Know more

Abstract

The need to rethink production practices in agriculture, in order to meet the new challenges associated, is now widely recognized. Agronomists generate innovative knowledge, both of new objects (e.g. diversified crops, semi-natural or auxiliary elements) and natural processes (e.g. biological regulations), geared towards new functions as well as tools and methods for design. However, effective application to specific situations involves re-designing processes, that include a variety of technical changes implemented over a long term scale, as well as learning a host of new approaches. We have studied first the knowledge dynamics of mobilisation and construction, to understand how they allow the farmer to act in these situations marked by strong uncertainties, the need to adapt practices to local environments, and the need to anticipate on long-term events.

Given the choice of a disciplinary placement in agronomy, we have focused our study on agronomic knowledge. Using an inductive approach, we first conducted individual interviews with farmers producing arable crops, at different stages of progress in re-designing, as well as a review of the literature (both technical and scientific press) and of the knowledge regarding three techniques applying agroecological principles. Such initial analyses enabled us to build a framework for the characterization of knowledge contents, which we then remobilized for the purpose of retrospective study of a re-design project, conducted over 9 years with 8 farms in the French Picardy region (2003 to 2012). We were able to highlight dynamics of knowledge mobilization during the process. A confrontation of these dynamics with the knowledge proposed by agronomists led to identify inconsistencies.

Subsequently, we addressed a larger variety of re-design situations, either through individual interviews, or design workshops with groups of farmers, or knowledge-sharing meetings and visits to cropping systems experimentations. We focused on the indicators applied by farmers and their functions in farmers’ actions and learning, as change was being conducted. While agronomists produce a wide variety of indicators to assess the performances and impacts of the practices or production systems, we have shown that farmers apply more indicators related to the intermediate states of the agroecosystem, thus allowing more advanced adaptation and monitoring of the actions taken, further reinterpretation, and in the end, issuing new knowledge. Such indicators being seldom conceptualized and produced by agronomists so far, we include further in this study a number of key attributes as guidelines for later development.

Finally, we have called on the formerly established types and categories used in the previous steps to analyse combinations of knowledge that helped unlock change situations, with a particular focus on 'fundamental' knowledge (i.e. relating to biological, physical or ecological processes, or to the biology of cultivated or non-cultivated species). These categories are linked to the knowledge gained about practices and their effects. The fundamental knowledge appeared instrumental in building a systemic representation of a part of the cropping system, which validates innovative onfield actions and makes new agronomic knowledge more widely transferable.

In the field of professional didactics, we start from cropping systems re-design situations, to explore various aspects of knowledge pragmatisation in the agricultural sector. Regarding agronomy, we offer tools to identify the processes of creation and mobilization of knowledge, and the ways agronomists can provide knowledge support to make new developments of cropping systems a goal within reach.

Co-supervision

Marie-Hélène Jeuffroy et Lorène Prost

Jury

• Mme Marianne LE BAIL, Professeur, AgroParisTech (Présidente)
• Mme Mireille Navarrete, Chargé de recherches, INRA (Rapporteure)
• M. Paul OLRY, Professeur, Agrosup DIJON (Rapporteur)
• M. Eric SCOPEL, Chercheur, CIRAD (Examinateur)
• M. Bernard HUBERT, Directeur de recherche émérite, INRA (Examinateur)
• Mme Lorène PROST, Chargé de recherche, INRA (Examinatrice)
• Mme Marie-Hélène JEUFFROY, Directeur de recherche, INRA (Examinatrice)