Jacques Tasin, agronomist. “Agriculture focused on productivity and forgot itself”

“The land does not belong to us, it is we who belong to it,” Jacques Tasen, an agronomist and environmentalist at CIRAD (Center for International Cooperation in Agricultural Research Development), begins his thoughts with this quote by Edgar Morin. in his latest book, Agricultural land (Ed. Odile Jacob). the author of For the ecology of the senses (Ed. Odile Jacob) based his meetings with farmers around the world to find a window into the impasse.

Madame Figaro. – In your work, you ask the question of the lost meaning of agriculture. In the context we know, how can we find a reason? ?
Jacques Tasin. – It is interesting to find out what the polysemy of the word “meaning” tells us. a direction arises from the sensitive. Agriculture must go through the recognition of living things, which is more speculative than looking. Agriculture has focused on productivity and has forgotten itself. In the Neolithic, at the beginning of agriculture, an alliance was created that allowed people to take advantage of certain biological processes; we used predatory systems to protect plantations, we played on crop heterogeneity to cope with threats, we created hedges and fences so that symbiosis served us. This is agriculture.

Does this qualify as “agroecology”? ?
We recently coined this word, which can create tension among farmers. This polarizes the debate. It seems that the word “agriculture” has been misused as a synonym for agro-industry. However, from the beginning, agriculture is an art of tilling the soil, an art of observation, of giving sensitive manifestations. That’s why I chose this title “agriculture” to put the land at the center… Today we encourage farmers to sit on tall tractors. Bankers, politicians and distributors choose the directions of their profession. They became farmers. This system is a source of discomfort both individually and globally. I met farmers who chose to change models, from conventional to agroforestry, to organic, and who regained their decision-making power, their well-being, reconnecting with the care given to plants and animals.

Many farmers are looking for solutions. Can these hummingbirds stand up to the giants of agribusiness? ?
As long as their suggestions are not passed on by those in power, as long as we maintain an accounting vision of the world, as long as those in power favor industry, I fear the hummingbirds will be left alone. But I am not writing to blame the farmers who are stuck in conventionality, who, in my opinion, are the victims of this system. My proposal with this book is to think about how to reappropriate the part of the sensitive, the living, the solidarity that is inherent in agriculture and that will allow us to reorient our views and perspectives on agriculture.

Will there be hope from the feminization of the profession? ?
It is no coincidence that there are few women in cereal monocultures, the most profitable and mechanized crops…Agriculture has deviated from solutions presented by many women worldwide due to the difficulties and lack of access to land. of resources. Women who have made contracts with living things since the Neolithic era. I looked at community market garden initiatives run by women in Ivory Coast and Kenya. When it works, men use the model to take advantage of it as well.