LISTO is a multidisciplinary research unit with a strong sociological bent. Its work focuses on the changes taking place in agricultural activities in a context in which farmers must reckon increasingly with a wide range of social expectations: food quality and safety requirements, environmentally friendly practices, new connections between farms and land-use dynamics, and so on.

 

These injunctions to change do not suffice to define a “new business model” to which farmers need merely adapt. Consequently, we are studying their abilities to invent new forms of farming via:

 

-       the debates going on within the agricultural profession and their technical, economic, and social impacts on farmers’ practices; and

 

-       the types of support that development bodies (technical institutes, Chambers of Agriculture, and trade federations), which are called upon to review their purposes and organisation, offer farmers.

 

Based on comprehensive surveys, direct observation, and intervention research, our research (into the reduction of pesticide use, peri-urban agriculture, traceability, and the transformation of technical advice, for example) is aimed at increasing the various players’ (farmers, agricultural institutions, and local communities) abilities to think about what is at stake today. It also contributes actively to the training of agricultural engineers and the further training of all players in the agricultural sector.