Sustainable agriculture and food: how to act as an elected official?

A 2-day training course was organised by the TETRAA programme (Territories in Agroecological and Food Transition) on 26 and 27 September 2023 to accelerate the agroecological and food transition in the territories. Many initiatives already exist in the 9 living areas involved in the programme. How can they be scaled up? Accelerate them? Spread them? Deploy them? To make them known? The territories are asking themselves questions in consultation with their elected representatives. At the heart of these questions: the role of politics.

40 elected officials gathered at the foot of the Mont Dauphin mountains

How can they act? What room for manoeuvre? How to deploy strategies? What posture should you adopt?

The territories abound in concrete cases demonstrating that action is possible at the level of local authorities: development of more sustainable school catering, support for the installation of organic farmers, facilitation of access to quality food, etc. The training allowed them to share good practices and gain perspective.

The 2 days were structured around the possible levers of action for elected officials:

• Innovation through law
• Local action on agricultural land
  
• Collective catering
  
• Public procurement
  
• Preservation of natural resources

The testimonies also made it possible to share the common obstacles in this path of acceleration.
Luc Bodiguel, Director of Research at the CNRS, spoke in particular about the legal difficulties that can be encountered. Among other things, the criterion of geographical location to promote local production cannot be included as such in a public call for tenders, because it does not comply with the principle of non-discrimination of the Public Procurement Code.

Other obstacles to action were identified by the participants:

• Lack of funding, particularly for the facilitation of procedures
• Working in silos
• Lack of skills
• Massive weight of supranational policies such as the CAP
• Issues related to the length of the political mandate entrusted by the ballot box…

How can we overcome them? This is what the experts have tried to answer. Luc Bodiguel, Hélène Béchet from Terre de liens, Véronique Lucas, Sociologist, and Marc Lourdaux and Lionel Piffaretti from the Echanges Paysans Hautes-Alpes platform, provided concrete answers to unlock the blockages and take action.

Together, we are supposed to go further”: actions

“Of the overall transition objective, 30% of the levers and solutions come from the local, 70% from the international. I was slapped in the face when I heard that. 70% of decision-making over which we have no control! shared one participant.
Nevertheless, a desire for collaboration to build a common advocacy was strongly evoked during this training. For all, local initiatives must multiply and grow. They have the potential to bring about significant change at the national and even European level.

As a bonus of these two days, the participants were able to make inspiring visits to Mont-Dauphin in the Hautes-Alpes.
The participants visited the Queyras Regional Natural Park, a territory that brings together 3% of French farmers and which works for the preservation of agricultural land from urbanization. They were able to discover the cooperative society of collective interest in land, Terres en Guil, which works to maintain and install sustainable and responsible peasant agriculture.
The visitors discovered the site of the Hautes Vallées slaughterhouse, a Cooperative Society of Collective Interest. In 2016, a group of farmers organized themselves to take over the activity of the slaughterhouse which was closing and maintain this local structure. The participants in the training also visited the Coopérative Laitière des Alpes du Sud: a cheese processing workshop born from the merger of the Coopérative Laitière de Guil et Durance (1971) and the Coopérative Laitière Alpine (1958).

Finally, the group discovered the stronghold of Mont-Dauphin which was built by Vauban (in only 11 years!) to protect the kingdom of France from intrusions from Italy.

The Proceedings of this training course list the experiences shared, resources to better understand the levers of action and a guide to “act as an elected official”: finding the right posture, being pragmatic, building other narratives or acting collectively.

The TETRAA programme: at the service of the agroecological and food transition

From the Alpes-Maritimes to the Meurthe-et-Moselle via the North, the Territories in Agroecological and Food Transition (TETRAA) programme supports 9 territories in France. Committed to ambitious actions to strengthen the social, environmental and economic sustainability of agricultural and food systems, these territories are supported for 5 years, from 2020 to 2024.

The programme, funded by the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, has a budget of €5.69 million. It is co-piloted and implemented with AgroParisTech and the participating territories: Grand Bourg Agglomération, Communauté de communes du Val de Drôme, SYDEL du Pays Cœur d’Hérault, Douaisis Agglo, Ville de Grande-Synthe, Ville de Mouans-Sartoux, Syndicat mixte du Pays des Châteaux, Guillestrois-Queyras, Pays Terres de Lorraine

It is supported by the Porticus Foundation.

Through an analysis of the mechanisms of the transition in the pilot territories, the programme draws generic lessons and disseminates good practices to all actors wishing to initiate ecological, democratic and solidarity-based agricultural and food transitions.