The National Research Programmes on Organic Farming 2000–2006: French Country Report

Summary

In France, the research programmes have always been fairly decentralized. They are being carried out at several research institutions1 and universities. Government funding and sources of financing are available at national, regional and district level. Even at the national level, it is not easy to identify a real unified research policy. The main way to analyse the funding systems is to follow up the topics mentioned in the calls for proposals, which are often very much influenced by various policy networks.
During the last decades, farmers’ organisations have influenced the main themes of the research programmes, both at the National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) as well as at other institutions.
However, since the beginning of the 1990s, a real diversification of the themes can be observed, due to substantial changes that have been taking place in the agricultural sector since then. Changes include the diversification of production models towards designation of origin (DOC); introduction of farmhouse products, extensive agriculture, breeding with suckling cows; increased attention on rural development, environmental aspects, sustainability, etc. Organic farming has a special place in this framework as its policy networks had to fight a long time to become recognised.
In the year 2000 a national programme for organic farming was set up by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and the National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA). At the same time there were also other calls for proposals from various bodies, both at national and regional level, which cover organic farming within the overall topics. Several of these programmes are described in this article, even if they are not specialised on organic farming. It should be mentioned in this context that the main responsible experts are represented in the different boards. Organic farming projects are therefore consistent and overlapping is in fact often avoided.
The main actors in French agricultural research are
- National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA),
- the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (Teaching and Research Department DGER) and the Ministry of Research,
- the Union of the Technical Institutes for Agriculture (ACTA), consisting of 20 technical institutes organised by agricultural commodities,
- the Union of the Technical Institutes for Food Processing (ACTIA), consisting of 15 technical institutes organised by processed commodities,
- the Agency for Agricultural Development (ANDA) which was replaced in 2004 by the Agency for Agricultural and Rural Development (ADAR) who are yearly issuing calls for proposals.
The whole system was simplified and rationalised in 2005 by the creation of the National Research Agency.