CONTEXT

According to the bifurcation hypothesis, a gap may be growing between “agroecological” organic farms, which rely mostly on ecosystem services, and “conventionalised” ones, which rely more on external inputs, related to contrasting evolutions in farm structure (e.g. size, specialisation) and supply chains.

OBJECTIVE

The objectives of this study were to 1) analyse the diversity of organic vegetable farming systems in France, 2) investigate the extent to which bifurcation can be observed among organic vegetable farms in France and 3) investigate the extent to which structural factors that can reflect bifurcation (e.g. profiles of “new organic farmers”, marketing channels, farm size) are related to conventionalised or agroecological OF.

METHODS

We developed a farm typology based on Factor Analysis of Mixed Data (FAMD) and agglomerative hierarchical clustering (AHC) using information obtained from an online survey with 165 complete answers. We used composite indexes that aggregated primary indicators to compare the biotechnical and socio-economic dimensions of farms among clusters.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

The diversity that exists in organic vegetable farms, with large differences among farm clusters, can be interpreted as a snapshot sign of bifurcation, which is a temporal process, and support hypotheses that relate farming structure to farming practices in this perspective. Our study suggests that 1) the dichotomy that contrasts “agroecological” to “conventionalised” organic farms should be considered as a conceptual perspective with two poles and a gradient of farms between them; 2) farms that were created as organic tended to be more agroecological than farms that were converted from conventional farming; 3) new entrants to organic farming had the best agroecological performances; 4) the best agroecological performances were associated with short supply chains, although good agroecological performances did occur with some long supply chains; and 5) the smallest farms were more likely to implement agroecological practices, but farm size did not have the same influence on all agroecological practices.

SIGNIFICANCE

These findings confirm the influence of structural factors that reflect bifurcation of the degree of conventionalisation or agroecology of organic vegetable farming. For a given set of structural factors (i.e. farmer profile, farm size and supply chain), however, agroecological performances varied greatly. This suggests levels of freedom to develop more agroecological organic practices for a given farm size or supply chain that should be further investigated.

中文翻译：

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有机蔬菜农场的常规与农业生态实践：从分叉的角度调查农场结构的影响

语境

根据分叉假设，主要依赖于生态系统服务的“农业生态”有机农场与更多依赖外部投入的“常规”有机农场之间的差距可能会扩大，这与农场结构的变化形成对比（例如规模，专业化）。 ）和供应链。

客观的

这项研究的目的是：1）分析法国有机蔬菜种植系统的多样性，2）研究法国有机蔬菜农场中分叉的程度，以及3）研究可以反映结构性因素的程度分叉（例如“新有机农民”的概况，销售渠道，农场规模）与常规或农业生态OF有关。

方法

我们使用从165个完整答案中进行的在线调查获得的信息，基于混合数据因子分析（FAMD）和聚集层次聚类（AHC）开发了一种农场类型学。我们使用综合主要指标的综合指数来比较集群之间农场的生物技术和社会经济维度。

结果与结论

有机蔬菜农场中存在的多样性在农场集群之间存在很大差异，可以解释为分叉的快照迹象，这是一个暂时的过程，并支持从这个角度将农业结构与农业实践联系起来的假说。我们的研究表明：1）应该将“农业生态学”与“传统化”有机农场形成对比的二分法应被视为具有两个极点和两个农场之间梯度的概念性观点；2）与传统农业相比，有机农业更趋于农业生态化；3）有机农业的新进入者具有最好的农业生态表现；4）最佳农业生态绩效与短供应链相关，尽管在某些较长供应链中确实具有良好的农业生态绩效；

意义

这些发现证实了反映有机蔬菜种植常规化程度或农业生态学分叉性的结构性因素的影响。但是，对于给定的一组结构性因素（即，农民的个人资料，农场规模和供应链），农业生态绩效差异很大。这表明对于给定的农场规模或供应链，发展更多农业生态有机实践的自由度应进一步研究。