Abstract
The second conference will look at how the Common Agricultural Policy, inaugurated in Europe in the late 1950s, embodied a productivist model from the outset, focusing on increasing yields in order to guarantee food security for the European continent. This pressure to intensify agricultural production has come at the cost of a number of abuses, including soil impoverishment, dependence on fossil fuels for agricultural inputs (pesticides and nitrogen fertilizers), and the gradual disappearance of small-scale farms, a gradual disappearance of small farms that are less competitive on larger markets, a diet increasingly based on processed products that are harmful to health and responsible for a spectacular increase in non-communicable diseases, and finally exports to southern countries threatening the viability of local production.
Criticism of the productivist model embodied by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) gained ground in the 1990s, leading to a gradual "greening" of the CAP ( ), but without leading to any more fundamental questioning. Indeed, by the time scientists and civil society organizations were making their voices heard on this subject, food systems in the European Union already appeared largely locked : economic, technological, cultural and political components had co-evolved over the years, explaining the strong inertia of the whole, as well as the path dependency affecting the reforms undertaken.
This conference will provide an opportunity to demonstrate the relevance of transition theory in analyzing the failures of successive CAP reforms.
