TEFOR

Ongoing health, climate and geopolitical crises have shown the vulnerability of our food systems and the need for a transition to more resilient, self-sufficient local food systems. Given its extremely low level of food self-sufficiency (an estimated 2% of the food consumed is produced locally), the Alpes-Maritimes department is facing a real challenge in this regard, despite its past agricultural and culinary tradition. At the same time, strong initiatives have been developed by citizens, farmers and decision-makers to reverse this trend and restore a certain level of local agriculture. The department has launched six official local food projects, and a host of initiatives to help new farmers set up and create local sales channels for their products. In addition, the presence of a relatively wealthy fraction of the population that can afford comparatively more expensive products potentially justifies the development of a local market.

The Tefor (Territorial Food Systems Resilience) project seeks to gain a better understanding of the levers and obstacles to this transition. An interdisciplinary team comprising two geographers from the ESPACE laboratory, three economists from GREDEG, an agronomist from ISA and an expert in collaborative methods from OTECCA are working towards the same goal: the co-construction of scenarios for tomorrow's agriculture. The area studied is the Cap Azur Metropolitan Cluster, located at the western end of the department, and home to approximately 400,000 people. Its history shows a clear division between a highly populated coastal area where agricultural land has been lost to urbanization, and a rural hinterland where land has been left fallow or preserved for extensive livestock farming (including for recreational purposes). Today, the challenge is to understand how such an area can feed itself and attain a higher level of local self-sufficiency. This can only be achieved by collaborating with different disciplines and actors.

The project team, led by Nathalie Lazaric from GREDEG, first carried out an analysis of the area to characterize current food systems and their development over the past 150 years, and to identify the obstacles and tipping points towards territorial resilience. This involved joining discussions regarding Territorial Food Plans with the communities concerned, and studying data from different sources including the national agricultural census to spatially characterize the agricultural landscape and its evolution. The project has also made it possible to identify, study and unify some of the main innovative agricultural initiatives within the area.

The initiatives under study highlight an important phenomenon of diversification of the economic models implemented by farmers, and this may offer a pathway towards a locally resilient agriculture. At present, Tefor is focusing on studying how the combination of traditional farming with the production of energy by photovoltaic greenhouses can create synergies between food and energy production. The hypothesis is that this could provide a more stable income for farmers and create a partnership with industry and could help fund longer-term projects.

An additional outcome is the production of agent-based models to explain the process and potential scenarios for reintroducing agriculture in the area. We have developed a first model that focuses on economic variables (chiefly, variations in farmers’ income) to explore how this might influence the future of the agrifood system. In addition, ongoing interdisciplinary work is seeking to extend the model to include spatial dimensions, with the objective of studying where and what type of production is possible in a given area.

Ultimately, the Tefor project aims to design tools to assist public decision-makers and local stakeholders in developing local food resilience, notably by creating a serious game to be used  in participatory workshops. This “gamification” should help the stakeholders (local actors, farmers, citizens) take a new turn while also highlighting the different possible pathways of transition.