Plan
Concepts, analytical frameworks and methods
1. A necessary combination of theoretical frameworks
2. How to narrate the chronology of territorialized agri-food transitions?
National and supra-national context effects, milestones of agri-food transitions
Timelines in the four agglomerations
1. In Rennes, the model of the city-archipelago promotes a territorial food plan early on
From the 1980s, pioneering niches around direct sales and organic farming
The stormy revision of the SCoT imposes the concerted emergence of a Local Program for Agriculture
From the local program for agriculture of 2008, the networks intertwine
2014: national developments subordinate agriculture to the public food issue
2. In Caen, the transition is hampered by the city-countryside divide
Late niches around organic farming, against a backdrop of city-country relations
2008 to 2015, a difficult federation of actors for local supply
After 2014, the beginning of another networking through research
3. In Angers, attenuated niche-regime oppositions
Old pioneering niches anchored from the outset in national networks
Wine as an early unifying theme
An inter-actor weave that predates national dynamics
Anchoring: food as a federation of themes and networks before 2014
After the national stage of 2014, continuity and reinforcement
4. In Poitiers, a singular transition structured around social themes
From pioneering niches to anchorages
A later federation of agricultural actors around local production
From 2014, a concordance of dynamics with the national rhythm
A transition shaped by and for local singularities
1. Contributions of the timeline approach
Regularities
Variabilities
2. What friezes do not do: limits and extensions
Conclusion
In the analysis of socio-technical transitions, we are interested in the factors that favor the emergence and then the diffusion of innovations, and in the societal or at least sectoral scope of the changes thus induced. Applied to the agri-food sector, this questioning invites questions to be addressed on several scales at the same time. On a macro-national or international scale, we can look for signs of a change in public agricultural or food policies. At the meso scale, we can focus on the dynamics of the food systems of each territory, by examining whether the rhythms and forms of transition are identical everywhere or, more likely, how and why they differ. To do this, two explanatory registers can be combined: the effect of innovation niches, possibly capable of strengthening and influencing the territorial trajectory; the effect of the context, which is also likely to exert an influence on…