A revolution that is rooted in five dynamic

For fifteen years, French agriculture combines the crises. Economic crisis, characterized by the decline in market share and the erosion of the income of producers: the viticulture, traditional centre of excellence, is iconic, net sales decreased by 14 in a decade in France, while global consumption progressed in the same time by 13 and 23 sales. Political crisis, the fact of the decommissioning and abandonment of farmers, feeling that toggles the rural world in extremism, fueling protectionist and xenophobic passions. European and international crisis for the central role played by agriculture both in the blocking of the European Union because of the financial weight of the CAP (293 billion euros by 2013) that obstructs the reorientation of the Community budget to support the structural competitiveness (74 billion euros) in the halting of the Doha round in the WTO. Scientific and moral, crisis with the critique of the impact of intensive agriculture on the environment and landscapes, with the polemics on GMOs, with the rise of the health risks, dramatically illustrated by outbreaks of mad cow disease and bird flu.

These problems certainly reflect the obsolescence of the model of French agriculture, based on the social support of the decline of the agricultural population, the pilotage by the State of innovation and productivity gains, the Community preference and the price support by grants from the 1960 European. They however give agriculture a table very negative and biased, which hides the new revolution of the sector. A revolution that is rooted in five dynamic.

The first is demographic: the world's population will be 10 billion people by 2050, compared to 6.5 billion in 2006, with a daily caloric intake will increase at least 15, particularly due to the reduction of poverty (in regression of more than 10 in Asia since 1990). At the same time, urbanization will accelerate, about 60 of the world's population. Thus, in emerging countries, growth in consumption should be greater than the gains in agricultural productivity, resulting in an increase in imports. China is exemplary of this double shock of demand and supply, which has seen in 15 years consumption advance of 60 for meat, 40 for sugar, 24 for wheat, 18 for rice, while the rural exodus touched more than 180 million people, that arable land decreased by 1 per year because of urbanization and pollutioncausing a decrease in the production of wheat from 125 to 95 million tonnes between 1995 and 2005.

The second dynamic is rooted in globalization, by the constitution of a global market, the reduction of barriers to trade, the growth of international trade. It promotes the rise of new farming superpowers to the South, with symbol and leader the Brazil. And emerging countries will produce near term 59 wheat, 66 of butter, 77 of sugar, 54 of the poultry, 62 of the beef and veal. This take-off of southern agriculture is the main vector of development and poverty reduction.

The third comes from the intensity of innovation, which allows to consider reconciling productivity gains and sustainable development: the use of GMOs has authorized the Brazil to highlight the Mato Grosso while controlling the erosion of soils.

The fourth is located in the progressive reduction of agricultural subsidies in developed countries (226 billion EUR, or 1.2 of GDP, compared with 2.3 per cent 20 years ago, representing 30 of revenues against 37) and their change in nature: decrease the market price support measures in favour of aid to the area cultivated, number of animals and contributions to the general interestleast disruptive disadvantageous to developing countries and markets.

The fifth is the rise of environmental concerns. On the one hand, protection becomes central in agricultural policies, the fact of the global risk (climate change, biodiversity...), tension on the scarce resources in the first rank of which water of the degradation of some natural environments the sea, due to overfishing, or arable land in China, where pollution has caused the first environmental riots in the history of capitalism. On the other, sustainability opens new markets, for example with biofuels, representing 20 of consumption in the Brazil.

It is in light of this new world order that must be determined the future of French agriculture. And the five principles.

Risks and shortage imbalance in some markets, agricultural policy can only be understood in terms of services of general interest, including through the maintenance of the territory and landscape, but must rediscover the size of the production.

The response to the increase in world demand through the development of the market, the transparency of trade, the strengthening of the regulation through the WTO mechanisms. Hence, in the short term, the importance of a favourable outcome to Doha round and medium term, the support must be provided to the WTO, cornerstone of better governance of agricultural trade.

Unlike the United Kingdom, who has sacrificed its agriculture and its industry financial services, or the Germany, structured around its industry, whose survival was accept modernization of Rhine corporatism, the French economy is not marked by a strong sectoral specialization but keeps poles of excellence in agriculture as in industry and services. By its diversification, its high productivity, its presence on international markets, French agriculture is perfectly positioned to take advantage of the new world deal, in particular the movement of liberalization initiated by the Doha cycle.

As in the agricultural revolutions of the 18th, and then the end of the 19th century, two strategies collide: the first, Malthusian and protectionist, symbolised by the Méline laws, helped stabilize the existing structures and delay the rural exodus to the price of the stagnation of production and income on the one hand, of progressive blocking of the economy and society on the other hand; the second, experienced after 1945, been modernization forced March and the tech to reposition the production on world markets. The development of French agriculture depends today of the capacity of farmers and their representatives to break with the utopia of a return to the mechanisms of the cap of the 1960s and the steering of the sector by the State to resolutely make the choice of production, innovation, which is decisive for sustainable development, unlike the chimeric precautionary principle, competitiveness on world markets.

Agriculture is not a sector sentenced or marginal. It is best instead of the contradictions and the blockades of the French economy. In the new comic gives by globalization, its strengths are major and its bright future, little that she stops of the thirty Glorieuses Conservatory and she agrees, and after the second world war, in a new revolution, now placed under the sign of the production of research and innovation, the market and export.