Multifunctionality and agriculture

The concept of agricultural multifunctionality is the fruit of intense debate of which the initial phases date back to the early 90s. Its main phases include the principal of sustainable development ratified at the Rio Summit (1992), that of decoupling agriculture subsidies adopted in the Marrakech Agreements (1994) along with the concept of an integrated rural policy put forward at the Cork Conference (1996). In France, the Agricultural Orientation Act (1999) designates the principal points and results of this debate. In this country with a rich farming tradition, the crisis affecting the agriculture of the developed countries has been the mostly deeply felt. There are five dimensions to this crisis: the demographic and sociopolitical crisis of the farming community; the emergence of extraordinary territorial fragility; the increase of disregard to food among the citizenry; the growing manifestation of a split with the living; farmers' uncertainty in identifying their own profession. In confronting this crisis, multifunctionality is a concept, which can give meaning to the farming profession and to agriculture. Indeed, it shows that farming activity plays many roles that can be illustrated through five distinctions: foodstuffs and non foodstuffs, production and transformation, material and immaterial wealth, private and State goods, market and non-market goods. To be meaningful, these different functions must be apprehended and encouraged globally. Here is where one finds the interest of an agricultural policy based on the "decoupling-recoupling" principal: "decoupling" the different functions of the act of production so as to assure their remuneration then "recoupling" them so as to preserve the links uniting agriculture to the territory, to nature and to the living. The originality of this profession is its capacity to articulate several missions and different types of know-how-far more than those implied in the definition of the agricultural producer prevailing in the latter half of the 20(th) century. It is the reconstruction of a profession of synthesis, not an equivalent of the 19(th) century paysan. I believe that, from this point of view, the farmer is a very modern entrepreneur. An entrepreneur who has the particular characteristic of being as much in phase with the market as with the rest of society, through public policies. In the final analysis, this very strong recomposition around multifunctionality can be seen as an historical opportunity to redefine the role of agriculture in modern society.