What will “produce” mean in a few decades? What current issues will determine the agricultural practices of tomorrow? In a series of articles, Biocoop, alongside Usbek & Rica, questions the future of food consumption and agriculture. We start with a fiction. The story of a certain François P., market gardener with the look of a gentleman farmer in France in 2050.
François P., tall and thin, nonchalantly cultivates his gentleman farmer look , preferring tweed jackets to the down jackets, fleeces and T-shirts of yesteryear. But that's not the only outfit that sets a farmer in 2049 apart from their predecessors. Moreover, François tells us bluntly: “ Agriculture, and market gardening in particular, have changed dramatically since I started to take an interest in the subject. From the outside, we measure badly everything that has been played in thirty years ". At the beginning of 2020, in the midst of the Covid19 crisis, when he was soon to celebrate his tenth birthday, François P. was confined, and like many young people of his age, hung out on Youtube. He had come across a video in which a Sol Vivant market gardening specialist gently teased Parisians who prided themselves on agriculture, "back to the local", pinning their obsession for "aeration" (soil ... and living things in general. ). “ For me, ” explains François, “ it sounded like a challenge. I was born and grew up in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, and I didn't see how that made me less legitimate to do this job. It will take another trip to the Sarthe and the discovery of an ultra-modern tractor to cement François' vocation. A good student, he opted for a technical bac, followed by a TB preparation to prepare for his entry into agronomy school. However, he will not go to the end for reasons that he attributes to a " lack of seriousness at the moment when he would fall to demonstrate it a hundredfold . " Not discouraged, however, François could count on his determination, sufficient scientific knowledge to set foot in the stirrup, and a thirst for learning made possible by the multiplication of sources of information and mutual aid networks.
Today, at the age of forty and after much trial and error, François is at the head of a small farm, mainly market gardening, but whose certain characteristics are radically different from those which had made him dream in his early youth. Also, as soon as you arrive on the site, you are struck by the presence of huge solar panels topping an ultra-modern glass and wood building, looking like a scientific research center.
"On a failure the end of the world"
Francis' vocation grew at the same time as a feeling of global anxiety developed about the future of the planet. We were entering the Anthropocene era, in which humans were recognized as a “geological force” in their own right. Also, François will have very quickly integrated the risks and challenges of the 21st century: health crises, increase in the world population, soil impoverishment, global warming. Feeding everyone without dealing a fatal blow to the planet seemed like the new squaring of the circle. A fortiori when we know that market gardening, for centuries, has been one of the most destructive for the environment: " The work, which has been practiced since antiquity, offers only short-term benefits. In the long term, it depletes the soil forever , ”explains François. " And to think that we based all our agriculture on it!" ". He quipped : “We missed the end of the world … narrowly, and partly in good faith! ". For François, salvation comes first through so-called “conservation” agriculture, eliminating work and emphasizing crop rotations and the systematic use of cutlery - those plant mats that include soil protection while allowing seedlings. “ In France, when I started, ” explains François, “ the notion of living soil was still a little esoteric. Those who defended this notion were rather seen as "decreasers", disconnected from reality. The pandemic episode during the Covid19 had given us a glimpse of new production paradigms, but it was not yet that… I paid the price when I started! ". French skepticism? Maybe. Because at the same time, the Americans - who were readily presented as the official polluters of the planet - had already adopted the concept. And with success: conservation agriculture, by treating the soil as a living being that it would be imprudent to “shake up”, has enabled the latter to recover its function of absorbing carbon, and to counterbalance in a significant way the effects of global warming.
François spoke with lip service to another cause of this reluctance in vogue in the 2030s:
“The problem is that we were coming out of a period when immediate profitability had been a real mantra. This is why things took their time. Basically, it is only in the last five or six years that we can measure to what extent the long term has paid off, both in environmental and economic terms, if only with the drastic reduction in inputs. "
A farm-laboratory
The exploitation of François, as we have said, sends back a rather distant image from clichés which always die hard. "To plow or not, a modern market gardener can no longer ignore certain equipment, " he says. “ To finance them, it was necessary for me to diversify my activity. So I also became an electricity producer, taking advantage of the aid that the state offered in 2037. The large surface area occupied by the solar panels allows me to generate enough electricity for this little "extra" to represent. 30% of my income. A lot of colleagues are more in biofuel but all in all, many farmers now have this double hat. "
The laboratory side of his operation is by no means trivial: research occupies an important place in François' life. Yet he does not see himself as a scientist: “ I am probably a researcher in the strictest sense of the term. My scientific background is limited, but it has the merit of existing. The sinews of war, in my part, is the network, the exchanges, the pooling of information. » Thanks to all over the world, François is constantly perfecting his knowledge: properties of new fungi, behavior of certain earthworms . He specifies : " I am equipped with very precise measuring devices, but I would not have the background to fully exploit the data I collect. On the other hand, I can share them and take advantage of the feedback that others, more qualified, will give me. "
Moreover, life “in a network” will have had other consequences for François. In particular, to bring him closer to consumers - he doesn't like the term customer - and to rethink in depth with them - and other farmers, of course - a relationship which, for a long time, will have been largely dehumanized. “ There was a balance to be found between shopping in supermarkets, completely disembodied, and direct sales, which is not a panacea either. We therefore go through smaller cooperative structures, on a human scale, which have managed to free themselves from central purchasing bodies. "
In this mode of operation, the consumer becomes the driving force, both producers and points of sale being aware of their needs almost directly. It is therefore possible to fine-tune orders, or even direct part of the production to one point of sale rather than another. The whole rarely going beyond the local scale. “ In the supermarket, a carrot is a carrot. Being able to put a name and even a head on the carrot: that's new! », Enthuses François.
Hi-tech VS low-tech
When we tease him about his costume, he replies: " We must not believe that we do not get dirty anymore! But a little less, no doubt, depending on the degree of mechanization available ”. Mechanization? Would this notion not go against the grain of what François advocates? “ You mustn't forget that I fell in love with a tractor. I didn't expect to fit into a… spaceship cockpit , ”he recalls. And today, if it is no longer a question of disturbing the soil, we still cannot envisage cultivation on a more or less large scale without a little help. François introduces us to his autonomous robot-picker for potatoes, a strange machine that reminds us of the tripods of the War of the Worlds. " Developments in fuel cell technology have made them affordable, even to small operators like me. When weeding is necessary, which has become rare, I prefer to hire the robot ”.
What about drones? Since the 2030s, they have become as familiar to those who cross the countryside of France and elsewhere as the crows and raptors in the past, and François of course has his own mini-fleet: “ Prices have fallen at the same time as autonomy has increased. Today, it is no longer a luxury or a tool for the “rich”. In my case, drones are mainly intended to analyze the structure of soils, thanks to the mini-mass spectrometers with which they are equipped. With that and all the sensors installed on the farm, you can really see all of this life, once invisible, in real time. " It's time to optimize yield… and protect the soil ! The intra-plot modulation, which consisted in considering the needs of a cultivable land no longer in its entirety, but by mini-zones, had cleared the land from the end of the 20th century. But even though recourse to inputs (fertilizers, weedkillers) has become almost nil to date, this quasi-surgical approach in the field remains relevant.
When we ask François, a little naively no doubt, if market gardening version 2050 was not content with reinventing the wheel, he takes on the falsely amused air of those who are tired of always repeating the same thing, and invites us to follow him in his " control tower ". There, screens, computers, desks and joysticks are aligned on tables arranged in a U. From this room, François watches, organizes, plans, pilots, and shares.
“ Obviously, the idea that nature knows very well how to grow things on its own is not new ”, he is justified. “ But there is still a paradox. In Taoism there is a notion poorly translated into French which is that of "non-act". Only, non-acting is not doing nothing. It actually takes a lot of work to "not act"! Do you see a surfer on his wave? In appearance, he does nothing but let himself be carried away. But if it was you or me, we would be in the water. Well, my work is identical in a way. To let vegetables grow "alone"… you need all of that. "After having verified that his robot-gatherer was indeed returning to the fold on his long and slender legs, he concluded:" The science of the ancients was mostly a form of common sense, which got lost at one point. But common sense alone is not everything, and at one point, we got a little lost in making rhyme "wisdom" and "low-tech". Today, without research, we would not go far. But without common sense, we would do the same stupid things again. The balance is not easy to maintain, but as long as we have it, no one will starve anymore ”. And while looking at his plots through the window, he adds: " starting with the earth itself ... "