Challenges and issues

Our work focusses on the production and implementation of policies, regulations and various forms of coordination. We aim to analyse existing mechanisms and highlight their socioeconomic and political impacts on food systems and stakeholder practices in the field with a view to accompanying their developments. We adopt a multi-disciplinary social science approach combining economics, sociology, anthropology and political science while calling on quantitative and qualitative tools. Our work is founded on three main research thrusts.

Scientific issues

Axis 1 - Hegemonies, critique and dynamics of debate

The evolution of agricultural and food systems is dependent on even greater developments with regard to government systems on a global scale. Major drivers of these changes include new power balances between the different players from both an economic and political standpoint on the international and trans-national scene. For example, new powers such as China and India grow in importance, and transnational corporations diversify various type of political work in order to assert their power in the game of global influence. These geopolitical developments have major consequences on the structure and dynamics of food systems and on the manner in which public and private policies and regulations are built at every level of governance, including local. The transformations resulting from contemporary neoliberal globalisation also radically change the rules of public debate, albeit indirectly. Through our work, we endeavour to understand these changes. We analyse the manner by which criticisms of these globalised systems and their consequences emerge, and the welcome they receive. We pay particular attention to the strategies deployed by the critics themselves and by the predominant stakeholders with a view to incorporating the criticism or channelling it in order to mitigate it.

Axis 2 - Diverse and hybrid mechanisms

The second thrust focusses more particularly on the operations and diversity of the existing or emerging regulatory mechanisms, as well as the hybrid solutions they give rise to. Against a backdrop of transnationalisation, mechanisms are increasingly based on technical indicators while being deprived of “good production practices” defined at the global level. This is the case, for example, for multi-stakeholder mechanisms for creating voluntary standards for the sustainability of agricultural commodities, mechanisms for targeting emergency food aid or payments for ecosystem services (PES), all aspects which are often the focus of research within this thrust. It is also the case of multi-sector mechanisms, including the agriculture and food sectors, implemented with a view to managing health issues from a One Health perspective. In addition to analysing these mechanisms driven by globalisation, their effects and the questions of inequality they raise, in particular in terms of access to public debt and participation in defining what is at stake between different types of stakeholder, we also focus on the alternatives to these global mechanisms. This is the case for participatory guarantee systems (PGS), which pave a different way in the field of certification of sustainable systems, or mechanisms which place essential goods at the heart of groups, such as care or critical participation.

Axis 3 - Evaluation of methods of regulation and mechanisms aimed at promoting more sustainable agricultural and food systems

In the third thrust, we assess the effects of public, private and collective mechanisms aimed at promoting sustainability within food systems, as well as forms of coordination in the value chains capable of influencing stakeholder practices and the results in terms of sustainability. This evaluation takes account of the conditions in which the mechanisms are designed and implemented in different contexts. We attempt to answer the following two key questions: to what extent can public, private and collective regulatory mechanisms encourage the stakeholders in food systems to adopt more sustainable practices, and what are the impacts of the different forms of organisation and coordination within food systems? The evaluation procedure also involves monitoring and assessing social innovations designed to foster sustainable food in order to observe and monitor their different impacts in relation to the question of their changing scale and the political accompaniment afforded the transitions.

Key areas of research

• Food policies in countries of the North and South
• Food crisis management
• Biodiversity conservation policies
• Environmental regulation mechanisms in the agricultural sector
• Agro-environmental contractualisation (MAE, PSE)
• Regulatory and support mechanisms for organic farming
• Agro-ecology and dedicated public policies
• Regulation of the organic inputs market
• Regulation of the veterinary medicines market
• Management policies for emerging sanitary risks (anti-bioresistance, zoonoses)
• Policies for the reduction of pesticide use
• Miscellaneous social innovations for more sustainable food systems

Main geographic areas

• Africa
• South-Est-Asia
• Brazil
• Mediterranean
• European Union

Scientific appraisal: Food System Assessment (2019-2023)

Several members of the Regulations research group are involved in this evaluation project of food systems with a view to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. These evaluations are based on a systemic approach which takes account of the food system as a whole and examines the numerous interactions involved through four key sectors: nutrition and food security, economic well-being, territorial equity and environmental protection.

This project is placed under the aegis of a partnership between the European Union, the FAO and the CIRAD, in cooperation with the national governments and the stakeholders of the food systems – a consultation and evaluation process of these systems has been launched in 50 countries.
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