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Abstract: Abstract Labels are currently numerous and diverse in the fishery and aquaculture products (FAPs) market, providing consumers with information about the different attributes of FAPs. This extensive development implies that consumers have to face trade-off situations. This paper aims (1) to identify which labels are most valued by consumers when they face a trade-off situation, (2) to study the consumption profiles behind these preferences and (3) to suggest ways of improving the efficiency of labelling policies. Based on a survey conducted in 2021 (n = 1 427), this article describes FAPs consumers’ preferences for labelled FAPs. To do so, each consumer was asked to rank their favourite scheme from a pool of nine hypothetical labels related to specific FAPs characteristics. Then, we used a mixed multinomial logit model (MMLM) with marginal effects to analyse consumption profiles. Our results show heterogeneity among consumers regarding labelled FAPs. Overall, labels that ensure intrinsic qualities remain preferred to labels linked to ethical considerations. Moreover, while preferences for domestic productions are prominent, there is a very wide gap with real purchasing behaviour. Furthermore, this study shows that personal motivation, age, gender, knowledge or place of residence influence the preferences expressed. Labels are a policy tool used to reform the FAPs value chain. Nevertheless, they are struggling to achieve their objectives. Our results can be useful for better targeting the messages to be implemented, improving the efficiency of labelling policies and helping consumers to make informed and sustainable choices. PubDate: 2024-08-05
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Abstract: Abstract Voluntary labeling strategies, such as Organic label or Label Rouge, have long been considered as a potential solution to address environmental and social issues in the food sector. As a complement, the European political authorities developed a mandatory marking system for fresh eggs. This article questions the effectiveness of public intervention to support sustainable practices using analysis of the demand for fresh eggs in France. Unit root (augmented Dickey Fuller) tests, stationarity (KPSS) tests, and Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) models are used to investigate the unit root behavior of the prices and expenditure shares of fresh eggs in France between 2017 and 2022. We use the Almost Ideal Demand System model on scanner data to analyze the demand of six eggs’ categories, including mandatory egg codes and two labels (Organic and Label Rouge). The results suggest that a low price does not compensate for low sustainability involvement in eggs from caged farming, favoring free range eggs. Label Rouge shows market weaknesses, while the organic label shows promising results with both a voluntary and a specific mandatory mark. The lack of elasticity observed, except between cage and free range eggs, implies that consumers who choose high-priced products with voluntary labeling strategies are less inclined to switch to alternatives. The mandatory marking system brings more transparency than voluntary labeling initiative, in favor of sustainable products. The case of eggs is a relevant example of how market intervention can push sustainable consumption and production without forbidding products in the market. PubDate: 2024-07-25
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Abstract: Abstract This paper investigates the determinants of the nutritional quality of food imports in the French West Indies (Guadeloupe and Martinique), from 1995 to 2016. We use an original dataset reconciling data at the six-digit level of the Harmonized System with data from the French food composition table (Ciqual, 2017). We estimate the impact of several socioeconomic factors and food processing on per-capita imports of key markers of the nutrition transition: kilocalories, animal protein, saturated fat, and sugar. Results suggest that an increase in the per-capita GDP in the French West Indies increases per-capita imports in terms of kilocalories and saturated fat. Retail expansion is shown to contribute to the nutrition transition via increasing per-capita imports of our nutrition outcomes (except for sugar). We also show that processed and ultra-processed foods are associated with higher per-capita imports of our nutrition outcomes. Finally, the impact of the female labor force participation rate is found to be statistically insignificant. PubDate: 2024-07-18
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Abstract: Abstract This article addresses the decarbonization of the French public research sector via a novel form of scientific mobilization: Labos 1point5, a group of research personnel, whose strategy is partly based on developing and then distributing a carbon calculator to estimate the quantity of greenhouse gases emitted by French public research laboratories, expressed as carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) or “carbon footprint.” Here, I question the effects of this quantification on laboratories’ approach to decarbonization. Commensuration of research practices through an estimation that is not centered on a specific practice (such as travel) or limited to certain instruments (e.g., telescopes, supercomputers, computer hardware) opens up the boundaries of responsibility attribution. I identify three forms of tensions that arise during this process: a tension in terms of level of responsibilities, a material and disciplinary tension, and finally, a definitional tension, in the sense of “boundary-work” (Gieryn, 1983), in which this initiative is simultaneously labeled as scientific and activist. PubDate: 2024-07-08
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Abstract: Abstract This article sets out to analyse how and why the wood industry in France has recently responded to various calls for its economic models to fit better with the demands of climate change and ecological transition. By adopting a ‘politics of industry’ approach to the linkages between business practices and their regulation by the European Union, the state, and regional authorities, it unpacks the structuration of this industry, then examines the political work undertaken either to change or conserve it. The study draws upon interviews with public, private, and collective actors from throughout the industry, documentary analysis, and observation of stakeholder meetings. First, we show that in this industry, access to markets and to its factors of production (natural and financial capital) has indeed become increasingly driven by environmental criteria and practices of ecological planning. Second, however, the industry is still struggling to make its productive models fit with an institutional order that has only partially transitioned in this direction. In endeavouring to make productive models and this institutional order match up, key actors in the industry are still working politically to reach three objectives that are often contradictory: (i) build cohesion within the industry aligned with decarbonization ambitions, (ii) re-organize value chains that respond to calls for more national sovereignty for wood, and (iii) maintain ties between a productivist model that has taken on board ecological constraints and another, essentially conservationist, one which still resists change to the very definition of the overall objectives of the industry. PubDate: 2024-04-16
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Abstract: Abstract The new post-COP21 climate regime is ushering in a range of reorientations and transformations of productive activities and economic sectors, based on their place in the global carbon cycle and carbon flows. This introductory article to the special issue on “The Politics of Decarbonization” explores how a focus on the promises of decarbonization observed in various productive sectors can contribute to our understanding of the current transformations of these sectors, their practices, and their production models in the face of climate change. We begin by (I) situating the special issue’s project in relation to the works on greening and ecological modernization published since the 1990s and particularly in relation to the critique of climate capitalism, so as to emphasize the continuities as well as the specificities that a focus on decarbonization policies entails. We then outline (II) the aims of the special issue in relation to the recent literature on climatization: far from seeking to standardize the treatment of the climate issue within a specific social science discipline, we feel it is important to contribute to a multidisciplinary and critical approach to the revival of productivism and the depoliticization of change often associated with decarbonization policies. This issue develops a range of perspectives anchored in different social science fields and disciplines, particularly looking at the forestry, energy, mining, agriculture, research, and bio-economy sectors. PubDate: 2024-04-08
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Abstract: Abstract This article contributes to the history of both climate policies and industrial and energy sectors (IESs) dynamics in France, through the analysis of discourses and practices around a climate technology: CCUS (carbon capture, utilisation, and storage). We show that while CCUS has been continuously promoted as a decarbonisation technology in speeches, the main goal of its promoters in practice has instead been research and R&D cooperation, plus funding. With rare exceptions, CCUS has remained politically disconnected from the issues of energy independence and deindustrialisation. This brings into question the French technocratic and political elites’ commitment to undertaking these two missions. Of course, some public players stress that they do not want to confuse the debate over CCUS, or make it more controversial, since reindustrialisation tends to generate new domestic CO2 emissions. Nonetheless, other factors can explain the very marginal space made for energy independence and deindustrialisation in the CCUS discourses. Firstly, many members of the political, expertise, and industrial elites demonstrate a certain self-satisfaction over the level of decarbonisation and energy independence, mainly related to France’s unique development of nuclear power. Secondly, the issue of reindustrialisation has always been rather low on the French governmental agenda. Besides this, the practices of CCUS promoters raise a democratic problem. Firstly, most public planners still think of the question of decarbonisation in a way that is rather disconnected from other issues of public action. Secondly, decisions about IESs and climate are still often made in a classic State-centred technocratic problem-management style, and/or are kept in a confined technical sphere. By studying the case of CCUS, this article both contributes to the complex history of French IESs in the time of climate politics, and opens up the present debates over decarbonisation and IESs to greater complexity. PubDate: 2024-04-02
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Abstract: Abstract This study empirically illuminates the contemporary food regime in Switzerland to understand the organisation of food production, distribution, and consumption. From the perspective of food regime theory, it highlights in detail the (inter)relationships in the food regime between the food from nowhere, somewhere, and here sub-regimes using empirical means. Heterogeneous structures, processes, and relations that coexist within an umbrella food regime are examined. To address the criticisms of food regime theory ignoring social agency, this study further reveals collective agency and addresses the role of alternative food systems within the food regime in Switzerland. In-depth document analysis and subsequent qualitative data collection relying on expert interviews were performed. This study illustrates the collective agency shaping the contemporary food regime in Switzerland, encompassing private companies, relevant media, as well as associations and unions involved in farming, processing, and consumption. These influential entities and actor-networks advance different sub-regimes of food from nowhere, somewhere, and here that reflect the heterogeneity of the contemporary food regime in Switzerland. However, the data did not provide sufficient information to determine the collective agency of actors within the alternative food system. The dynamics of the food regime are shaped by contested social practices, which are influenced and interpreted through social agency. This results in an overlap of the sub-regimes that has led to strong counter-movements within the contemporary food regime in Switzerland. PubDate: 2024-03-20
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Abstract: Abstract This paper examines how researchers in biotechnology reflect on the challenges of turning microbes into what they call “cell factories”. These researchers use the tools of genome editing to harness the biochemistry of single cell organisms, such as bacteria, yeasts and microalgae, and tweak the enzymatic reactions of their metabolism. One research priority is to engineer microbes able to feed on agricultural residues and assemble drop-in compounds to be used in a range of commercial products, from drugs and food additives, to cosmetics, detergents and fuels. To justify financial support for such research, arguments about the need to move away from petroleum as a source of energy and feedstock for chemical synthesis are put forward, underpinned by concerns for climate change, resource renewability and energy security. Drawing on interviews with scientists, we explore what it means for them to make “cell factories” and discuss how they problematise the logic of carbon substitution that orientates their work. Biotechnology is expected to support a shift from one source of carbon, past life gone through slow geological cycles, to a different source of carbon, renewable biomass metabolised by living microbes. As scientists face unhappy cells, recalcitrant plant fibres and unfair competition from fossil-based processes, the promise of carbon substitution tends to be most convincing in the confined space of the lab where faith in biotechnology goes hand in hand with a pragmatic commitment to sustainability. We speculate that the researchers might be failed by the system that biotechnology seeks to (partially) replace, the conditions of which are shaped not around the material constraints of making “cell factories”, but around fossilised life cracked in ever-greater quantities. PubDate: 2024-03-13
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Abstract: Summary This article examines the political dynamics of regulating decarbonised energy such as agrivoltaics and questions the intersectoral logics inherent in this energy. It examines the political dynamics of multi-level and multi-sector regulation of decarbonised energy such as agrivoltaics between the local and national levels and between the agricultural and energy sectors. It hypothesises that the political dynamics of agrivoltaics regulation are first and foremost multi-level: The national framework for agrivoltaics regulation is based on incentive instruments, in which the state attempts to develop a market to achieve its decarbonisation policy objectives via guaranteed feed-in tariffs, and also on an imprecise regulatory framework. At the same time, the regulation of agrivoltaic projects is a prerogative of the local level, paving the way for the development of diversified projects. Agrivoltaics also raises the question of the encounter between two historically well-established areas of public policy: energy decarbonisation policies and agrivoltaics. These strongly mobilise agriculture and farmers and call into question the traditional balances, institutions and sectoral divisions between the energy and agriculture sectors and their players. PubDate: 2024-02-20
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Abstract: Abstract This paper deals with a specific form of carbon-centred rationale aimed at maintaining carbon stocks in forest soils by promoting certain practices and discouraging others, primarily clearcutting. The goal is to explore recategorisations and realignments within the forestry sector brought about as a result of increased awareness of this rationale in the public debate within France. To do this, I conducted a qualitative case study (observations, interviews, and document analysis) in the Morvan region (centre, France), which plays a role in the French national media as a hotspot of opposition between contrasting forestry models. The global issue of maintaining carbon in forest soils is translated into the local context mainly by environmental NGOs and their allies, who redefine older critiques of clearcutting. Knowledge on the topic circulates in three parallel networks of stakeholders in the Morvan, due to a polarised setting where the Regional nature park of the Morvan has difficulty acting as an interface. Beyond the committed decarbonisation agendas of citizen-led forestry groups, a more general loss of legitimacy of clearcutting is tangible within the forestry sector, with some operators favouring other models, such as natural regeneration. Greened forms of clearcutting are also justified with merely strategic uses of carbon arguments. Paradoxically, these various positions about maintaining carbon in forest soils can lead to a similar interest for less productive areas of forest. Another weak signal of the revival of forestry production in the name of carbon is the increasing implementation of the Label bas carbone scheme. PubDate: 2024-02-16
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Abstract: Abstract The objective of this paper is to analyse the cost structure of pasture-based beef production in Ireland. Specifically, the paper assesses (i) farmers’ capacity to respond to price changes by substituting inputs; (ii) the optimality of the scale of production; and (iii) the optimal utilization of land. As differences in soil quality may alter the size of utilized land and affect farmers’ dependency on purchased or home-produced feed, a short-run translog cost model was estimated separately for three groups of farms with differing soil quality. For empirical implementation, Irish beef farm data from 2000 to 2011, obtained from the Teagasc National Farm Survey (NFS), were used. Results suggest that substitution possibilities are limited in Irish beef farms. The lack or limited substitution possibilities between types of feed suggests that beef farms are vulnerable to feed price increases. We find statistically significant evidence of allocative inefficiency irrespective of the quality of soil, which takes the form of over-utilization of purchased cattle relative to other inputs. Moreover, cost advantages can also be achieved if Irish farmers decrease beef production. Given that increases in methane emissions from higher cattle numbers could jeopardise the achievement of climate neutrality by 2050, the implications of results are of interest to agricultural and broader policy makers, industry stakeholders and society as a whole. PubDate: 2024-01-08
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Abstract: Abstract This paper investigates how the process of institutional change shapes community-based organizations, by considering both formal and informal governance rules over several different periods. For this purpose, we examine how the community-based management of organic farming has changed in the past five decades. The French association, Nature & Progrès (N&P), adopted a “Participatory Guarantee System” (PGS) to monitor compliance with their organic standard, created in 1972. Yet, following the European regulation “Organic Agriculture” enforced in 1995, N&P was excluded from the public policy framework for organic farming, which was reserved for operators that were certified by a third party. Ostrom and Basurto’s (Journal of Institutional Economics, 7(3), 3, 2011) analytical tool is useful to describe the changes in collective rules. Drawing on original data collected from N&P, we examine how institutional changes in the European legislation have affected the governance of a community-based certification scheme. We focus on prescriptions that rely on internal or external sanction mechanisms and discuss the implications for enforcement. Our results show that the N&P structure has become an institutionalized PGS. N&P members have managed to build a complex governance system to certify organic products despite the European restriction on access to the organic label. However, the conformity system used by local groups is largely based on unwritten norms, which can cause confusion and conflicts between users, especially since PGS communities are “evolving communities.” PubDate: 2023-12-01
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Abstract: Abstract Despite their multiple ecological benefits, semi-natural grasslands are threatened by intensification and conversion to cropland farming practices. Previous agri-environmental schemes have yet to prove successful in giving adequate incentives to farmers to engage in their restoration on a large scale. Through a discrete choice experiment conducted with 110 farmers in northwestern France, we show that participation in grassland restoration can be enhanced by introducing a conditional monetary premium contingent upon compliance with the enrolled farmland’s scope and spatial distribution conditions. We have also found that although farmers clearly prefer to avoid signing a grassland restoration contract, technical support is a significant contract attribute. Besides, our findings underline that small dairy farmers who seem knowledgeable about ecosystem services provided by grasslands prefer signing a collective contract that engages them with their neighbors toward achieving significant ecological outcomes of grassland restoration. We conclude with policy implications within the post-2023 CAP as well as a research perspective to improve the implementation of large-scale grassland ecological restoration measures. PubDate: 2023-11-20
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Abstract: Abstract The European mining revival strategy correlates with the agenda of transition to a “green” and “climate-friendly” economy. In this article, we focus on the climatization of extractive discourses and practices in Europe, France, and Andalusia in order to show the changes in discourses while noting the continuity of practices. While discourse justifying the mining revival is circulating within Europe, the operationalization of extractive reindustrialization is materializing in different ways across the Member States, revealing specific constraints and dynamics at a regional level. In Spain, for example, more than a dozen mining projects have been launched since the late 2000s, particularly in Andalusia, where reindustrialization has been associated with greening and climatization. In France, where ecologization and reindustrialization have been integrated into a discourse on securing sovereignty, none of the projects submitted over the last decade have been successful, which highlights the difficulty of reconciling greening, climatization, and extractive reindustrialization. We show that the climatization of the extractive industries in Europe largely remains a discursive process that does little to transform mining practices and activities—other than by contributing to legitimizing their redevelopment, under certain conditions which we highlight. PubDate: 2023-11-08
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Abstract: Abstract In Europe, payment for environmental services is increasingly perceived as an alternative to government-led incentives for promoting pro-environmental land use and attaining policy objectives of groundwater quality and quantity. The processes linking land-use decisions and ecosystem services related to aquifers (EcSA) are complex, involving different time and space scales. This raises specific challenges for the effectiveness of payment for environmental services related to aquifers (PEvSA). After defining the concepts of PEvSA, we highlight these challenges—uncertain links between land use and EcSA, spatial and temporal dimensions, monitoring and compliance issues, the invisibility of aquifers and the social equity/efficiency dilemma—and identify good practice and innovative designs for addressing them. We then review how existing PEvSA schemes throughout the world have succeeded, or not, in addressing these challenges and identify evidence of their effectiveness. We conclude that future implementation of PEvSA should pursue (i) the use of science-based approaches for determining land-use prescription; (ii) the adoption of result-oriented payments adapted to PEvSA; (iii) the use of longer term contracts adapted to water transfer time in aquifers; (iv) a finer spatial targeting of PEvSA; (v) the use of contracts with collective conditionality; and (vi) the labelling of products that generate EcSA as ways for stimulating demand. We finally call for establishing formal evidence of the impact of PEvSA on EcSA. PubDate: 2023-05-31
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Abstract: Abstract In the face of growing demand for local products, farmers are developing direct sales. Our research examines the impact of this strategy on farms’ sustainability. Focusing on the market gardening sector, we compare metropolitan France and its overseas departments: Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Reunion. These insular economies must meet national and European requirements for healthy and local production while complying with specific organizational and geographic conditions. If direct selling is considered an innovation, we first identify the factors, such as characteristics of farmers and their farm, determining its adoption. While establishing the link between such an innovation and performance, we study the impact of direct sales on farms’ sustainability, inspired by the IDEA method. We use representative farm data from 2010 and 2016 and perform a propensity score matching coupled with a difference-in-difference analysis. While the impact of direct sales on sustainability is effective in metropolitan France, more nuanced results are observed in insular economies. Whatever the location, direct sales provide a response to consumers’ expectations in terms of product diversification. While direct sales are initially associated with product processing and tourism, these activities are gradually abandoned, in particular, because of the skills necessary to their realization. In metropolitan France, direct selling modifies the relationship with certifications by developing organic production to the detriment of other types of certification. It is also accompanied by output and employment growth. Our results question the role that the environment in which farmers evolve plays in the sustainability dynamics of farms in island economies. PubDate: 2023-05-26
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Abstract: Abstract Individual subsidy payments that are conditional on a collective contribution threshold could provide a viable resolution to the insufficient and dispersed adoption of agri-environmental contracts aiming at attaining environmental quality targets. Indeed, in a decontextualized laboratory experiment based on a threshold public goods game (TPGG), Le Coent et al. (2014) offer promising results regarding a conditional subsidy compared to an unconditional subsidy (i.e., the standard subsidy in existing agri-environmental schemes). In this article, we propose to improve the external validity of these results by transposing this laboratory experiment to a lab-in-the-field setting with farmers. To do so, we carry out a contextualized lab-in-the-field experiment with farmers by explicitly mentioning agri-environmental contracts and water quality. Our results show that farmers cooperate even more successfully than students and sustain more efficient outcomes over time. In a between-subject comparison, our results indicate that average group contributions under the conditional and the unconditional subsidy mechanisms are not significantly different. We find that this is due to two behavioral responses (perceived risks and initial beliefs on others’ contributions) in the conditional subsidy treatment, which show to have opposing effects on contributions that cancel each other out. The conditional incentive mechanism thus shows promising potential as a tool for agri-environmental policy since it avoids the pay-for-nothing trap of the unconditional subsidy mechanism without discouraging contributions. PubDate: 2023-05-26
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Abstract: Abstract Encouraged to design a more agroecological livestock system, farmers today must develop new practices to address herd health management. They must do this on their farms, alongside other farmers, but also with the support of various livestock professionals, such as veterinarians and agricultural advisers, each with their own skills and knowledge. This article analyses how these farmers enlist the aid of different professionals in their quest for a more agroecological approach to herd health management. Drawing on a conceptual framework, based on the prescription relationship concept, we refer to all the professionals involved as a “prescription system”. The qualitative analysis of the 26 interviews conducted with French dairy farmers involved in an agroecological approach reveals five types of prescription systems: (i) one structured around the farm work collective and a few trusted prescribers; (ii) one organised around farmers seeking prescribers and concrete solutions; (iii) one extended around an autonomous operator; (iv) one oriented towards prescribers capable of promoting transition by encouraging discussions around health; (v) one designed to promote precise and technical herd health management. The question, then, is how do these different systems provide farmers with learning opportunities in their quest for agroecological approaches to health management' The extent to which these systems influence farmers’ representations of health management, and the manner in which the latter’s perceptions of health help to shape these systems, therefore appears to be worth exploring. PubDate: 2023-05-09
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