A radical shift in our approach to crop production is needed to ensure food security and to address the problems of soil degradation, loss of biodiversity, polluted and restricted water supplies, coupled with a future of fossil fuel limitations and increasingly variable climatic conditions. An interdisciplinary network of European scientists put forward visions for future crop production embracing the complexity of our socio-ecological system by applying the principle of diversity at all levels from soil micro-organisms to plant varieties and cropping systems. This approach, integrated with careful deployment of our finite global resources and implementation of appropriate sustainable technology, appears to be the only way to ensure the scale of system resilience needed to cope with many of our concerns. We discuss some of the most important tools such as (i) building soil fertility by recycling of nutrients and sustainable use of other natural and physical resources, (ii) enhancing biological diversity by breeding of crops resilient to climate change and (iii) reconnecting all stakeholders in crop production. Finally, we emphasise some of the changes in agricultural and environmental regulation and policy needed in order to implement the visions.

In early modern Europe, as in developing countries today, much of the population had to struggle to survive. Estimates for many parts of preindustrial Europe, as for several countries in the so-called Third World, suggest that the majority of the inhabitants owned so little property that their livelihood was highly insecure. 1 Basically, all those who lived by the work of their hands were at risk, and the reasons for their vulnerability were manifold. Economic cycles and seasonal fluctuations jeopardized the livelihood of the rural and urban masses. Warfare, taxation, and other decisions by the ruling elites sometimes had far-reaching direct and indirect repercussions on the lives of the poor. This is also true of natural factors, both catastrophes and the usual weather fluctuations, which were a major factor affecting harvest yields. Equal in importance were the risks and uncertainties inherent in life and family cycles: disease, old age, widowhood, or having many young children.On calculating both the incomes and the subsistence needs of the "labouring poor", 2 economic historians discovered that, according to this type of accounting, a large section of the rural and urban population would have been unable to survive. In years of dearth, wages were insufficient to feed a family. 3 In many parts of Europe, even the majority of peasant farms did 1. According to a famous contemporary definition, the "labouring poor' were "those whose daily labour is necessary for their daily support", and "whose daily subsistence absolutely depends on the daily unremitting exertion of manual labour": Frederic Morton Eden, 4 Historians studying poor relief, on the other hand, have found that the help provided by these institutions was clearly not enough to overcome the misery of the masses. Despite broad variations between different cities, towns, regions, and countries, and the major changes in welfare institutions between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, the number of people receiving support and the amount of help per person or family, were generally too low to make up for the shortfall. This is true even of England, which, under the Old Poor Law, has been called a "welfare state in miniature" and probably had "the most comprehensive system of public support" in the early modern period. 5 Findings like the ones described above, together with more general changes in historiography, and current social and political problems such as the welfare state's transformation and possible dismantling, have shifted the focus of research. Instead of trying to delineate a broad aggregate picture of the poor or showing the proliferation of welfare institutions and unveiling their disciplining purposes, scholars have started looking more closely at what the people on the margin of subsistence actually did to survive. In the process, historians quickly discovered that many of the labouring poor had not just one occupation but several, and that they shifted from one activity to another in a seasonal pattern, or according to perio...

Over the last few years, an increasing number of agricultural R&D actors have sought to discover and get to know farmers' practices that they consider as innovative, unconventional, or promising. We refer to these approaches, all of which aim to support the design of farming systems, as 'farmer innovation tracking'. There is still a lack of knowledge, however, about the specificities of the approaches adopted to track innovations and how they contribute to design processes. To explore these questions, we studied 14 initiatives in France led by actors from different R&D networks. We analysed the data collected using agronomy and design science concepts. Three outcomes emerge from this work.(1) We shed light on the common features of innovation tracking. We outline five stages that structure all the approaches: formulating an innovation tracking project, unearthing innovations, learning about them, analysing them, and generating agronomic content. (2) We characterize six contributions of farmer innovation tracking to design processes: giving rise to creative anomalies, shedding light on systemic mechanisms to fuel design processes on other farms, uncovering research questions, stimulating design in orphan fields of innovation, circulating innovation concepts, and connecting farmer-designers with each other. (3) Finally, we highlight three tracking strategies: the targeted tracking of proven practices, the targeted tracking of innovations under development, and the exploratory tracking of proven practices. This article is the first to propose a theorization of the farmer innovation tracking approaches, thus enriching the agronomic foundations supporting farming system design. The purpose of our paper is not to provide a turnkey method, but to highlight concepts, mechanisms, and points of reference for actors who might wish to develop farmer innovation tracking in different contexts in the future. By revealing their contributions to design processes, this article seeks to contribute to the institutionalization of innovation tracking.

Notre point de départ sera une vieille question : quelles influences exercent, à l'époque moderne, les lois concernant la transmission des biens sur la structure des familles ? Dans la lignée de Tocqueville et de Le Play, Jean Yver et Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie ont déduit des coutumiers et des recueils de lois trois grands types de structures familiales ainsi que les grands référents (lignage/ ménage) sur lesquels elles s'appuient.

No abstract

La mobilité, qui est un des phénomènes majeurs des sociétés de montagne, a fait l'objet de nombreuses analyses. Historiens et géographes s'accordent depuis longtemps pour lier ces migrations à l'écosystème montagnard parce que celui-ci conjugue à de maigres récoltes, un important besoin de main-d'oeuvre pendant la brève saison agricole. A ces données structurelles, s'ajoutent l'oisiveté forcée des hommes durant les hivers trop longs et la fiscalité, qui oblige à trouver le numéraire nécessaire pour acquitter l'impôt. En ce sens, ces analyses reprennent à leur compte les doléances des habitants.Toutefois, ces modèles classiques reposent sur plusieurs postulats, explicites ou implicites, qui influencent à leur tour les images données de la migration. Nous en retiendrons deux, essentiels pour comprendre les questions que posent ces approches de la mobilité. 1) La dépendance stricte entre système écologique et mobilité montagnarde sous-entend que la nature impose à l'homme une manière de l'exploiter et une seule ; elle renvoie au système agro-pastoral pratiqué dans les Alpes françaises au XIXe siècle ; à la « loi de transhumance » qui concerne hommes et bêtes, énoncée par Raoul Blanchard. 2) Dans ces sociétés agro-pastorales, les hommes sont égaux en pauvreté ; ce second postulat est d'ailleurs explicitement affirmé puisque les communautés montagnardes sont toujours décrites comme des « républiques » de petits propriétaires égaux dans la médiocrité.

Le crédit est à la fois bien connu des historiens parce que toujours mentionné et méconnu parce que peu analysé dans la diversité de ses pratiques. L'attention a surtout été portée sur l'analyse des transferts de propriété qu'il a permis, partant sur son rôle d'instrument économique. Pourtant, le crédit ne se réduit pas à ce seul aspect : il est aussi un lien social, culturel et parfois un instrument politique. L'objectif de ce texte est de montrer — à travers l'analyse des pratiques de crédit que l'on observe dans les communautés montagnardes du haut Dauphiné aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles— la diversité des espaces géographiques que dessinent les relations de crédit et les différents rôles qu'assume le lien de la dette.

No abstract