Agricultural and food transition : the revenge of territories

Henri Rouillé d’Orfeuil, January 2018

Our food system, largely globalised today, covers a vast field going upstream from agricultural production and downstream to food consumption. It mobilizes 50% of human labour, consumes 75% of the planet’s fresh water and emits 25% of all greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The social and environmental stakes that are induced are hence enormous.

Here, Henri Rouillé d’Orfeuil attempts to define what is covered by the agricultural and food transition, why it is indispensable to implement it and how to do so. He reminds us of how the agro-industrial model developed historically and shows how its economic performance goals have also driven the impoverishment and exclusion of most of humanity and the growing destruction of part of the world’s natural and mining resources.

The alternative to agro-industry could come from a revival of the development of territories, which have been ignored and demolished by globalisation, whereas the growing aspiration to take account of the social, environmental and cultural performances of food production, which are ignored by the markets, could very well herald the revenge of the commons.

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