Society

The work presents a sociological and historical analysis of transformations in French agriculture since the Second World War. The author shows that some farmers continue to invent unusual productive forms that withstand the on-going extension of industrial agriculture. The work has six chapters and can be a medium for teaching the history of French agriculture.

Based on archive documents and surveys, the author analyses the transformation of farmers, both men and women, since the beginning of the last century. It addresses the influences of post-war modernisation and group farming in the 1960s. It examines the changes in certain farming populations, pig breeders, organic farmers and also women. Lastly, the author presents the effects of a reconstructed work area (rurbanisation, for example) on today's farmers.

Partly instrumentalised by the policies, the nature conservation movements and the economists, ecology is the vector for many perceived ideas. The ecologists themselves fuel the debate dramatising the future of the planet, in the belief that they are giving legitimacy to their discipline. But are the resources used for ecological research in line with the anxieties and appeals from society and managers? This work is the testimony of an ecologist at the heart of this multi-discipline research.

This book outlines how the concept of geogovernance makes the spatial issues in managing their territory visible and comprehensible to its citizens. Geogovernance is defined by numeric tools used in geography (spatial analysis, modelling, GIS, public Web). These share information between residents, users, development professionals, experts and elected representatives in order to build up jointly the decisions to be made for the territory.

Fruit of the photosynthesis of plants, the biomass is an essential resource for humans, supplying them with food, energy and materials. With its three sources (forest, crops and waste), the energy-biomass is restricted by the production capacity of soils and its competition with its other uses. Could it therefore contribute to the growing energy needs of humanity and to the energy transition that must take place to reduce our oil and gas consumption substantially?

How can cultivated plant biodiversity contribute to the transformation and the "ecologisation" of agriculture in Southern countries? Based on extensive field work in the Southern countries, a great deal of scientific progress is presented in all areas affecting agriculture (agronomy, plant breeding and crop protection, cultivation systems, etc.) in order to intensify the ecological processes in cultivated plots and at the scale of rural landscapes.

Defined in the Bruntland Report in the 1980s, sustainable development is a notion that remains largely controversial: helping to assess it is the main objective of this book. What are the specific features of sustainable development? What relationship does it enjoy with growth? What is its timescale - long-term development or countdown? Sustainability is studied here across various sectors - urban, landscape, biodiversity, industry and agro-materials.

Ce numéro spécial des Cahiers Agricultures traite de la problématique du foncier dans les pays en développement, notamment les états africains, mais aussi au Brésil et en Indonésie. Il met en perspective le rôle du foncier dans les transformations du secteur rural (investissements privés, états, communautés d’acteurs locaux).

This book champions the idea that it is possible to achieve plentiful agricultural production whilst improving the quality of the environment. It discusses the various specific features of ecologically-intensive agriculture, sets out the changes in the concept and states the means of expanding the use of ecological functionalities for agriculture and animal husbandry. It addresses the conditions for global economic and social viability, seen as a factor in successful ecologically-intensive agriculture. Based on a panel with very wide experiences, this work will fuel the debates between agricultural professionals and environmental groups so that farmers themselves become true champions of the agricultural biosphere.

How, since 2006 when the organic law on the finance law entered into force, has the figure become the centrepiece in a way of governing where the political decision is subjected to a logic of result? The author wonders about the current hold of the management evaluation over the definition of the governmental activity. He shows how it makes the democratic practices lose their strength. It addresses the forms of resistance that civil servants and citizens can use to oppose this erosion.