F2.2. From foresight to research programming

From foresight to research programming : Agrimonde, Dualine…

Marion Guillou, chair of the Board Agreenium

Agreenium ?

• A French centre for research and higher education operating as a public scientific cooperation body

• in the fields of agriculture, food, animal health and the environment

• To create synergy between research , education and dissemination

• To best respond collectively to the issues and challenges of food security and sustainable agriculture worldwide

• Foresight processes transform the way we think and how we understand things

• They make people change their own point of view

• The foresight practices and techniques help managers, decision makers, politicians… to cope with environmental uncertainty and complexity and to react promptly to opportunities and threats

• In a complex and globalized world, it is more necessary than ever to imagine several scenarios ,to collect “weak signals” and to anticipate

• More than 100 researchers involved, who broke down the question of the sustainability of current food supply systems into a range of research issues

• The study highlights a clear lack of data

• It underlines the need for building scenarios on food supply systems to clarify the margins of uncertainty of the potential evolutions of the food systems and their consequences

• Complementary to Agrimonde, by focusing on the downstream of the systems and in particular on the consumers

Agrimonde terra

• complementary to Agrimonde

• Future land use is subject to uncertainty and to controversies between societal players, and is an important issue for global governance

• The foresight exercise will explore the conditions under which land use worldwide could become either an aggravating or a securing factor in food security.

• By combining regional approaches and a global approach, and linking the different levels with trade

• By combining a quantitative approach (modelling) with a qualitative approach (narratives, scenario building)

The link to research programming at Inra

• “Metaprogrammes” : inter-disciplinary research on global challenges• to implement cross-cutting research programmes which will

mobilize research teams from different scientific disciplines

• to identify major bottlenecks where research is needed

• Six Metaprogrammes launched in 2011

• « Foresight based » :• highlighting of the interdependences between systems and

scales

“The inescapable interconnectedness of agriculture’s different roles and functions” (IAASTD 2009)

• the need for changing the production paradigm : to produce more and other things, better, with less ,and differently

• the need for systemic and integratives approaches

What should we take care of ?• Foresight changes the representations that we have of the

future, in the light of reason, using the most objective data available (Thierry Gaudin)

• Beware of assertions : “agricultural production will have to increase by 70 % by 2050 to feed a population of some 9 billion people”

• The power of foresight is often underestimated

• The traps of the extrapolation come either from an inaccurate knowledge of the past, or from the incapacity to take into account possible ruptures (Philippe Madinier)

• Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future, Niels Bohr

Thank you for your attention

Photograph by AB Lagrelius & Westphal