Reading agroecological transformations

Agronomy and landscape architecture are two disciplines with an operational planning focus, and they share both multiple fundamental sciences (botany, pedology, hydrology, climatology, now included under the term of ecological sciences). Both have a common root in horticulture. In the debates that animate urban planning on agricultural issues, which are heated today as this study day points out, agronomy is very little present, still marked – and this is logical spatially – by its interest in large-scale farming systems production, and less in territoriality aspects: urban agriculture is certainly a recognised theme within INRAE, for example, but only very marginally. Landscape architecture, which is primarily an urban planning movement concerned with the creation of urban public spaces, is therefore a useful tool for renewing practices aimed at this relationship between cities and agriculture, and for finding new models that respond to ecological challenges while being economically sustainable.

Based on observations of volunteer farmers and their connection to their territories, we have developed a reflection on these intersections: they share a common goal of seeking to hybridise the tools and knowledge of these two disciplines. The corpus is twofold. First, we’ll analyse the proceedings of the ‘Agropaysages’ seminars, which have been held for almost fifteen years, during which agronomy students and landscape architecture imagine an agroecological transformation of the choosen farms. Second, we’ll review a series of visits to exemplary farms led by a collective that also combines landscape and agricultural analysis, including agroecology. The analysis of the projects and assessments highlights a typology of desired transformations (within the framework of the projects imagined by the students) or transformations already underway (within the framework of cross-diagnostics). This typology proposes two factors of transformation that are material and spatial, corresponding to the activation of relationships between agricultural practices and biophysical environments: the role of uncultivated landscape elements, and the spatial organisation of cultivated space, particularly parcels of land design. It is complemented by two more immaterial, territorial factors, in the sense that they involve not only spaces but also non-agricultural actors and communities: a multi-scale approach to the functions of agricultural spaces, and the multifunctionality of farming. This forms the basis for interdisciplinary questioning, accompanied by a methodological proposal. Agricultural landscapes are treated as one would treat an interview, using a comprehensive interview method, alternating between a global view and a detailed view, crossreferencing different types of discourse, and drawing on with both the agricultural actors and whatthey produce as a system. These crossings reveal clues and hypotheses, and at the same time outline futuristic projection to address environmental challenges.