Can an organic market garden without motorization be viable through holistic thinking?

Summary

Increasingly strong social movements built upon concrete experiences as organic market gardening microfarms to promote alternative food systems. These microfarms share some main characteristics: cultivated acreage smaller than official recommendations for market gardening set up; marketing in short distribution chains; high diversity of cultivated plants; low level of motorization and investment, agroecological practices. The study of 12 French microfarms, based on semi-structured interviews and cross-disciplinary analysis, pointed that alternative microfarms stands upon the access to immaterial or material resources, available in their social environment. Involvement in the community is thus a necessity, and at the same time the way to concretize ecological and social aspirations which are essential in the farmers' projects. Because they hardly take into account these kinds of no-merchant inputs, classical techno-economic frameworks are thus not adapted to analyze and assess their strategic choices. A larger conceptual framework, nourished by the inputs of concepts as multifunctionality of agriculture, ecosystems services, "double" sustainability seems indispensable in this purpose.