Claire Aragau1 (p)

Rawaa Laajimi

In a region marked by tenant farming (nearly 90% of land area, with a very high number of owners per farm) and even more so by forms of land tenure insecurity linked to precarious leases (Dabo, 2022; Aragau, 2022), building food projects requires securing land as a production tool. This is the aim of our proposed communication. However, the Paris conurbation, which extends over a large number of administrative areas (a region, 7 départements and 1,929 communes involved in inter-municipal groupings), is not covered by a uniform land regulation system, which leaves room for specific arrangements. These cover a wide range of procedures, sometimes involving governance, such as territorial cooperation through the associative structure of AgriParis Seine to mobilize public land, or the labeling of agri-urban territories by the Ile-de-France region (De Biasi et al., 2005; Toublanc and Moquay, 2021) to promote planning that favors agriculture and food production, and experimental schemes that provide leverage for future development, such as the TIGA (Territoire d'innovation et de grande ambition) Sésame pour une transition agricole et alimentaire. What they all have in common is that they seek to ensure the sustainability of agricultural uses in order to contribute to the functioning of a food system that is wholly or partially connected to the urban markets of Greater Paris.

Amélie Goncalves (p), Gwenaëlle Raton, Céline Raimbert, Frédéric Wallet (p)

Claire Aragau

Local food policies have proliferated in France in recent years, driven by the national policy in favour of Local food plans (Projets alimentaires de territoire - PAT), initiated in 2014 (Maréchal et al., 2019). These policies aim to reterritorialise food and even to structure territorial food systems (PNA, 2022), which are most often understood as the linking at local level of different components of food supply chains, from production to consumption (Hospes, Brons, 2016; Van Berkum et al., 2018). Logistics, defined as "all the operations required to transfer flows from the place of design/preparation/production to the place of consumption" (Damien, 2010), is a key vector for making these linkages operational. Many public players recognise the need to take action in this area and are trying to implement strategies. However, this commitment is not self-evident, because 1) public players have few competences and levers for action; 2) this is a new field of action in which almost everything remains to be built; 3) the problems and responses to be provided as place-based and thus vary from one place to another.

This study therefore focuses on the way in which local authorities are dealing with the logistics of short food supply chains. More specifically, we are seeking to answer the following three questions: how are local authorities building their commitment to logistics? What issues and resources do they use to tackle it? Do they approach it differently depending on their scale of action and the degree of urbanisation of their area?

Based on an online survey to French local authorities we show different ways of tackling the issue according to the type of authority (its scale of action) and the level of urbanisation of the area. The resources to do so are very scarce and most of the time linked to the ones dedicated to wider food policies. However, these initiatives do demonstrate the willingness of some local authorities to use logistics as a place-based means of putting their food policy into practice.

Julia Barbet (p), Salma Loudiyi, Etienne Polge

Amélie Goncalves

Awareness of the negative externalities and vulnerability of food systems has led to the development of numerous initiatives by a wide range of local actors (agricultural producers, public actors, citizens, etc.). The structuring of localized food systems is now seen as a means of initiating a transition to more sustainable models. In this sense, the 2014 French law on the future of agriculture, food and forestry created territorial food project (“Projet Alimentaires Territoriaux” in French, hereinafter PAT), a territorial governance arrangement for strengthening and enhancing food systems anchored in the territory, which are now recognized as levers of agricultural and food transition. In particular, they aim to federate actors around a common food-related territorial project, to strengthen local food supply chains and to act as levers for integrating different issues (social, environmental, economic or health-related) and areas of public action.
The aim of this paper is to analyze how territorial food project meet these objectives by studying the dynamics of coordination between the actors involved in these arrangements. The first step was to draw up an overview of the diversity of PATs and their singularities, in terms of projected trajectories of change and forms of actor participation in the French Auvergne Rhône Alpes (AURA) region. In the AURA region, there are over 60 PATs, 56 of which are in the emergence phase (labelled level 1) and 7 fully operational (labelled level 2). A second task consisted in selecting two "operational" PATs, contrasting and characterized by a history of territorialized food policies, in order to assess the effects of PATs on the interactions between actors in territorial food systems, on the structuring of local food chains and the integration of issues, sectors and scales. To this end, we analyzed the evolution of the territorial food project actors through social network analysis approaches (relational chain and complete social network) considering the types of actors involved (roles, challenges raised, positioning in controversies, practices). Thus, we documented the construction and implementation processes of integrated food policies through the prism of these coordination and alliance strategies (sectors involved, associated governance processes, cooperation at different organizational levels, as well as the controversies structuring these constructions).

Rawaa Laajimi (p), Laurence Delattre, Hubert Jayet, Nicolas Debarsy

Julia Barbet

If the characteristics and location of farms and consumers involved in short food supply chains (SFSCs) are well studied, especially for on-farm sales, the location of off-farm points of sale - as interaction point between supply and demand – has not been much analyzed, especially from a quantitative perspective. Though, a better understanding of the factors favoring and impeding the emergence of such points of sale could be valuable for producers (farmers), sellers (farmers or intermediaries), consumers (through consumers driven initiatives) but also for policymaking. To fill this gap, we have compiled an original database from local, regional, and national websites for the year 2020 and geolocalized more than 500 points of sale (pick-up point for sale by internet, pick-up point for community supported agriculture, producers’ collective stores, markets and retail stores) in two French departments (Nord and Pas-de-Calais). We account for the local environment of each point of sales, both in terms of potential supply of agricultural products and potential food demand, by relying on distance-weighted variables (inspired by the concept of market potential). We then estimate a count model at the municipal level to distinguish the demand and supply factors explaining the creation of points of sale. Even though this first model is already estimated at the smallest administrative geographical scale, leading to potential policy recommendations, we also wanted to go as far as possible in the understanding of the location of off-farm points of sales and we thus estimate a model explaining the existence of a point of sales at the INSEE-grid scale (200 square meters). After discussing our finding, the paper closes on policy recommendations and future research opportunities.