Marion Guillou

1. Marion Guillou, chair of the Board
Agreenium
From foresight
to research
programming :
Agrimonde, Du
aline…

2. Agreenium ?
• A French centre for research and higher education
operating as a public scientific cooperation body
• in the fields of agriculture, food, animal health and the
environment
• To create synergy between research , education and
dissemination
• To best respond collectively to the issues and challenges
of food security and sustainable agriculture worldwide

3. • Foresight processes transform the way
we think and how we understand things
• They make people change their own
point of view
• The foresight practices and techniques
help managers, decision
makers, politicians… to cope with
environmental uncertainty and
complexity and to react promptly to
opportunities and threats
• In a complex and globalized world, it is
more necessary than ever to imagine
several scenarios ,to collect “weak
signals” and to anticipate

4. • More than 100 researchers involved, who
broke down the question of the
sustainability of current food supply
systems into a range of research issues
• The study highlights a clear lack of data
• It underlines the need for building
scenarios on food supply systems to clarify
the margins of uncertainty of the potential
evolutions of the food systems and their
consequences
• Complementary to Agrimonde, by focusing
on the downstream of the systems and in
particular on the consumers

5. Agrimonde terra
• complementary to Agrimonde
• Future land use is subject to uncertainty and to
controversies between societal players, and is an important
issue for global governance
• The foresight exercise will explore the conditions under
which land use worldwide could become either an
aggravating or a securing factor in food security.
• By combining regional approaches and a global approach, and
linking the different levels with trade
• By combining a quantitative approach (modelling) with a
qualitative approach (narratives, scenario building)

6. The link to research programming at Inra
• “Metaprogrammes” : inter-disciplinary research on global
challenges
• to implement cross-cutting research programmes which will mobilize
research teams from different scientific disciplines
• to identify major bottlenecks where research is needed
• Six Metaprogrammes launched in 2011
• « Foresight based » :
• highlighting of the interdependences between systems and scales
“The inescapable interconnectedness of agriculture’s different roles and
functions” (IAASTD 2009)
• the need for changing the production paradigm : to produce more and
other things, better, with less ,and differently
• the need for systemic and integratives approaches

7. What should we take care of ?
• Foresight changes the representations that we have of the future, in
the light of reason, using the most objective data available (Thierry
Gaudin)
• Beware of assertions : “agricultural production will have to increase
by 70 % by 2050 to feed a population of some 9 billion people”
• The power of foresight is often underestimated
• The traps of the extrapolation come either from an inaccurate
knowledge of the past, or from the incapacity to take into account
possible ruptures (Philippe Madinier)

8. • Prediction is very
difficult, especially if
it's about the future,
Niels Bohr
Thank you for your
attention
Photograph by AB Lagrelius & Westphal