Evaluation participative de scénarios : quelles perspectives pour les systèmes agricoles camarguais ?
Résumé
Agricultural systems are constantly evolving driven by technical and organizational innovations and changes in their socio-economical context. At regional scale local stakeholders can encourage and accompany foreseen changes if they can have clear visions of their potential impacts. The objective of the PhD thesis was to develop and test a framework to assist farmers and local stakeholders of a region in the building and assessment of scenarios related to agricultural systems. This framework is based on different modeling approaches for a participative, integrated, multi-scale and prospective assessment of agricultural systems. It was implemented in the Camargue region, South-East of France, with cereal farmers and local stakeholders involved in agricultural production and territorial management. Scenarios assessed were related to the reform of the common agricultural policy (CAP) of the European Union in 2012-2014, and to national objectives of reduction in pesticide use and extension of organic farming (OF). Several data and expert knowledge have been formalized and used in these simulations of scenarios. Two modeling tools have been used for scenario assessment with stakeholders: an agent-based model allowed interactive simulation sessions with farmers, and a bio-economic model was co-developed and used with local stakeholders such as the French Union of Rice Producer and Industry and the Regional Natural Park, both important stakeholders influencing local agricultural systems. Assessing scenarios related to the CAP reform showed the strong dependency of rice farms to EU subsidies. Farmers involved in the sessions tested several adaptation strategies for their farms in response to the disappearance of the rice coupled payment. These strategies often implied a diversification of production and/or the conversion to OF, but they did not allowed to compensate the economic loss due to the suppression of the rice coupled payment. At the regional level, these strategies would lead to an important decrease on the area cultivated with rice, and therefore have an impact on other related activities in the region. Diversification of production is also a key strategy in scenarios related to governmental objectives of reducing pesticide use and conversion to OF. Therefore, in Camargue, there is room for maneuver for conciliating environmental and economic objectives related to agricultural production. This thesis proposed and applied a framework for participatory integrated assessment of agricultural systems. This framework associates closely farmers and other stakeholders in all phases of scenario assessment (scenario definition, data gathering and analysis, the building and use of models). The way different modeling tools are used in this framework could contribute for collective assessment of future farming systems and support collective actions for sustainable agricultural development.