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1 1 Neologism in French.
2 2 SCOP: Sociétés Coopératives Participatives, employee-owned companies.
3 3 SCIC: Sociétés Coopératives d’Intérêt Collectif, stakeholder-owned companies (employees, clients, suppliers, local institutions, funders, etc.).
Chapter written by Bérangère L. SZOSTAK, Michael E. LAVIOLETTE and Thierry BURGER-HELMCHEN.
3
Agriculture – Agricultural and Food Innovations and Agro-ecological Transition
3.1. Introduction
Three main periods in the history of the use of the concept of innovation in agriculture can be distinguished (Temple et al. 2019). The first period, which does not explicitly discuss the notion of innovation, but the question of technical progress, is affirmed by agricultural scientists, covers the two centuries preceding World War II. The second period covers the 30–40 years following World War II, during which the notion of innovation, posited by Schumpeter (1935), was deployed in all sectors. The third period, starting in the 1980s, is marked by a concomitance between the questioning of the previous development model and a renewal of the concept of innovation that diversifies its use in agriculture. Through the prism of these three periods, we will successively examine how the scientific communities have dealt with agricultural innovation, in order to explore the specificities of agricultural and food activities that make these activities interact with the use or conceptualization of innovation.
3.2. Two centuries of agricultural revolution without “innovation”
In the context of the famines between the 18th and 19th centuries, agriculture was called upon to respond to food demands, as well as to an industrialization that reduced the relative number of farmers and necessitated an increase in productivity. Technical changes (cultivation practices, tools) triggered a slow agricultural revolution, differentiated according to territories and sectors, closely linked to the development of industry and trade. All these changes benefited from the progress of knowledge on plant functioning and soil fertility. They were also linked to the institutionalization of agronomic research, carried out by the experiments of agricultural notables and then by public action (Jas 2005). These two centuries of agricultural transformation were observed by the first economists and sometimes inspired their vision of technical progress. This was the case, in the 18th century, of physiocrats (such as Quesnay) who argued that the investment of rich farmers, enlightened by new methods, would improve the efficiency of agriculture. Classical economists (Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Say, etc.) then turned their attention to technical change, based, above all, on observations of the infant industry. For Smith, the introduction of new machines and the division of labor were the result of initiatives by economic actors (in particular, craftsmen), and also implied profound institutional and contractual changes, to which technical innovations were therefore subordinate (Labini 2007). In agriculture, for example, he suggested the introduction of long-term rental contracts to encourage investment. For his part, Ricardo (1817) identified two forms of improvement in agriculture, namely “[...] those that increase the productive capacity of the land [...]” (new rotations, fertilizers, etc.) and “[...] those that, through improved machinery, make it possible to obtain the same product with less work [...]”. Say associated the image of the farmer, already dear to physiocrats, with an entrepreneur in the agricultural industry and insisted on the links between technical changes in agriculture and those in industry. Marx, whose work in agriculture put technical progress into a historical perspective that would lead to an appropriation of living labor by capital, a kind of a violation for workers and peasants, also saw that it was necessary for the progress of humanity.
While the question of technical change in agriculture was largely ignored by the academic economists of the 19th century, it was, on the other hand, very present among the first chemists, agronomists, rural economists and agricultural historians. The analysis of technical change was also the subject of work in rural sociology at the beginning of the 20th century, which analyzed the social and political conditions that governed the technical transformations in European agriculture.
3.3. The green revolutions driven by linear and technological innovation design
The post-war historical and macroeconomic contexts generated an institutional environment that placed the State at the center of productive investment in the sector of food and agriculture. In this context, the models developed in the industry in terms of research specialization, economies of scale, competitiveness and the dissemination of technical artifacts were applied to innovation in agriculture. A consumer society structured by an agro-industrial and agri-food sector (cereals, oilseeds, meat) became globalized. Innovation became the driving force of competition. The objective of international agronomic research was then focused on increasing global food production through new technologies, known as the green revolution.
During this period, the social sciences studied and supported technical changes in agriculture using the notion of innovation conceived as the process of farmers adopting new technical objects (seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, machines, etc.) that have been developed by research and industry. Rural sociology, with Rogers’ work in the United States, thus, for over 30 years, provided analytical methods for the diffusion of new technologies, studying the obstacles to their adoption according to typologies of adopters. Other work analyzes societal resistance to agricultural modernization (Mendras 1970). A Marxist-inspired school of thought also criticized agricultural innovation as a means of extending capitalism in order to integrate agriculture into industrial sectors.
3.4. The notion of innovation in the face of agricultural and food transitions
The succession of crises in the economic growth model that is based on industrialization, by renewing the role of agriculture and food in development mechanisms, calls into question the very nature and conceptualization of innovation in order to respond to global challenges. The work of development economists in this case highlights how pressure on resources structures the innovation capacities of agrarian societies, which
