Should Sustainable Development Rely on Financial Incentives? Lessons from the CTE Experiment in the Loire Valley

Summary in the original language of the document

The Contrat Territorial d’Exploitation (CTE), land use contract, was a significant experiment in France in the early 2000s. Farmers were offered financial incentives in exchange for more organic farming practices, as part of a sustainable development (SD) approach. Using a database of 462 farms in the Maine-et-Loire region, we tried to investigate the true motivation for signing a CTE: was it financial or ecological? In other words, were farmers simply maximising their profits or was there a broader objective? Our results indicate the former to be true. This means that a policy may encourage SD, but farmers cannot be expected to adhere to it without a financial incentive.