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Summary:
In
memoriam : Bats ;
Urbi et orbi (in Japanese);
Sommaire en français (avec résumés
des articles).
PROBLÉMATIQUES ET DÉBATS
Sustainable farming: the foundations of a new social
contract? (Etienne Landais) ; Economic assessment
and the environment - public decisions (Michel Cohen, Lara and Dominique
Dron) ; The sanitary state of European forests (Guy Landmann)
; The standards for livestock housing are 150 years old, the
code of good agricultural practice 100 years old… (Pierre Morlon)
; Mountain farming and state support for spatial management:
from discourse to reality. (Gilles Bazin) ; Aurochs: return
of a prehistoric animal or scientific manipulation? (Piotr Daszkiewicz
and Jean Aikhenbaum).
The French Agricultural Scenery - Highlights
(Repères dans le paysage agricole français)
The Environment and Society Mission: on the lookout…
Patrick Legrand
Humans, game animals and damage (François Spitz) ; An
assessment of the environmental impact of chemicals for transgenic rape resistant
to glyphosate and glufosinate (Philippe Girardin, Christian Bockstaller
and Luc Merouzeau) ; CAP and the environment in 27 points
(Philippe Cacciabue, Matthieu Calame and Olivier Rank) ;
Estimating the impact of agricultural practices on the
environment (Christophe Reibel) ; Changes
in the type of crops grown in Lorraine and Alsace (France)(Marc.Benoit):
a threat for the groundwater (Serge Ramon) ;
Other landmarks, other landscapes (Autres repères, autres
paysages)
Catching butterflies can surprisingly save them (Larry
Orsak) ; Social actors and agri-environmental policy in the
European Union (Eduardo Moyano and Fernando Garrigo)
[R] Sustainable farming: the foundations
of a new social contract? [L]
First used in 1987, the term "sustainable development" generally refers
to the means used to conciliate development dynamics and resource and natural
environment protection, in the long term. Sustainable development has now
progressed towards the autonomisation of environment protection imperatives.
How does this approach apply to agriculture? Up to now, farmers have been
hostile to this method, however they are starting to consider sustainable
development as a new social contract and the idea of sustainability may be
as good a driving force as productivity was in the past. Scientists are often
ill at ease when faced with a complex long-term "extra-scientific" topic
and they find this approach rather problematic.
At the farm level, sustainability would improve everyday life and would ensure
the farm viability. As for the development modalities, such as those of intensive
pig farming, they may reveal to be unsustainable.
By Etienne Landais, chargé de mission auprès
du président de l'INRA, Paris
Etienne.Landais@paris.inra.fr
[R] Economic assessment and the
environment - public decisions [L]
The cost of accidental pollution or of natural disasters may be quite easy
to assess, yet one cannot say the same about the financial loss and costs
entailed by the lack of protection of the environment (or of health, as a
matter of fact). We are faced with technical obstacles but also with financial
covenants and different ways of thinking. The authors of this text analyse
these obstacles in order to support the measures taken against them.
By Michel Cohen, Lara and Dominique Dron,
Cellule de prospective et stratégie, MATE, Paris
dominique.dron@environnement.gouv.fr
[R]The sanitary state of European
forests [L]
Since the 15-year-old acid rain scare, thirty countries have set up a
tight observation network. However, there is a great difference between figures
and facts: trees are subject violent attacks and forests are in a piteous
state. Figures vary because of the many different methods used to observe
trees and because of the cultural differences. The information given in France
is however relatively correct as French scientists remain prudent and are
not obsessed by atmospheric pollution. The information is treated region
by region and takes the forest ecosystems into consideration.
By Guy Landmann,
MAP-DERF, Paris
landmann.dsf@wanadoo.fr
[R] The standards for livestock housing
are 150 years old, the code of good agricultural practice 100 years old…
[L]
Environmental recommendations included in the standards for the housing of
livestock and in "good" agricultural practice are not recent. Most of them
date back to the XIXth century and are based on the same knowledge on processes
as nowadays, but in a very different context regarding societal concerns:
at the time, the problem was not that of avoiding pollution, but of preserving
the fertilising nutrients. Indeed, for centuries the removal by, and loss
of nutrients to agriculture, was only partially compensated by manure
applications that corresponded to a transfer of fertility from the pastures
to the cultivated land and caused soil exhaustion. This situation induced
XIXth century French agronomists like Mathieu de Dombasle to popularise a
set of recommendations on how to draw maximum advantage from farmyard manure.
The scientific revolution initiated by Lavoisier and continued by Liebig
(mineral nutrition of plants) only had practical effects, in the case of
nitrogen, after industry was able to produce synthetic nitrogen fertilisers
in large quantities i.e., in the first quarter of the XXth century. Until
then, the development of knowledge on the nitrogen cycle in the soil (inter
alia, the role of microbes studied by Pasteur's disciples), led chemists
and agronomists like Sabatier and Dehérain to establish and popularise
knowledge and recommendations to avoid the leaching of nitrates.
Par Pierre Morlon,
INRA-SAD, Dijon
Pierre.Morlon@enesad.inra.fr
[R] Mountain farming and state support
for spatial management: from discourse to reality.
[L]
An analysis of the structural and productive evolution of mountain farming
since 1988 (date of the last agricultural census) highlighted the wide difference
between the income of mountain farmers and other farmers. The difference
exists despite specific financial support to compensate for the natural
constraints of the mountain environment, a problem that leads to unequal
agricultural development of French regions. The solution would most probably
lie in greater financial support. But are political decision-makers really
ready to spend more money on mountain farming?
By Gilles Bazin,
INRA ESR,
Grignon
[R] Aurochs: return of a prehistoric
animal or scientific manipulation?
[L]
The media claim that Heck Aurochs would be extremely beneficial for the
ecological management of difficult areas. These animals are, however, just
prehistoric-looking oxen that were created through cross-breeding between
domestic species by the Heck brothers under the Nazi regime. The species
disappeared in Poland in 1627. The "reconstruction" of this species seems
to have occurred in the context of a resurgence of German identity…
By Piotr Daszkiewicz and Jean Aikhenbaum,
213, rue de Montreuil, 75011 Paris
[R] The Environment and Society
Mission: on the lookout…
[L]
The environment is an atypical field, a complex and unlimited entity, built
on interactions, and a source of interest for both scientists and society.
In its recent reform, INRA, the French National Research Institute for
Agriculture clearly states that environment is an important research field.
INRA established to this purpose a small, mainly autonomous structure, the
Environment and Society Mission (ME&S), to closely examine the scientific,
social and cultural aspects of the environment and to be on the lookout for
anything new and interesting in this field. The aim of ME&S is to inform
in particular through its quarterly journal, the Courrier de
l'environnement.
By Patrick Legrand,
INRA-ME&S, Paris
Patrick.Legrand@paris.inra.fr
[R] Humans, game animals and
damage [L]
Humans and herbivores gracefully shared plant resources until the first invented
farming and, thus, invented and applied the notions of damage and destruction
to the second. Ecosystems have undergone considerable change, as have the
status of game animals, the rights of hunters, the populations of wolves
and the farming landscapes… Game such as deer have had to adapt to this
change of status and now mainly live in woods where they literally swarm,
whereas humans have adapted to the system of compensation for damage made
by game and even profit from it…
By François Spitz,
INRA-ESR, Toulouse
spitz@toulouse.inra.fr
[R] An assessment of the environmental
impact of chemicals for transgenic rape resistant to glyphosate and glufosinate
[L]
An experiment based on the pesticide indicator IPEST shows that if one considers
impacts of the chemicals used on human health and the natural environment
(water, air, soil), and given active matters currently available on the market,
there is no significant advantage in growing a transgenic rape resistant
to glyphosate of glufosinate except in cases of high combined risks of runoff,
leaching and pollution of rivers and streams.
By Philippe Girardin, Christian Bockstaller and Luc
Merouzeau,
INRA-Agronomie, Colmar
girardin@colmar.inra.fr
[R] CAP and the environment in
27 points [L]
The article reflects on a sustainable farming experiment carried out in the
Vexin area (France) by the Charles-Léopold-Mayer foundation for the
progress of humankind. Philippe Cacciabue explains that the evolution of
agricultural policies will lead to the questioning of present technical choices,
and uses this experiment to prove his point.
By Philippe Cacciabue, Matthieu Calame and Olivier Ranke,
La Bergerie, Villarceaux, 95710 Chaussy
[R] Estimating the impact of
agricultural practices on the environment
[L]
The paper describes studies carried out on 15 farms by INRA-Colmar in Alsace.
These studies concerned agro-ecological indicators, tools developed to allow
farmers to evaluate the impact of their cultural practices (treatments,
fertilisers, etc.) on the environment.
By Christophe Reibel
(article first published in the journal Réussir,
"Céréales Grandes Cultures" n°99, 1997)
[R] Changes in the type of crops
grown in Lorraine and Alsace (France): a threat for the groundwater
[L]
The rotation of crops depends on the degree of over-fertilisations and on
periods when the soil lies bare as these practices lead to nitrates to leach
into the underground aquifers. Each crop has a corresponding level of nitrogen
in the layer below the roots. Since 1980, the ploughing up of pastures and
their replacement by rape and maize crops has led to increasing levels of
nitrates in the groundwater. The only solution to the problem is to re-establish
pastures.
By Serge Ramon,
agence de l'eau Rhin-Meuse, Moulins-lès-Metz and Marc
Benoît, INRA-SAD, Mirecourt
Marc.Benoit.@mirecourt.inra.fr
Other landmarks, other landscapes (Autres repères, autres paysages)
[R] Catching butterflies can
surprisingly save them [L]
Entomology (or at least, entomology as concerns amateurs of spectacular
butterflies such as Ornithoptera) can help the preservation management of
tropical rainforests if it entails a reasonable, measured and controlled
exploitation and respects the international conventions for the preservation
of wildlife. It must also not rely on the local trading of caterpillars that
are captured and raised on trees planted near the villages.
By Larry Orsak,
CRI, Po Box 305, Madang
(Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée)
[R] Social actors and
agri-environmental policy in the European Union
[L]
There are dominant traditional actors, non-hegemonic traditional actors and
new actors that are appearing on the scene along with the new agri-environmental
policy. These new actors are mainly ecological movements and the civil servants
of diverse services created along with the new policy, many of whom have
no agricultural training whatsoever…
By Eduardo Moyano and Fernando Garrigo,
IESA - (CSIC d'Andalousie) Cordoue (Espagne)
ea.1.moese@uco.es
Translation: Nicola Scott
