Conventionalised vs. agroecological practices on organic vegetable farms: Investigating the influence of farm structure in a bifurcation perspective

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2021.103129Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Organic vegetable farms showed a range of farm structure, related to practices with different levels of agroecology.

  • The smallest farms were the most agroecological, while the most conventionalised practices were associated with a large percentage of sheltered area.

  • Large farms were less agroecological on average, but some had agroecological performances similar to those of smaller farms.

  • The coexistence of agroecological and conventionalised farms may result from bifurcation, where the role of new entrants needs further research.

Abstract

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.

Introduction

Organic agriculture is characterised by the prohibition of synthetic chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Beyond these certified standards, the overall principles which support organic farming (OF) are the use of natural resources by managing biological processes of ecological systems, and limited use of non-renewable resources and off-farm inputs (European Commission, 2007). However, the hypothesis of “conventionalisation” of OF, defined as “the introduction of farming practices that undermine the principles of organic farming” (Darnhofer et al., 2010) suggests that the mainstreaming of OF may increase the reliance of some organic farms on external inputs. Conventionalisation may also be related to a more industrial management approach and economic model, which contrasts with the small-scale family farming historically supported by OF (Howard, 1940; Lockeretz, 2007). OF based on applying a limited set of organic principles can be opposed to OF based on agroecological principles (Gliessman, 2013). Rosset and Altieri (1997) opposed agroecological OF, defined as “an approach that goes beyond the use of alternative inputs to develop integrated agroecosystems with minimal dependence on external, off-farm inputs”, to OF based on input substitution, driven by the agribusiness sector. The contrast between these models, hereafter referred to as “agroecological” and “conventionalised” organic systems, supports the “bifurcation hypothesis” (Darnhofer et al., 2010).

Beyond academic discussions about the relevance of this hypothesis, the bifurcation of OF is a controversial topic in civil society. This is especially true in France, where the media reveal a growing concern about “two-speed” OF (Bolis, 2017) and doubts of consumers about the true sustainability behind the organic label. These concerns are related to the rapid growth of OF in the country. In the past five years, the area of organic production in France has doubled, reaching 2.3 million ha, which represented 8.5% of French agricultural land in 2019. The organic market has followed the same trend to reach 11.9 billion € in 2019, 55% of which is sold in generalist supermarkets, 28% in organic shops and 11% by direct selling (Agence Bio, 2020). France represents 15% of the European Union's (EU's) OF area and 23% of the EU's organic product market (Agence Bio, 2019). The EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) supports OF, having given it 6.3 billion € from 2014 to 2020 (1.5% of the CAP budget). In France, organic vegetable production is the sector that receives the largest subsidies from the CAP per hectare: 900 € and 600 € for conversion and maintenance, respectively (French Senate, 2019). Within these global dynamics, the French organic vegetable sector has grown strongly in recent years, due to conversions of conventional farms and new entrants (FRAB, 2019), and currently represents ca. 8% of the national area of fresh vegetable production (Agence Bio, 2020). In France, the bifurcation debate is increasing for organic vegetables, fed by parallel contrasting trends. On one hand, the strong increase in sales, particularly in supermarkets, may favour larger and more specialised farms and become an incentive for large conventional vegetable farms to convert to OF. On the other, the country has seen a recent and growing development of “microfarms” created mainly by new entrants with no agricultural background and strong social and environmental aspirations, characterised by small areas, diversified production, short supply chains and radically alternative practices (e.g. inspired by permaculture) (Morel and Leger, 2016). Although the bifurcation hypothesis refers more to changes in practices on existing organic farms (Darnhofer et al., 2010), the role of these “new organic farmers” in France generates many discussions. At the heart of this societal debate in France, we identify three controversial statements that partly echo some scientific studies:

  • 1)

    Conversion of large conventional farms in response to the growing organic market would result in conventionalised OF (which somewhat echoes Läpple and Van Rensburg (2011), who observed that late adopters of OF tend to attach more importance to profit); in contrast, the strong ecological values of new entrants, for whom farming is above all a “life project”, would be materialised in agroecological OF (Morel and Leger, 2016).

  • 2)

    Conventionalised OF would be involved in long supply chains which conform to dominant industrial rationales, whereas “truly” agroecological OF forms would be part of local short supply chains that value agroecological practices in the perspective of a global food system (Francis et al., 2003; Fernandez et al., 2013; Guzman et al., 2016; Lamine and Dawson, 2018).

  • 3)

    Small farms would promote agroecological practices better than larger farms (Netting, 1993; Rosset, 2000); thus, larger farms would be related to conventionalised OF.

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 are related to conventionalised or agroecological OF. We considered a broad definition of structural factors, which included profiles of “new organic farmers”, marketing channels and farm size (Stanton, 1991). Most studies of conventionalisation and bifurcation have been performed by social scientists who focused on dynamics and structural evolution of farms over time, whereas the relationships between these structural changes and actual farming practices have rarely been investigated (Darnhofer et al., 2010). As agronomists, we did not analyse bifurcation as a temporal process. Instead, we empirically explored a snapshot of the current diversity of organic vegetable farms in France and assessed whether it reflects contrasting OF approaches that could be related to bifurcation. The main novelty of this study is its analysis of the extent to which structural factors that can reflect bifurcation are related to conventionalised or agroecological OF practices on the ground.

To reach these research objectives, we performed the study in mainland France, focussing on the north-west and south-east, which are two contrasting vegetable-producing regions. 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. The biotechnical functioning and socio-economic context of the resulting clusters were analysed using composite indexes that we developed based on the conceptual framework of Therond et al. (2017). To our knowledge, our study is the first quantified application of this framework.

Section snippets

Building the typology

To explore the diversity of the structure and practices of organic vegetable farms in France, we chose a typological approach (Sierra et al., 2017; Kamau et al., 2018; Blanco-Penedo et al., 2019). The variables chosen to characterise farming systems influence the resulting typology greatly (Alvarez et al., 2018), and the structure of the typology depends on its objective (Perrot and Landais, 1993). We built our typology using a six-step method developed for research or development projects by

General characteristics

Four clusters of 41, 99, 9 and 16 farms, respectively, were identified (Fig. 2). All quantitative variables were significantly related to the cluster variable (Table 1, Kruskal-Wallis p < 0.001). The chi-square tests indicated that all categorical variables but one (diversification) were related to the cluster variable (Table 3, p < 0.001).

The characteristics of the clusters are presented in Table 2, Table 3. UAA and the area of outdoor vegetables increased with cluster number (e.g. UAA had a

Selection of data and interpretation of the statistical analysis

We collected data from the farmers on a voluntary basis. We aimed to maximise the number and diversity of the farms involved by sending e-mails to farmers and managers of farmers' networks. Despite this communication effort, only willing farmers and managers answered the survey or forwarded it to farmers in their network, respectively. This approach may have resulted in a small sample size for some farm types (e.g. cluster 3). In particular, one farm in cluster 4 lay apart from the other farms

Conclusion

Our study, based on 165 farms in France, revealed a heterogeneity of organic vegetable farms that were grouped in four clusters with contrasting size, percentage of vegetable area under shelters, labour force, production diversity, mechanisation, involvement in supply chains, age, time since adoption of OF and farming practices. Methodologically, our study shows the utility of using composite indexes that aggregate primary indicators to position and compare the biotechnical and socio-economic

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the farmers who answered the survey and to the people who helped disseminate it. They also thank Mathieu Conseil (ITAB) and Vincent Faloya (INRAE), the vegetable experts who helped them develop the first hypothesis about the typology, and Goulven Maréchal (FRAB) for the opportunity to present these results to farmers to obtain their feedback. The research was supported by the Centre Technique Interprofessionnel des Fruits et Légumes (CTIFL) and the Association

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