Workshop Cycle « Innovations for Resilience » - March session

Dans le cadre du cycle Innovations for Resilience du Risk Institute en partenariat avec INNOVACS, l'atelier de recherche du 20 avril 2023 accueillera Morgan MEYER (Mines Paris Tech, France) qui présentera ses travaux : "Fabriquer, expérimenter et documenter les low tech. Le cas de l'Atelier Paysan". Une discussion ouverte s'ensuivra sur la question de la participation des citoyens à la réduction de la vulnérabilité et à la gestion des risques au moyen de technologies légères et faciles à utiliser.

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2^nd part of the cycle:
Involving users ? New trends in design methodologies

Workshop #5: March 20^th, 2022

Making, experimenting and documenting low tech. The Farmer fablab case.
Fabriquer, expérimenter et documenter les low tech. Le cas de l'Atelier Paysan.

by Morgan MEYER (Mines Paris Tech, France)
Language: French, English material
Paper:  Meyer, M. L’Atelier Paysan: Reprendre la Terre aux Machines: Manifeste pour une Autonomie Paysanne et Alimentaire [taking back the land from the machines: a manifesto for peasant and food autonomy]. Agric Hum Values 39, 1161–1162 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-022-10323-4

Festival Low Tech of Concarneau © Morgan Meyer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

Research paper’s abstract
Several collectives have been created in recent years to promote the self-construction of agricultural machines and equipment. We have seen the creation of the Farmhack network in the US (in 2011), the UK (2015) and the Netherlands (2016). And in France, self-construction workshops have been organized since 2011 leading to the creation of the cooperative L’Atelier Paysan [literal translation: peasant workshop] in 2014. The latter has just published its first book for a large audience, Reprendre la terre aux machines: Manifeste pour une autonomie paysanne et alimentaire. In this book, Atelier Paysan provides a critical analysis of the contemporary agricultural world, while focusing on its pet subject: agricultural machinery.
The list of observations and criticisms drawn by Atelier Paysan is long: an increase of the average surface of farms, a decrease of the active agricultural population, over-indebted farmers, a decline in biodiversity, a strong dependence on private actors, a devaluation and disappearance of know-how, environmental and sanitary damages, the degradation of soils, an increase in the use of pesticides, excessive and oversized machinery, poor nutrition, too high reliance on digital technologies and robotics.
For Atelier Paysan, agricultural production and food must be reconnected. “Just as we must ask ourselves what kind of food we want, we must ask ourselves what kind of machines we want [...] There will be no food autonomy without technical autonomy” (p. 227).
While detailing in an alarmist and pessimistic way the problems of contemporary agriculture, Atelier Paysan proposes certain ways forward: establishing a social security for food (a project carried out with other actors); installing one million farmers in France; creating a minimum price for entry into the national market. This last proposal is particularly problematic, as it would be incompatible with the principles of free trade and would require “disobedience” to the European Commission.
Full paper

Annual program

Coordination: Jean-Luc Bosson (TIMC-Imag), Jean-François Boujut (G-Scop), Céline Cholez (PACTE)