Les Villes ont tué l'Agriculture Paysanne ? Un autre Futur est Possible !

half of humanity is fed by fertilizers. Yes, but there's the other half, you know. The other half is doing just fine without it. So, there are 1000 ways to do without synthetic fertilizers. Um, let's explore them. All the progress in agriculture before the beginning of the 20th century was progress in the way legume crops, cereal crops and livestock were arranged. There is a problem with fertilization between the countryside and the city. Carl Marx had already spoken about this. Authors like Victor Hugo and Zola talk about this at length. Start by dreaming without limits, then reintegrate the limits and see what remains of the dream. It's not the business of a few experts in planning offices that will determine our future. What the hell. In a way, cities have always lived off the agricultural surplus of other territories. But gradually, supply distances and agricultural practices have evolved, leading to a situation where cities produce almost nothing of what they consume and depend on flows coming from all corners of the world. On the other hand, agri-food systems have radically evolved to the point where today they are the cause of considerable ecological damage such as exceeding planetary boundaries, the utrophication of oceans, the destruction of soils and biodiversity to name just a few. But then, is it possible to reconcile city and agriculture while remaining within planetary boundaries? And what can we learn from the parallel transformations of past cities and agri-food systems? To shed some light on these questions, I am pleased to speak with Gill Billen. Gill is an emeritus research director at the CNRS and a biogeochemist at the Métis laboratory of Sorbon University. This research focuses on nitrogen flows, socio-ecological transitions and agri-food systems. Ultimately, this episode is part of a larger documentary project about the past, present and future of cities which is supported in part by the online media outlet Tilt. More on Tilt, a little further down in the video. Good episode. Hello Gillan. Good morning. As I said in the introduction, what I would really like us to do together is understand this relationship between city and agriculture. In our previous discussion, you said that cities only exist because of an agricultural surplus somewhere. Without a surplus, there is no city. How far back do we have to go to try and understand this symbiotic or parasitic relationship between city and agriculture? Well, you have to go back to the birth of cities. Obviously, uh, it 's François Hasher, right, an urban planner who defined the city as a gathering of populations that do not produce their own food. So. Uh, it's coming from an urban planning perspective, it's a bit curious, but it's interesting because it immediately shows uh the need for this complementarity that you're talking about. The city has to import food from elsewhere, from around it, from its nourishing Ninterland, from its food ched as some geographers say its food basin . Well, we can look at this relationship from two points of view, ultimately. From the city's point of view, or from the countryside's point of view . Okay, perhaps let's start from the city's point of view. How does the city organize its supply and what constraints does it face? There is a German geographer, I believe it was from the beginning of the 19th century, who somewhat founded economic geography and was the first, in any case, to have put the geography of spatial distribution into these supply issues with his theory of concentric circles. Around a city, there is inevitably, firstly, in the initial perimeter, the marshland belt. Well, it must be near the city because these are heavy products, difficult to transport, which must be transported fresh. So there you have it, the marsh belt, the first circumference around the city. Even for the same reasons, dairy production is somewhat secondary because milk is not easily transported, but milk is expensive, more expensive than vegetables, so it can withstand a slightly longer journey. And then, over greater distances, large-scale crops that are easier to transport, such as cereals, can be established. It takes up more space but it is easy to transport and lasts longer. [sigh][breathless] Uh, there's also the case of meat. The meat may come from a little further away. Cows grazing on large expanses of meadow, that can still be behind the belt, or rather, this cereal production circle because it is easily transported. The meat, in fact, is the animals that transport themselves [laughs] and that are slaughtered in the city. And then after that, it's the forest. So, that was the vision of a concentric circle around the city. It's a completely theoretical but interesting vision because there's a part [clears throat] of reality, the marsh belts are, it's true, you know. We see that very strongly. Well, it's true that this beautiful image of a concentric circle is modified as soon as there is a river that allows for the cheap transport of heavy goods or luxury items from further afield. So, uh, and cities generally settle precisely on major river routes because it's easier to transport goods. So. Okay, so that's the city's point of view. So the main constraint, as we see in the supply of cities, is ultimately transportation. It is the possibility of transporting heavy and expensive materials that justifies the geographical distribution in this very urban-centric vision. [clears throat] Uh, so obviously, from that point of view, uh, the 19th century with the explosion of means of transport, uh, the railway obviously, then the road, huh, the possibility of using energies that allow for long-distance transport, very good, all of that abolishes its constraints and makes the city uh no longer dependent at all on that geographical distribution. And geographers are starting to show cities interconnected by communication routes and instead of putting concentric circles around the points that represent the cities, they are putting lines that cross-reference the space between the cities. Cities are interconnected, particularly in transport networks. So. And that's how they organize their supply. Okay , so there's this very, very important change related to, uh, the modification of transport constraints. In fact, when you look at it, it's very reductive because it doesn't talk about another major constraint that makes all these theories a little bit obsolete, right? These are, uh, these are constraints that appear when you look at the campaign's point of view. on the contrary. Well, we can't produce just anything before the end of the 19th century, I would say, for one essential reason [clears throat], which is that what limits agricultural production is the need, I'm talking about the countryside now, the need to return to the soil what we have extracted from it through harvesting, it's fertilization. This is good, every agricultural system depends on its fertilization method and that's it, that's essential. as an ecological constraint. Well, if we're talking about the 19th century, the time of Von Tunen, well, it's true that there are marsh belts. They can export their production to the city and then quite easily re-import the excrement of urban consumers. So basically market gardening is quite easily freed from this constraint of restitution of fertilization because the use of human fertilizers is easy in market gardening and is traditional in market gardening of human extremities or horse excrement from the cities he the market gardener of Paris has long prospered on the recovery of horse excrement of the very numerous horses in Paris because there were as many horses as inhabitants almost to pull carts. So it is finally, I may be exaggerating a little bit but I mean it is still a very important and highly valued source of fertilization in these market garden belts. But as soon as you go a little bit beyond that, it becomes very difficult to recover the equivalent of what the countryside sent to the city to feed it. And that's a lot of nutrients that are lost from the soil, that are not recycled, and that have not allowed this loop to be closed. There is a problem with fertilization between the countryside and the city. That's what many [clears throat] authors have called the metabolic rift of metabolic rupture, huh. Well, Carl Marx had already talked about this, and in a rather visionary way, too. But authors like Victor Hugo and Zola talk about this at length. Zola talks about it a lot in La Terre. Hugo devotes an entire chapter of Les Misérables to this question. It's quite incredible, the idea of ​​saying the city is impoverishing the countryside, and then all that gold that's in human excrement, we throw it into the sea. Well, it's a waste, and it impoverishes the countryside. Okay, so here's the thing, how can you not love the campaign? Is the countryside organizing itself to guarantee its fertility despite this long-distance export? So, firstly, by closing local material cycles as much as possible , that is to say by recovering, it's not much, but the excrement of rural inhabitants, but it's not done and it's a shame, it's nothing of the sort, not worth the effort. But in any case, we do collect the excrement of farm animals which is the major source of fertilization for the countryside at that time. It is a recycling to a certain extent, insofar as the animals are fed on the agricultural lands of the territory, well, on the Arab lands of the territory, [breath taken away] it is an external contribution compensating for exports insofar as the animals eat the grass of the natural or artificial meadows elsewhere of these same territories. And here, symbiotic fixation plays an important role. Symbiotic fixation, I remind you, is this natural process by which atmospheric nitrogen. The atmosphere is filled with nitrogen, so we are actually swimming in nitrogen. No, but it's an ocean of nitrogen and yet nitrogen is very rare because that gaseous nitrogen in the atmosphere is not usable by plants and organisms. It is in a practically inert form. Therefore, it does not play a role in the biogeochemical nitrogen cycle. In order for it to be injected into the biosphere and to play this role, it must be transformed into a reactive form, that is, into ammonia or nitrate or protein. [grunt] And it doesn't happen, well, it only happens with the intervention of a few batteries which need a lot of energy to do it, which therefore cannot find this energy alone in the soil, but find it easily when they are in symbiosis in the root nodules of certain plants adapted to this, to this interspecific collaboration, these are the legumes. plants such as beans, chickpeas, lentils, but also alfalfa, clover, holy water, jackets and so on. And so, grow legumes such as lentils, peas (i.e., beans) or fodder legumes such as pelts, clover or alfalfa. This allows us to take from the atmosphere a quantity of nitrogen which will then be injected into the cycle and thus serve the following crops easily or serve for the nutrition of cattle, ruminants in general and then through the bandages of their excrement on arable land, bring nitrogen to the soil as compensation because it is an external nitrogen, it is an external supply of nitrogen to compensate for the exports made to the city. Okay, so there you have it, but for it to work, everything has to be well balanced. There needs to be enough legume crops to provide livestock to produce manure, and this manure needs to be used on Arab lands; only then can we have a balanced cycle. So all the progress in agriculture before the beginning of the 20th century was progress in the way of arranging arable crops, cereal crops and livestock and putting all of that in good connection. That's it, that's right . When we look at the evolution of agricultural yields in a territorial manner, this is what we see, it is an improvement in this organization of complementarity between crop and livestock and in particular between symbiotic fixation, cereal cultivation and animal nutrition. So. And so, uh, it has to exist, and that's why V Tunon's scheme completely ignores the fact that even if areas export a lot of grain to the city, they continue to do mixed farming. There is no specialization that Von Tunen's first scheme seemed to suggest. That's not it at all. a small surplus made possible by good mixed farming and livestock breeding . Okay, a short break before the next part to talk to you about the partner of this video, the digital media outlet Tilt. I am very pleased that Tilt is supporting the channel again, especially in this exciting project that explores the past, present and future of lives. If you've been watching this channel for a while, it's because you're trying to better understand the socio-ecological crises we are going through and how to act in a systemic way. But it's quite difficult to find quality content that is based on scientific knowledge on the internet. And that's where Tilt comes in. I have been following this media for several years to discover researchers , but also testimonies on social and environmental inequalities, global warming, women's rights and many other subjects. The links can be found in the description of this video. Enjoy the discovery and back to the video. And that completely limits things, but it also means that it works quite well in the end and that a city like Paris finds all of its supply within a circle, I'm talking again about a circle of roughly a hundred square kilometers around it. That's basically the stage basin, actually . And when are we talking about this? Finally, when you say that's exactly what we observe as far as we can really quantify this kind of thing. Uh, at the end of the old regime, so uh, 1780 something like that, we can quantify it there because the Voisier was there for uh, the Voisier. No, it's funny because Voisier is the father of modern chemistry, so nothing is secret. That's the principle of chemistry. But he was also a tax farmer, meaning he was in charge of the uh the register of entry taxes, the octroi, uh in Paris. He had no responsibilities and so he meticulously noted every detail of everything that entered Paris to feed her. And so we can identify the origins and therefore we can reconstruct it. Then we see things. That exists somewhere. Finally, these paintings exist. Ah yes, absolutely. He published that while he was still alive. It was his passport, but it's very funny because this obsession with the preservation of matter was already present in him, and so yes, we have this and historians have used it a lot. So, there is a very good book by Abad, uh, which explains, called The Great Market, I think, which shows how in the old regime Paris, the great city, seat of the monarchy, imported food from all over the kingdom and so that the wealth of Paris still irrigated, trickled down to the end of Provence and Brittany. So actually it's true when you look at it in terms of livres tournois, the currency of the time, and that's what Abad did. If you look at it in terms of calories or in terms of protein, that's what I do because I'm obsessed with nitrogen as the measure of all these exchanges. If you look at it in nitrogen, well yes, there are oranges and almond pastes that come from [laughs] the depths of Provence, but that represents Pinuts in terms of contribution to the general provision of food and nutritional supply of Paris. And if you really look in terms of protein, 95% comes from that famous 100 km circle at that time, the end of the old regime. So it's funny because a century later, at the end of the 19th century, Paris had almost increased its population tenfold. We were at roughly 800,000 inhabitants before the French Revolution and then we were approaching the Ouais. the 5.6 million inhabitants at the end of the 19th century. There, you're talking about the urban area. I'm talking about the metropolitan area. Well, we eat a little more too, we know the diet well. So, in fact, the demand for food has increased tenfold. And for the means of communication, we are pretty much at the peak of the railways at that time . Well, when we do this work, we have good statistical figures to see this, well, we are almost always on the scene basin, that is to say this same circle of 100 km², a little more with uh, well, uh, but basically no, it is the scene basin that feeds Paris for the most part and we find in the scene basin almost always mixed farming and livestock everywhere which produces small surpluses by specialist, sometimes in cheese, sometimes a little bit in the export of cereals. We have this specialization in exports, but it is still mixed farming and livestock breeding that is the dominant system in this area. So, what happens next? And why this barrier I'm talking about, this ecological constraint I'm talking about which is linked to fertilization? Why does this constraint finally cease to be imposed? Well, that's the [clears throat] substitution for natural fertilization whose principles I just explained, strongly linked to livestock farming. the substitution by synthetic fertilizers 194 1913 I think Frit Saber and uh Carl B Carl Bosch uh well you talked about it a lot in your podcasts uh commercializes finally industrializes industrial fixation of the zone finally manage to do in factories what the bacteria [clears throat] I was talking about do in legumes. Okay, but that obviously changes everything. Well, that requires a huge amount of energy once again. Well, we need to produce it, we need to produce hydrogen, right? And with this hydrogen, uh [grunt], by mixing hydrogen and atmospheric nitrogen gas N2 under pressure at very high temperature, we manage to produce ammonia. So, once we have ammonia, there you go, it's a reactive form and we can do anything we want with ammonia, ammonium nitrates, nitrates on their own, explosives, dyes, anything we want. and fertilizers and fertilizers and it is true that this way of making fertilizers insofar as the energy source allowing the production of hydrogen and heating very strongly and putting the hydrogen and iodine gas under pressure is available at a good price, it can be an excellent fertilizer. And indeed, uh, already between the two wars but especially after the Second World War, the use of industrial fertilizers became completely widespread. How does that change things ? Well, that's because as a result, we no longer need either symbiotic fixation or livestock to fertilize the land. We go to the neighboring town, to the neighboring factory, to get a bag of ammonium nitrate and it does the job with even much higher yields because, well, it's more efficient, we can, and the yields explode and the productivity of the countryside increases, but above all the countryside ceases to have this necessary complementarity between agriculture and livestock farming which was the condition of their fertilization. And so the countryside where cereal farming worked well specializes in pure cereal farming and completely evacuates [clears throat] their livestock. It's a nuisance with the cows, you have to milk them, it takes up space, you have to take them to the field for us. the culture series. Given how much we love each other, we use fertilizer and we harvest, it's still much easier. So, the hill, uh, the shelter, largely specializes in its crops, whereas these were areas for brilliance, it's particularly striking, isn't it? Bris cheese was one of the specialties. So that clearly showed a large breeding operation. This type of farming is disappearing; we still make br (a type of cheese) but with milk that we will, uh, import from the eastern regions. So. So the Paris basin specializes in cereal farming and the slightly less fertile areas are not very competitive for cereals because the yields there will never reach the 100 quintals that we are proud to have in BOSE. Uh, these regions are turning to intensive farming, uh, much linked to the importation of animals, animal feed, sorry. Well, possibly cereals from cereal-growing regions, but also soybeans from Latin America in particular. So, we have a livestock specialization in the Greater West, Serréaliculture in the center of the Paris basin, and we have completely separated these two activities. We have completely lost the complementarities that made the... Yeah. of all these regions, regions that are quite balanced in the end, in the relatively well-closed biochemical cycle. On the contrary, we have areas where we produce huge amounts of cereals which we export with huge amounts of industrial fertilizers which are leached to death and which therefore pollute the groundwater terribly. And on the other hand, an oversized livestock industry fed by the importation of cereals and legumes produced elsewhere. livestock farming which is used to feed the rest of France with milk and meat and which produces excrement which the meadows do not need at all because this excrement does not come from any cultivation carried out where they are penned. And so we also have monumental losses of nitrogen which pollute the rivers which cause coastal utrophication with the green algae which make headlines. This is the situation that has been put in place and that truly results from this complete change in fertilization methods made possible by industrial fertilizers and a certain industrialization of agriculture. So now, what is the perimeter, what is the area of ​​the Paris metropolitan area ? does not really mean much anymore because obviously locally a few hectares or a few hundred hectares of cereal land in the Paris basin are enough to feed Paris in terms of cereals but we do not find there the cheese or the meat or the vegetables or the legumes necessary for the diet which we have to go and get elsewhere in specialized areas which are now in competition in a network with huge transport networks which are therefore established in an international market and it is on this international market that Paris is supplied. And so we can no longer draw these concentric circles at all . We have to say, well , the cities are indeed connected to each other in an international market which is now completely under the control of a small number of firms which are international giants and which decide on prices and transport and we have completely lost the [clears throat] the link with a territory. Paris no longer has a food-producing territory; it depends on all the food markets that have been established. Firstly, thanks to the industrialization of agriculture, which was ultimately driven by the State in a very national way. [clears throat] Uh, it's the State that made this possible, but the State has completely or has been completely dispossessed, or has allowed itself to be dispossessed, or has in place the conditions for its dispossession, huh? [laughs] Uh, to ensure that, uh, we have a kind of globalization of supply when our urban planner Brenner, I think, talks about the urbanization of planetary urbanization, uh, generalized urbanization. Biogeochemically, that's what I mean, the flows have completely lost their territorial specificity, have opened up completely on a scale that was in fact planetary, at the same time as the modes of supply, consumption and production have become completely homogenized all over the planet. And so, we get the impression that there is a fatal sequence from one to the other that has brought us to where we are today, when this is not necessarily true for several reasons. Firstly, one might ask, did Paris and London develop urbanistically in the same way even though they perhaps had different football cultures? In other words, does the footed determine how one becomes urbanized? The fact that we have fertile land, the fact that we have rivers and so on and so forth. Did this determine the growth of a city because self-sufficiency remained the primary driver of population growth? And on the other hand, today we see that there is a kind of homogenization of agri-food systems pretty much everywhere on the planet. this opening, this linearization, this mechanization and so on and so forth. But there are different degrees of urbanization that can exist. I do n't know how you see this thing in parallel. Well yes, if we look at past trajectories, it's interesting because we see that there are different trajectories that have coexisted. Uh, you're talking about London, it's a super interesting case because, uh, London is surrounded by, well, was surrounded at the beginning of the 19th century by, uh, one of the most productive countryside and agricultural areas in Europe, huh . It's still, it's still in England. For what reason? We're not going to get into that, but it was in England that the most efficient methods of organizing legume crops, livestock and arable land were developed . uh and the fact of cultivating finally of increasing rotations, of including legumes, of having a very very connected livestock, uh it was in England that this started at a time when in France we still used a fallow, a dead fallow where simply the cattle came to graze at night and defecate there to allow the cultivation of cereals the following year. Uh, we were still at this three-field crop rotation with fallow in France when in England they were already cultivating uh the 3rd field or even the 4th with forage crops which made it possible to greatly accelerate these connections that I was talking about which was the condition at the time of fertilization. So England has one of the most efficient agricultural systems and yet England decides, and it is a decision, it is not at all inevitable, it is not the course of history [laughs] that imposes these laws. That's not it at all. This is ultimately an extremely important debate between proponents of Ricardian free trade theories who say, well, specialization and free trade is always preferable to autarsia. Every country, uh, has an interest in specializing in what it does least badly. Even if what it does least badly is no better than another country, it has an interest in specializing in what does least bad and in exchanging what it produces there for other things with other countries. And free trade is the key to growth, profit, and ultimately the wealth of nations. And there are big debates in England between those for and against free trade. Free trade finally prevailed in the middle of the 19th century. And so England makes the deliberate choice to delegate its food supply to other countries, huh. It completely abandons its agriculture, uh, it ceases to produce cereals and imports them massively. Well, from these colonies, these former colonies, especially in North America, right, where the pioneer front on the great American plain allows for some pretty incredible grain yields . And so, New York is organizing itself to become the hub of this trade, sometimes with communication via the Great Lakes which bring wheat from the great American plains to New York . And so, in a few decades, London will be supplied mainly with American wheat, or even Russian wheat from other types of specialists. Denmark seizes the opportunity to specialize in the production of butter and pork, which is essentially linked to London eventually becoming the world's leading food importer. And it's a business that explodes at that time, with an extraordinary opening. But it is a political decision also linked to the hegemony of England which it is putting in place on the seas, on the communication routes, on the empire of India, by completely muzzling China, by imposing the Pax Britannica almost everywhere. It is therefore a political choice of hegemonic ambition based on this Ricardian ideology of free trade. But there you have it, it's a political construct. That's really how you have to see it. And it's not a technical choice either. Finally, there are technical possibilities that make it possible of course, but above all there is a very strong imperialist political choice. So how does the whole story about Paris that I just told fit into all of this ? In fact, for a very long time, France resisted this desire for free trade. Under Napoleon III, there were also some attempts at opening up. Well, there's also the recourse to colonizing new spaces where we can produce, and that will play a big role, right? Algeria will also be a supplier of quite a lot of things for the French market. But all in all, and especially after the advent of the Third Republic, after 10870, the Melines laws reinstated [clears throat] extremely strong protectionism. This is what will make the case of Paris totally different, and the case of France in general is totally different from the case of London and England. Uh, France will remain self-sufficient or almost so for a very long time, and Paris will continue to be supplied locally for a very, very long time, while London has completely opened its borders. So here we have the demonstration that political decisions, choices, national strategic choices, can very, very strongly influence these things. That there is absolutely no technical inevitability involved. [breathless] Well, in the same way, the last phase of opening that I was talking about, well, it comes after the Second World War, the Marshall Plan, the real desire to share and create a new world order and the decision that France must become an exporter of cereals, that the markets must open up, these are also political decisions supported by extraordinarily effective public policies which in 30 years have made agriculture something totally different from what it was before the war . So there you have it, it's still a deliberate choice of certain directions. If we take stock of the situation from where we are today, we find that a large part of the population lives in cities that are deprived of their means of culture and nearby production. Finally, perhaps in others, we will perhaps talk about other cases where this is not yet the case, uh, this metabolic distancing, but we therefore have the cities which are really in control. On the other hand, we have agriculture which has become mechanized, full of fertilizers, pesticides and so on and so forth, also exceeding a whole series of planetary limits. And we need to find a way to solve an equation that takes these two aspects into account. Agriculture that goes way too far on one side, urbanization that goes way too far on the other. And the question remains, is it possible to reconverge these two spheres a little to help us get back within certain limits, whether they be planetary, social justice, and so on and so forth. What would be the method for thinking about this step-by-step rapprochement? Finally, you have done a lot of prospective studies to try to see if it is already possible, quantitatively speaking. Can you give us some examples starting from Europe and then perhaps locate them a little more specifically in France, and in some islands or other places? There is a new, there is a new slogan, right? It's funny how things are these days when we talk about food sovereignty. It's on everyone's lips, huh? [grunt] Uh, for not very long. We no longer have a Ministry of Agriculture, we have a Ministry of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty. It's very funny because this term of sovereignty was brandished by the proponents of the lead law to say it was absolutely necessary to authorize all pesticides in the name of our food sovereignty. That's a rather strange way to approach it. While the term itself is also brandished by opponents of this same law, who, no, there you have it. So, it's funny because this concept of food sovereignty, it is relatively recent but it is I think it was in the early 2000s I think that a meeting of Via Campesina which is a global peasant movement organisation proposed this term of food sovereignty with an extremely precise definition . It was the right of peoples to have access to food resources corresponding to their desires and culture, produced locally and using environmentally friendly methods, and placing consumers and farmers at the center of public policies rather than international marketing groups. So a very strict definition which is far from corresponding to the expectations of the law of the plan. Okay, so there you go, uh, but I think it gives a very good framework, especially since, if you want, there is a kind of consensus today on this notion, at least on the term, if not on its content and definition, but uh, but I think we can start from there. What is food sovereignty? That's good, it implies a certain level of food security. So, you need to have sufficient food. But it goes far beyond that. That's also it, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we need food self-sufficiency. A territory does not necessarily have to be self-sufficient in food production to be sovereign, but it must be able to choose its dependencies. Uh, and yet it's clear that a higher degree of food self-sufficiency makes it easier to achieve a certain uh sovereignty. Well, we can see it, we can see it very, very clearly in the current dependence of agriculture on fertilizers, uh, on industrial fertilizers specifically, which today uh are produced essentially where we have resources of gas or oil or energy, in any case, that is to say in Russia and in the Gulf countries, in Algeria a little. And it is in fact from these two places that all other regions of the world, except China, which produces and is self-sufficient in production because there is coal. Fertilizers can also be made from coal, but it is from these two or three poles that the rest of the world learned English. So, these are geopolitical dependencies that are quite extreme. So there you have it, it's hard to see how we can reconcile food sovereignty with this type of dependence on synthetic fertilizers. And so the question obviously arises: can we do without synthetic fertilizers? Then some will tell you "No, no, but wait, we can, we will equip ourselves with fertilizer production plants that will be independent of this." Okay, we don't have gas, granted, but we can make hydrogen with electricity. What kind of electricity? Well, nuclear power instead of solar power, don't even think about it, but it requires a huge amount of electricity. But there you have it, but that's, uh, I'm not saying this for no reason , you know. The Fertig factory project , Fertigi, I don't know how to say it , in the Somme, there, that's exactly it. This is one of the major projects of Macron's five-year term. [clears throat] let's produce our own synthetic fertilizers with [clears throat] green electricity, even nuclear, but finally, electricity from our own country [laughs] and there you go [clears throat] and there you go, the project has started. I mean , well, the study at least it is generating quite a lot of local reactions, but it appears as a natural project in this desire for sovereignty. Well, except that there are much simpler ways to do without synthetic fertilizers than building a gigantic factory which in any case will only marginally contribute to the current needs of agriculture. Therefore, this model would need to be replicated about ten times for it to become significant. Okay, aren't there other ways to do without synthesis? And yes, of course, we did it, we did it for millennia. Even now, proponents of chemical agriculture and synthetic fertilizers say that half of humanity is fed by fertilizers in Berboche. Yes, but there's the other half, you know . The other half is fine. [laughs] It depends on how you see it being done. Yes. So there are 1000 ways to do without synthetic ingredients. Let's explore them. Where we live, well, they're not very difficult. There is the recycling of human fertilizers which is starting to be implemented on a small scale but which is really growing and can contribute to, well, about 350,000 tons of fertilizer. For example, uh, we use millions of tons of nitrogen fertilizers, right? So, this is a small contribution, not major, but not nothing; it still represents twice what the Fertigaille factory could produce. So it's still worth looking into . Uh, there are, uh, there are other things. There are legumes. Legumes, which really don't count for much today in the nitrogen supply of French agriculture. Uh, I seem to recall that it's roughly the same order of magnitude, about 300 kilos of nitrogen. If we interspersed legumes in crop rotations, as is done in organic farming. So in other words, if we generalized long and diversified crop rotations integrating and legume in agriculture in general, the symbiotic fixation potential would approach 2 billion out of 2500 kN and therefore it would very easily replace current synthetic fertilizers. So there you have it , uh, it's not that there's a deposit obviously [sigh][breathless] and it's and I mean it doesn't require fabulous technological innovation, it doesn't require cutting-edge research from LINERA to develop new varieties. No, that can be done, it exists. These are practically heirloom seeds . Uh [laughs] it is enough, I would say, huh, to uh generalize these modes of production which already exist and which are already practiced, which have already proven themselves. So here are some ideas, and this is without factories, without future investment, only organizational. But, but ah, it's obviously revolutionary to do this, it completely changes the look of our countryside. But fortunately, fortunately , there is a model we can draw inspiration from that actually works. It's the organic farming model which is far from being completely marginal today. So it is the generalization of this type of production dish that allows, uh, on the scale of territories to see which are the most, the most, well, we must not re-experiment with this. It's already been done. It's done, it's just the generalization of an existing system. So there you have it, here are a few alternative elements if you will, which make such scenarios entirely possible. Yes, there you have this triptych, so recircularization of human and animal extremities, legumes and then obviously a change in eating habits. Depending on what we eat, well, we'll be able to be more or less easily sovereign or not. So yes, of course, diet plays a strong role in that. Well, as a consequence or as an initiator of good, in any case, it forms a system with the rest. Legumes are an excellent source of protein, which is good because we need them in crop rotations. And what about the meat in all of this? What I forgot to mention is that there is an important lever in it is not just generalizing long and diversified rotations, it is also reconnecting livestock and crops because we are growing legumes and seeds. Certainly, it's good for the diet, but we must also cultivate forage legumes. So there is one, it's good to have livestock for that, but livestock there on site, reconnected to agriculture and which will allow to close the loop and so on. That means that in the diet, uh, meat produced in meat factories, I mean in industrial farms, uh, structurally importing livestock feed from outside, that's over. However, the consumption of meat raised in connection with agriculture is not over at all and is perfectly possible. So yes, the quantities are smaller and it will probably be necessary to limit the proportion of animal protein in the diet to a proportion that can be around half, right? So that means we'll eat less meat, but of better quality. It's not, as we often hear, the exclusion of red meat, that is to say, ruminant meat. We need ruminants and they are the only ones who can eat things that we cannot eat. So it's silly to say we're only going to eat white meat because white meat is poultry and pigs that eat the same thing as us. So that's absurd. We have to eat red meat, at least ruminant meat, and milk of course, because it's the normal complement to agriculture. So there you have it, that's what we can take in this type of scenario, it's not at all full veganism, it's a reduction in the quantity of animal proteins and a fairly complete modification of the way they are produced, but which does not exclude ruminants at all, quite the contrary, even if ruminants are known to produce methane, which is something that monogastric animals like pigs or poultry do less of. But, in Libra, ruminants still have their place in these systems. It is obviously these kinds of trade-offs that are always quite complex. Well, there are also ethical questions, there are also questions of this, that, and that. Finally, there you have it, for the agri-food system, at least biogeochemically, we would be able to manage in terms of nitrogen , whether at the European level or at the French level. You have also done this type of study for more localized territories, whether it be the case of Reunion Island, the case of Paris as well, or the Paris metropolitan area. Can you tell us how we start from the existing situation to try and develop territorial projections? Yes, well that's it. We first try to diagnose how it works today. Uh, and then we see how by activating the three levers I talked about, huh, the reconnection of livestock farming, the generalization of crop rotations with legumes and then uh, the diet. how can we try to build a system that works locally, taking into account local constraints and characteristics of agriculture? So it's not necessarily the desirable system because it's created from almost agronomic equations. But in any case, it shows that certain lifestyles are possible. It's biochemically sound, so it holds up from an agronomic point of view . Actually, uh, that's what's important to show. Hm uh yeah , we did that for Paris which can indeed become again, well, regain its interland of 100 km or so. Ultimately, that's pretty much it. That's not out of reach, but it doesn't imply that we haven't looked for things elsewhere, but that the bulk of production can be found locally and that makes credible political systems on which we could rely, such as a food social security system based on a system of local producer agreements through local food social security funds, we could find a system of agreements with local producers who deal with the needs of local consumers. Well, that doesn't exclude longer- distance, more marginal exchanges at all, but that would be the heart of the matter. Well, there you go. Um, in Paris, I was asked about Reunion Island. Reunion Island is a fairly well-populated territory, uh, very agricultural, but where the largest part of agricultural production and agricultural land is dedicated to sugar cane for export, which does not actually feed the people of Reunion. So, to what extent? Finally, however, there is still an important need there to regain some food sovereignty because episodes like the Covid crisis had made supply suddenly very difficult and stock shortages of imports were really very dramatic, especially in terms of livestock feed, but not only that, also in terms of rice supply. of the population. So there were big fears at that time and then people started to wonder how we could regain at least some food security but also some sovereignty over our modes of production. Is it interesting to be specialized to the extreme according to a model that dates back to Ricardo, in the tropics, you have to grow sugarcane, but that doesn't make much sense anymore, especially since the international sugar market has changed so much, so sugarcane production in Reunion is only possible thanks to massive state subsidies to a single firm which owns the entire sector, which is Teros, a [clears throat] former beet cooperative from the north but which has become an international giant of sugarcane and which produces in India and Brazil as well as in Reunion. And so Reunion Island, well, that's a production that isn't profitable, but since it's subsidized it works, we continue. But if state subsidies were no longer sufficient, Teros would withdraw. So, what can we do to anticipate this kind of thing? Don't we want a different food system? Sure, we'll always produce Rome, right, [laughs] but we don't necessarily need to mass-produce sugar all over our entire land. So, can we diversify? Is there anything else we can imagine ? To what extent can one become self-reliant? So, food self-sufficiency in Réunion is a bit more difficult than in the Paris basin, of course, but it's not impossible. The constraints are very drastic. In any case, they imply reducing the share of land dedicated to sugarcane by 80 to 90% . Well, it is finally possible to bring back into fashion crop rotations which allow for much greater diversification, to reconnect a livestock farming which is much more characterized by, well, a more local diet. It's not a calculation that shows that it's possible. Well, there you go. Is that desirable? That's not me saying it. But in any case, there you have it, we are not weaklings when we put forward this type of demand or this type of future prospect, in any case. And there you have it. Well, I don't know what's going to happen in Reunion, but in any case, the term food sovereignty is used a lot there and we can put a bioeochemical, biophysical, uh, concrete content into it somewhere. And so we can reflect on this, and there is room for citizen reflection around it. When we multiply this exercise, we obviously see that there are different ways we can rethink our agri-food system, which means we must also rethink how we inhabit our territory. Uh, in the context of the PN's work, you pushed the reflection a little further on what the Paris agglomeration would look like in a few decades with slightly more bioregional scenarios, with post-metropolitan ones as well. Could you share some of the knowledge and lessons you've learned from this type of foresight? Not only obviously for everything related to agri-food that we just mentioned, but what does that mean in terms of governance, in terms of politics? Finally, we were talking about the 6th Republic, I think it was eco-socialist. Finally, can you give us a little more insight into territorial prospects, obviously including the agri-food sector, but also many other things afterwards? Yes, well I think this exercise needs to be done in an interdisciplinary way, right? Well, I'm not a political scientist, I'm a biogeochemist and it's with that knowledge that I contribute to this type of thinking. But we see very quickly, obviously, that the political decision-making system is central to this as soon as we try to build a trajectory that allows us to approach this kind of situation. the ideal that we have, that we have created. Obviously, this requires a lot of decentralization. This requires that people be able to organize themselves at the local level without being hindered by necessarily restrictive standards. It mainly requires freeing ourselves from economic dictates linked to the international market and which are presented to us as the environment, which is ultimately presented as... well, it's not possible under the current market conditions. The market is, after all, a social construct. We can break free from it as we please. Okay [laughs] so uh there you go , but it's obviously not easy to question that and that shows indeed that as soon as we talk about food uh we want to change the framework of the current system a little bit, it requires questioning other things than food. [sigh] Well, energy, well, we are constrained by energy sources. So if we're thinking about the future in a general way, there's more to it than just food. There is also the question of how to obtain energy because it is linked because because because agricultural land can also serve as an energy source because the forest can be an energy source because photovoltaics take up space. Well, if only for that reason, it's all connected. But uh yeah, beyond that, there is what? Yeah, well there is employment obviously. Finally, the peasant workshop which has given a lot of thought to the [clears throat] of agricultural prospects, uh, and with some rather radical projects, by the way, also imagining [clears throat] the return to the land in France of a million farmers, huh. This is, in fact, a little bit the basis of their project, which is based more on this than on agronomic considerations, but also. And so indeed, this implies a fairly complete modification of the ways of inhabiting the territory. That's when we're no longer dealing with rural exodus. We are in a reverse rural exodus [clears throat] which would still be quite interesting, so we should look at all the consequences. Well, there is also a lot of demonetization of things in there. Not everything has to go through commercial channels because commercial channels are indeed those of the international markets of which we are victims. If we demonetize a number of things, uh, that frees us from this dependence. Uh, and so the dictatorship of growth, meaning GDP growth, everything goes wrong if GDP is not growing, if we lose growth points, if there is no positive growth, everything goes wrong. [grunt] Well, that's true in a system like the one we know, but GDP is still just a measure of the commodification of things, you know. I mean, over the last 50 years, GDP growth is a little bit of an increase in productivity, but it's also a lot of the expansion of the scope of what we count, of what we commodify. Uh, so work is being monetized more and more, while there are still whole parts of unrecorded work that are no less useful to the well-being of the population than monetized work. So there are whole things that we should be able to think about, uh, independently of these dictates of the traditional , contemporary economy. And it's this kind of thing that's at play in the development of the scenarios. Well, ultimately, we would need an accounting system that is just as precise as the one we have put in place for nitrogen flows, or even for energy flows, in megatons or kilotons of nitrogen. We would need equally precise accounting of working hours. And there, we would have a fairly complete view of how society works and the levers of change finally [grunt] without this kind of meaningless abstraction such as gross national product or the cost of things which do not represent the value of labor embodied in goods. So, if we could manage to put back in place a somewhat precise accounting of human work and what it should ultimately be used for, what needs need to be met, what those needs are and how much it costs in working hours to meet them. That's what we should actually be doing now, including work accounting. In there , I imagine you are familiar with the work of Julia Steinberger with the uh well the stands finally the satisfaction of needs and how much it consumes in terms of energy and also what she calls supply systems. Finally, how do we meet these needs, and what infrastructural and socio-political arrangements allow us to do so? And I imagine that you've finally started using these kinds of things for your needs as well. What are the essential needs? How to satisfy them, and so on and so forth? [breathless] And there's perhaps one last thing: it's easier to do for food, for many other things, huh. Obviously, either there are 2000 calories, that's it, and then yeah, uh, it's true that for the journey, how many kilometers we have to travel is a bit arbitrary. How many computers we should have in a household is arbitrary. We have an ecological ceiling that could potentially help us. Yes. Yes. Well, specifically regarding energy , it was done by an English author whose name I've forgotten. Joel Millard, or rather , Milard Hopkins. But it's Julien's doctoral student. Finally, it's on Yeah's team. All right. So. He showed what the energy requirements for a decent life were. That's it. It's not a return to candlelight and the cave, but something sober yet perfectly acceptable according to our standards. So. Uh, he did that, and that's enough, that's enough, and a luxury for half the world's population too, huh. Finally, for us it's like a huge sacrifice, for more than half the world it's about inner comfort. Absolutely. Absolutely. [grunt] And it works, I mean, well, it's actually these figures that we used in the somewhat radical scenario we made for the scene's basin. We based our calculations on those estimates. uh we need to uh study it ourselves in more detail but it's doable. And so indeed, the Paris basin could be self-sufficient in food and energy by 2050. Yes, with no overall reduction in population, but a redistribution between urban centers and less populated areas. This is without a major population movement. We are not moving populations, but simply creating a little balance between large cities and their areas of influence. Well, it's perhaps on this last point that I would like us to focus , it's this question of size. Finally, are there thresholds beyond which this whole business of food sovereignty, this whole business of social justice, ceases to exist ? Obviously, I'm not expecting a magic number from you that is, " Here's the threshold." But how do we think about that threshold? Is there a size in relation to which the smaller it is, the easier it is, and the larger it is, the harder it is? Are there other parameters to consider? Yes, clearly, there are ecological limits to agricultural production, there are ecological limits to the pollution generated, to energy resources, they are also territorial if we think about solar energy. So there are limits of this kind, but that's not the only factor at play . It is also the way we want to live and [grunt] the way we may need to organize exchanges with other adjacent regions. Nor are we obliged to have walls inside which we are self- sufficient. That's not what it's about at all. So, well, it's clear that giant urban areas like the Paris metropolitan area are a bit problematic in this type of research. Well, or at least, you need relatively large Interland areas, but I was talking about a hundred kilometers. Okay, so, uh, this is to give you an idea of ​​the order of magnitude. But we can also imagine much smaller urban centers . I don't know, Renn Renn does quite a bit of work around the archipelago. uh Rennes, you see, it's not a big conurbation but a relatively human size, but with many small peripheral centers that can be connected and this type of archipelago arrangement is the subject of quite a lot of work which inspires quite a lot of land use planning in and around, well in the greater Rennes area. So this type of configuration is still much easier to manage than a behemoth like Paris, which is still unique in France . The next town is almost a factor of 5 or 10 below in terms of population, right? So it's still a rather special case. But again , it's not about everyone living in the countryside, that doesn't make sense. It's not dispersed housing, it's not the model that we are obliged to promote. It's not bad to live in small communities where people are close to each other, where they have a number of services close to home, but it does n't have to be an agglomeration of 12 million inhabitants. Are there any writings that have motivated you lately to explore these futures, to think "Ah, well, uh, that could work in such a way," or on the contrary, readings about the past where you learn a lot about how things were arranged in the past and which deserve to be better known? Yes. start there is a me I think yes indeed that looking at past trajectories is extremely interesting because it suggests scenario exercises not of scenario well of future not happened if you want what would have happened if this had not been taken if yes there you see if we had not voted for free trade in the Parliament of London you see if Aberbosch had not patented or invented his system well things completely fictitious but which allow us to imagine other trajectories. And when it's not factual history, it's actually quite interesting to do and it also frees the imagination to imagine future trajectories. And I think there are quite a few steps involved. I have n't done much of that myself, but there are more and more forward-looking theatre approaches where people are allowed to let loose and imagine things. And from these imaginaries, to bring back a little bit of rationality, and for that biogeochemistry is a formidable tool. Um, how do we translate your dream into terms of flow, of supply? Does that make sense ? Okay, so what are the limits? You start by dreaming without limits, and then reintegrate the limits and see what remains of the dream and how we can imagine it, build it. I think there are many participatory approaches of this type that are being put in place and that are very, very interesting and that actually allow for a citizen reappropriation of the future . It's not up to a few experts in planning offices to dictate our future. devil and that and that shouldn't be constraints arising from, uh, well, a particularly heavy geopolitical situation at the moment, by the way. So. Well, I invite you to participate in these workshops and to ink by yourself and call Gill who would be delighted to provide you with the geobio geochemical data. [grunt] Uh, thank you very much, Gill. You're welcome , it was a pleasure. [music]