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Publications > Cahiers (English)> N° 46-47, 1st and 2nd terms 1998

 

Histoire des techniques en biologie : contributions au débat

COMPTES RENDUS DE LECTURE

V.J. VANBERG, Rules and choice in economics, par J. Bourdieu ; J. NILSSON et G. VAN DIJK (eds.), Strategies and Structures in the Agro-ffod Industries, par A. Torre , A. SEN, Ethique et économie, et autres essais, par R. Larrère

Donner une valeur à la biodiversité
[On the value of biodiversity]

Caroline GAUTIER (GREMAQ, Toulouse et GREEN, Université Laval, Département d’Economique, Pavillon J.A. DeSève, Ste Foy G1K 1P7, Québec)

In : Cahiers d'Economie et Sociologie Rurale, n° 46-47, 1998, pp 5-27

Summary - Biodiversity has become a major global issue. The 1992 Earth summit at Rio recommanded discussions on approaches to safeguard biodiversity and to implement national conservation strategies (CNUED, 1993). Such preservation programs generate benefits but are costly. Planners must be given quantitative elements to appreciate these benefits and costs. Economists are then in front of a classical micro-economic problematic: they have to establish the relation between the level of biodiversity and the social value of the services flows it generates. Therefore they use a surplus analysis. This paper shows why such a valuation exercise is difficult for economists: the available frame for such an analysis in the context of the biodiversity preservation is not sufficient. This insufficiency results firstly from the complexity of the ressource. The paper shows that there is no unique and precise definition of the biodiversity. The definition of the biologists and the definition of the ecologists differ. The correspondance with the economic good biodiversity is then difficult. This insufficiency results secondly from the non-familiarity of the individuals with the good to value. Because valuation must take into account the totality of the benefits (use and non-use benefits) that biodiversity preservation may generate, data issued from hypothetical markets have to be used. On these hypothetical markets, people are directly interviewed on the value they give to biodiversity. But the non-familiarity of the individuals with the good to value (a program of biodiversity preservation) often implies that the obtained values are biased. Individuals are not accustomed to consider a biodiversity preservation program in their program of utility maximization. This article proceeds by a review of the existing studies. The most remarquable ones are then developed to illustrate the above aspects.

Key-words : renewable resources and conservation management, environmental management, demand and supply.

La consommation d’engrais azotés en France. Une prospective pour 2010
[The French nitrogen fertilizer consumption. Prospects for 2010]

Nathalie TAVERDET-POPIOLEK (Institut pour le management de la recherche et de l’innovation (IMRI) et Université Paris-Dauphine 3, place du Maréchal de Lattre de Tassigny, 75775 Paris cedex 16)

In : Cahiers d'Economie et Sociologie Rurale, n° 46-47, 1998, pp 29-69

Summary – The protection of the environment is nowadays a major goal for our society and its importance will probably get highly amplified in the near future. Farmers are pointed at because, through their use of fertilizers, they are responsible for a diffuse pollution of rivers and phreatic sheets.At the same time, these farmers are facing economic difficulties due to the steady decrease of agricultural prices in the European Community. Therefore, they try to reduce production costs by a better management of their intermediate consumptions (mostly fertilizers). Given this context, what will be in fifteen years the consumption of fertilizers in France? The aim of this paper is to answer this question by studying several scenarii based on the evolution of the economical, political and technological context. The future Common Agriculture Policy will certainly be the factor that will most affect this evolution. We focus only on nitrogen fertilizers, which are supposed to be the main responsibles for the pollution of phreatic sheets and which use can be rationalized. However, the methodology used to determine future consumption is easily applicable to other inputs (potassic and phosphoric fertilizers, phytosanitary, seeds, energy...). The goal of this research is twofold : * On the one hand, we build a prospective model representing the agricultural sector and the fertilizer industries in order to estimate (by simulations) the fertilizer consumption in 2010. No existant methodology can readily be used. We propose a methodology drawing on Yves Barel’s thinking (1971) and on systemic analysis, that implies the interaction of modelling, expertizing and simulations. We apply it to the agriculture sector and to the fertilizer industry but it is applicable to other sectors. * On the other hand, in addition to punctual results, this research aims at drawing a global prospective design of the French agriculture sector in 2010. The results of our prospective study show that, by the year 2010, the consumption of nitrogen fertilizers should clearly decrease. Such a decrease is mainly explained by a more rational use of fertilizers by farmers, due to the increased “environmentalists” pressure, whose lobby is represented at Bruxelles and in each French administrative region. Relevant technological innovations are spreading and should help farmers improve their fertilizing techniques.

Key-words : global prospective, systemic analysis, model, simulations, Delphi, agriculture, CAP, nitrogen fertilization.

L'approche évolutionniste et l'industrie des pêches maritimes : une application à la flotille chalutière bretonne
[Evolutionary theory and fishing industry : the case of trawlers in Brittany]

Pascal LE FLOC'H and Jean Pierre BOUDE (ENSAR halieutique, 65, rue de Saint-Brieuc,
35042 Rennes cedex)

In : Cahiers d'Economie et Sociologie Rurale, n° 46-47, 1998, pp 70-92

Summary - Bioeconomic models within mainstream economics deal with technology as an exogeneous variable of the harvest function. In that respect, technology is perceived as a free-access factor. More generally speaking, the mainstream approach envisages technical progress from the single aspect of harvest techniques. However, the processing of species is more and more commonplace onboard. Consequently, the evolutionary paradigm helps in designing an analysis of innovations. Wherever technology can take place onboard, the idea is to determine whether a R&D capacity can be developed internally within the fishing industry or if it has been a technical transfer from other industry. Finally, three main technological trajectories can be observed in fishing industry. It deals with direct and indirect fishing equipment, electronic equipment, handling and conditioning equipment. Minor improvements concern one of these three trajectories. Decision-making in investments depends on the one side with needs of firm and financing capabilities, and on the other side with technological opportunities on the market. These implications rely on the debate between the technology-push and the market-pull theories (Schmookler, 1966). In last, diffusion process is presented according to the technological taxonomy. This research is applied in the case of trawling fleet in Brittany. It shows that innovations are derived increasingly from the second and the third technological trajectory, electronic equipment and conditioning equipment. This situation is a result of the exhaustion of commercial stocks.

Key-words : fishery, natural resources, technological change, R&D, innovation and invention: processes and incentives.

Histoire des techniques en biologie : contributions au débat

Horticulture sans sol : histoire et actualité
[Soilless horticulture : history and event]

Paul ROBIN (Unité Ecophysiologie et horticulture, INRA, Domaine Saint-Paul, Site Agroparc, 84914 Avignon cedex 9)

In : Cahiers d'Economie et Sociologie Rurale, n° 46-47, 1998, pp 97-130

Summary - Soilless horticulture is a production tool using mineral solution for the plant nutrition with another substrate or support than soil. The apparition of this agrotechnic at the beginning of the twentieth century is linked with the history of the knowledge in plant mineral nutrition. The first conceptual break between plant and soil is the fact of van Helmont at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Nitre as a nutritive principle was experimented by Glauber in the middle of the same century. The questioning of Woodward in 1699 on the role of small terrestrial particles and salts would be answered firstly by de Saussure in 1804 and then by agricultural chemists during the nineteenth century. Sand culture or solution culture transfer from nutrition research laboratory to horticultural production appears in the twenties in the US with carnation, rose or tomato in a favourable scientific environment. In France in 1938, Truffaut introduces the Gericke’s soilless technic. But isolated exemples and whatever the yield increase with soilless cultivation on inactive or active substrates, the professional horticulturists develop effectively this agrotechnic between 1980 and 1990 after a long time of experimentation by research and extension services between 1965 and 1985. Firstly working with recirculated nutritive solution, this development was the fact of light and practical equipments, of the automation but mainly of the leaching of used solutions. Volumes and mineral contents of these leachings has increased considerably during the fifteen past years. Since 1990, the environmental consequences of this habit raise new concerns and new needs in experimenting recirculation technics. But desinfection is a handicap for recirculation. Technical solutions would be acceptable by vegetable and ornemental horticulturists only if there are minimal plant health hazards and economically optimal solutions. Free of the physical and chemical soil limits, soilless technics must face a growing social and environmental pressure. However, adopting the soilless technics, being aware of the environmental hazards or demonstrating new acceptable solutions, the history of this agrotechnic shows firstly the links between science, application and society and secondly the weight of time in the transfer from the lab to the field.

Key-words : environment, history, horticulture, nutrition, recirculation, soilless, technic.

Production, protection et professions truffières
[Truffle production, protection and social organisation],

Pascal BYÉ  and Carole CHAZOULE  (INRA, Unité d’économie et sociologie rurales, 2, place Viala, 34060 Montpellier cedex 1 et CTESI Montpellier)

In : Cahiers d'Economie et Sociologie Rurale, n° 46-47, 1998, pp 131-152

Summary - This article stresses the analysis of the relationships between domestication truffle process and social organisation evolution. Today, despite low yields and instability, truffle production is always considered more than an agricultural production than an experimental one. All along nineteenth and twentieth centuries, producers, scientists and traders tried to improve the know-how of this production. The general tendancy of such social oraganisations is based also on a real ability to maintain and valorize the natural image of the mushroom and to protect the “secret” of its production. Three periods can be distinguished. The first one from 1920 to 1970 testifies the slow dilution of empirical knowledge, induced by the creeping disparition of traditional agriculture. The second period from 1970 to 1990 stresses the importance of new plant variety in a recodification of cultivation methods. The third one insists upon the debate between a “statu quo” position and doubtness induced by the growing lack of production.

Key-words : truffle, technic, production, social organisation, protection, history.

Et le code s'est fait chair. A propos des mythes et des techniques biologiques
[And the code became flesh. Myths and biological techniques]

Michel TIBON-CORNILLOT (EHESS, 54, Bd Raspail, 75006 Paris)

In : Cahiers d'Economie et Sociologie Rurale, n° 46-47, 1998, pp 153-182

Summary - One of the fundamental historical mutations of the history of techniques is its interconnection with that of modern science barely 500 years ago. Traditional techniques disappeared or were entirely revolutionized; the traditional technical crafts were obliged to take part in a movement whose logic was based on, among other things, specialized tasks and an unlimited political and economic expansion. These changes are the cause of an erroneous but dominant interpretation, especially in the French academic world, which holds modern techniques to be applications of scientific theories; these techniques are thus confused with what we call the applied sciences or with technology, the suffix logos implying scientific rational. Techniques are at best thought of as “servants of science” and at worst, they are merely the application of science. It is, however, possible to give another interpretation to technical know-how which preserves its individuality without ignoring its interconnection with modern scientific methods and conceptions. This point of view sheds a new light capable of illuminating the position of modern industrial societies so profoundly marked by the development of these new allies, science and techniques. These reflections lead to two fundamental questions. The first regards the cultural origins of our ignorance regarding the individuality of techniques. The second is closely related: if we accept the evidence suggesting the autonomy of techniques, how to describe this individuality ? The reflection on the individuality of techniques thus brings forth another, often ignored aspect, much deeper than often suspected: the close relation between techniques and living organisms.

Key-words : traditional and modern techniques, organisms, machines, autonomy, genetic engineering, biotechnology.

De la technicisation des connaissances : une lecture de l'histoire des sciences de la vie
[Towards a technical process to knowledge : an interpretation of the history of life sciences]

Jean-Pierre MIGNOT and Christian PONCET ( INRA/CTESI, Université de Toulouse III et INRA/CTESI, Université de Montpellier I)

In : Cahiers d'Economie et Sociologie Rurale, n° 46-47, 1998, pp 183-206

Summary - The history of science is often presented as a succession of discoveries which, in adding to each other, allows us to reveal the secrets of both nature and mankind. The subject of this article consists on searching for a « meaning » in the building up of this knowledge ; and we start from hypothesis that this « meaning » comes to light by gradually taking account of the introduction of technology into modern sciences. This technical approach to knowledge, applied to life sciences, little by little takes the place of a philosophical construct concerning the knowledge of life. On addition to introducing the idea of progress into the building up of the sciences, the movement asserts itself by gradually bringing together subject of knowledge and technical subject, which leads to a kind of industrialisation of knowledge. We try to show, through the work of a few authors representative of the ideas developed since the XVIIIth century in the physiological field, that the modern conception of life sciences will allow the introduction of technology into the field of knowledge. We understand this setting up of this ability of technical acceptance from discourse on method (R. Descartes) to the experimental method (C. Bernard).

Key-words :history, technology, knowledge, towards a technical process,  life sciences, phase changing.

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