice it. Research efforts have remained modest since its official recognition in France in 1980. The scientific questions it raises are innovative, because contrary to what some people claim, organic farming is not the same as conventional farming, i.e. before its intensification. It's not a question of remaking pre-war agriculture, but of using scientific, technical and conceptual bases from different horizons, combining traditional and contemporary knowledge and know-how, to invent new practices that are productive, respectful of the environment and people. Organic farming is therefore a vast area of discovery and innovation, requiring the mobilization of a wide range of knowledge in many fields. But what is the state of research into organic farming? Is there any specific research for this type of agriculture? What knowledge is produced, for whom, for what and why?

Our research team is specifically dedicated to the development of organic and peasant agriculture, whose principles are inherited from the pioneers of the early 20th century. It calls for a new way of looking at life, and requires an adapted approach. Our dual skills - one thematic, focused on the renewal of cultivated biodiversity, and the other organizational, promoting participatory research - have led us, over time, through projects and encounters, to broaden our conception of research, moving from the study of cultivated plant diversity to the study of products "from field to plate", and integrating more and more players, with varied and complementary knowledge and know-how, throughout the research process. Today, our work has become multi-actor, trans-disciplinary research, based on action for organic and local food systems, and it is this experience of engineers of the living that we propose to share here.