Agronomy, land, and territory: Working on and for territorial development, the stakes for agronomy

Abstract

Over the last three decades, agronomy has opened many new pathways for research and innovation that involve new spatial approaches and relate to land use. This has led agronomists to address spatial and organizational entities other than (and often larger than) agricultural fields and farms. Such progress would appear to contribute to a wide range of land use or land management projects, conceived and operated by different groups of local actors. Today agronomists often refer to a "territory" as the appropriate scale for many of their approaches. Does that mean that agronomy really does make a substantial contribution to territorial development? In this paper, we try to answer this question by examining the state of the art in agronomy, with respect to the concepts of territory and territorial development, as defined by human geography and regional sciences. Three successive stages are analyzed: from a local to a spatial approach, from a spatial approach to land use management, and from land use management to territorial development. Each of these stages corresponds to a qualitative shift in the concepts and methods to be used. Our findings indicate that agronomy is already successfully involved in many aspects of land use management but has not yet really addressed territorial development. This could explain why, in France, agronomists are not renowned or sought after for their possible contribution to the elaboration of territorial development projects, as revealed by our examination of a representative sample of projects. Finally, we identify possible future ways to help agronomy and agronomists make more efficient and useful contributions to territorial development.