PAP 83: Action research on the limestone plateaus of Yonne and Nièvre

Laurent Lelli, Lucie Liège, June 2025

Le Collectif Paysages de l’Après-Pétrole (PAP)

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Agricultural practices have changed over the last few decades, with the agri-food industry industrialising its processes, leading to the standardisation of the products we consume and the landscapes from which they originate. The recent health crisis and the effects of climate change have revealed the low resilience of these systems. How can we begin to transform them?

Pollution of the land and water, the standardisation of landscapes, loss of biodiversity, the disappearance of living soils, climate change: the entire environment is impacted by the effects of agricultural intensification, while in many areas, people’s food consumption has lost all connection with local agricultural production. If we want to restore these various balances and ensure a desirable future for the land that sustains our existence, there is one lever we can use: seeking to revive the territorial roots of the land’s produce among both the inhabitants and the farmers who cultivate it.

By introducing the Territorial Food Projects (PAT) scheme, the 2014 Agricultural Orientation Law sought to revive these relationships. Philippe Pointereau puts it clearly: ‘The limitations of the neoliberal model and its consequences on climate change call for a transformation of our food production and distribution systems’ ¹. By promoting local products, these will no longer embody only authenticity and the values of the past, but rather resilience, sobriety, the deployment of renewable energies, agroecology and the fight against precariousness. By bringing consumers closer to producers, these initiatives also create a new pact between rural and urban areas.

Based on locally available resources – a wide variety of products from field to plate and new forms of democracy in trade, information availability and participation by all – territorialised systems seem capable of ensuring a significant part of the subsistence of territories in the context of the socio-economic and environmental crises that are already upon us. It is now important to multiply these approaches so that local actors, particularly farmers, can take ownership of them. Restoring the relationships between the disjointed parts of the system requires action on the whole, not just on one or other of its elements. To this end, the theme of landscape is essential due to its cross-cutting nature and the means it offers to raise awareness of the necessary changes. However, the relationships between agricultural practices, landscapes and products have been little studied to date in the context of PATs ². Supported by an original collective, the Permanent Centre for Environmental Initiatives (CPIE) Yonne et Nièvre has therefore launched a research-action project in this area, to be carried out between 2021 and 2023. By linking food to its territory through a set of facilitation tools, its ambition was to explore a systemic issue through step-by-step action on each of its components. The challenge was to devise regional strategies that would restore the obvious links that the landscape so powerfully reveals: water, practices, local cultures, memory and hope for the future.

The territorial and landscape context of the research

Faced with the challenge of successfully combining high-quality agricultural production with better management of environmental resources, citizen, community and institutional initiatives have multiplied in recent years in the Yonne and Nièvre departments. In order to provide locally sourced food that respects the living environment, several PATs are seeking to integrate the need to better manage increasingly scarce resources such as water, soil and biodiversity, and to this end are aiming to establish joint approaches between actors in the agricultural and food systems.

However, the landscape dimension of these food territorialisation schemes has remained very marginal, as the landscape was often presented only as a promotional backdrop, rather than as the very matrix from which links between food and agricultural practices are forged ³.

Building on its territorial roots, in 2021 the CPIE Yonne et Nièvre developed a project entitled ‘De l’eau dans les PAT’ (Water in the PATs). Aiming to link the themes of food, landscape and water at the territorial level, a major challenge in the context of climate change, the CPIE project proposes to experiment in the field with the concept of food landscape. This term clearly and originally identifies the organic link between the survival of our bodies and what we often refer to, in a still approximate and summary way, as our living environment.

The project’s study area is the Forterre, a small region located between the wet hills of Puisaye and the Yonne valley, extending to the Auxerrois basin. At the junction between the Paris Basin and the Morvan, it is characterised by a diversity of landscapes and agricultural systems. The shallow, filtering soils of the limestone and marl-limestone plateaus of the Yonne determine the crops that are grown there. Non-irrigated cereals and vines predominate.

In terms of their hydrological resources, these landscapes do not reveal themselves at first glance. Streams and rivers are rare because the waterways remain underground, independent of the surface of the limestone plateaus they cross, running beneath them along the slopes of an impermeable floor. Water surfaces here and there in the valleys in numerous springs around which villages have been established with their wash houses, masonry ponds, fountains and underground cisterns.

Rainfall first feeds a surface compartment that promotes plant production, the growth of grass and trees that provides biomass for farmers and greenery and shade for residents. The surplus recharges the water table in winter, when vegetation is dormant and evapotranspiration is zero. However, in the absence of winter rainfall in recent years, drought declarations have become more frequent in summer, while spring rainfall has led to record biomass production and a green countryside. These significant and visible changes are raising questions among residents. What kind of landscapes will the region evolve into in these times of climate change? In addition, many municipalities in this area have been affected by agricultural pollution of drinking water. The productive use of water can undermine its social use when certain economic priorities conflict with the vital needs of all. Water, a defining feature of the landscape, is therefore a common challenge for both agricultural practices and domestic uses in the region.

What does the future hold for a region affected by such changes? What new relationships can be forged between populations, professions and practices in order to restore the rational use of local resources and commit together to a more thoughtful and sensible regional and social future? A series of workshops on local landscapes aimed to enable populations to collectively wake up to the necessary changes and discuss the transformations to be decided together.

Local actors and project governance

By introducing the concept of food landscapes, the action research team sought to develop facilitation methods and tools that combined scientific and vernacular approaches to action. To do this, it brought together a collective of local organisations and researchers. Taking the cross-cutting theme of water in PATs as its guiding principle, this project aimed to reinvest in practices linked to past and present local knowledge.

The project is part of the ‘Fabrique de territoire’ consortium as a collective. The CPIE Yonne et Nièvre coordinates the project, while the P.a.r.c association provides insights into the links between landscapes and cuisine, while running workshops to enrich the approach to food landscapes through the senses. The ‘Bonjour Cascade’ collective offers support in the design of facilitation and feedback tools. The CAUE de l’Yonne provides human and technical resources as well as expertise in landscape, architecture and urban planning. Researchers contribute to the project’s methodology through field surveys and reflective analysis of the activities carried out by the local team. By combining different cultures of intervention throughout the process, this project is also an experiment in ways of working together in a region. The approach is based on two initial questions. Can making the links between landscape and food visible have a catalytic effect on the food transition? As a living environment and source of attachment, does the landscape make it possible to identify levers for action, at the level of the actors, to integrate water and food issues into territorial projects?

In addition to co-financing from the Recovery Plan, this project is supported by the Auxerrois urban community, the Bourgogne Franche-Comté regional council, the Yonne department and the Loire-Bretagne Water Agency. Regular meetings are held by the CPIE Yonne et Nièvre to steer the process and ensure that the structures complement each other in terms of the partners’ skills and contributions. A phase of mutual familiarisation has been conducive to the acculturation of these different stakeholders on the theme of landscape approaches. The multidisciplinary nature of the project team members (geographer, landscape architect, agronomist, soil scientist, etc.) made it possible to integrate sectoral approaches, whether aesthetic, heritage-related, functional or agroecological.

Methods and tools used

Organised in Saints-en-Puisaye, the Water and Food Days on 15 and 16 October 2021 marked the start of the project. To present it to institutional stakeholders, professionals and interested residents, each partner in the study prepared an activity focusing on the links to be re-established between landscapes, agricultural practices and food. CAUE 89 raised public awareness of the characteristics of the local landscape using iconographic materials showing how it has evolved as a result of agricultural transformations. CPIE presented a study highlighting the systemic dimension of water resources in a region where their uneven distribution affects both agricultural production and human consumption. Researchers presented the action research that was being launched in order to raise awareness among local residents. Finally, several producers came to explain why they were interested in the project and to offer tastings of their local products.

Between May and August 2022, a shared understanding of the landscapes of yesterday and today was developed with stakeholders in the field. A survey on the landscapes experienced and water issues was conducted among farmers, elected officials and tourism stakeholders. This survey highlighted that residents were concerned about the management of this resource. How can its sustainability be guaranteed while also preserving the small architectural heritage of villages, fountains, wash houses and cisterns? A diachronic approach to landscapes showed how much the links with the land had weakened. Memories of the removal of hedges, the enlargement of agricultural plots and the decline in vineyard areas had disappeared.

Several walks and landscape tastings were organised by the CPIE, offering an exercise in reading the landscape along a specific route. While the participants wandered around in groups, discussing their perceptions of the landscape and how it has changed, several tools were used to facilitate the activity, including old postcards, transparencies for everyone to draw their own landscape, plates for imagining a recipe inspired by it, and map puzzles for plotting a route through the wider landscape and analysing place names. A soil study was also carried out in situ. These walks ended with landscape tastings prepared on site and hosted by the P.a.r.c association with its mobile kitchen. Different recipes led to questions about the taste of landscapes, culinary traditions and eating habits during a convivial moment.

In November 2022, a projective workshop on the landscapes of tomorrow was organised based on an activity carried out by the collective of local structures. It was inspired by the methodology of the landscape trestles and the frescoes ‘Les campagne des paysages d’Afterres2050’ (The landscapes of Afterres2050) imagined by the collective Paysages de l’après-pétrole ⁴. In the form of a serious game based on block diagrams surrounded by drawings of landscape features, small heritage sites and contextual information, the exercise set out a prospective framework around a fictional situation reminiscent of various features of the local landscapes. The team had divided them into different entities based on their hydrographic, geological and pedological characteristics.

Each group had to consider the following questions: in 2030, how can we limit the extent of climate change, and how can we adapt to its consequences by 2050? After a quick study of the opportunities and threats affecting the landscape entity they were asked to consider, each group’s objective was to imagine what kind of landscape would enable everyone to have access to safe water and food in the future. Each participant had to fill out action sheets, vote on the proposals made and draw the resulting landscape change on the block diagram.

These workshops brought together around twenty participants who were already interested or even already involved – retired farmers, elected officials, citizens – with varying levels of information. Many proposals aimed to recreate links by organising harvest festivals as in the past or by setting up village communal kitchens to promote local produce. To adapt to both excess and lack of water, participants were invited to rediscover underground cisterns that store rainwater, the usefulness of ponds and the renaturation of watercourses, as well as the use of permeable materials, etc.

The concept of ‘food landscape’ derived from research and its possible generalisation

A booklet accompanied by a podcast was produced by La Fabrique de Territoire based on the testimonies of all the participants in the action research. Currently in the design phase, a travelling food exhibition will tour several municipalities to showcase the approach and its results and discuss them with the general public. This exhibition also aims to continue to mobilise, identify and even support projects by local actors. The findings will also be capitalised on and disseminated to local authorities through other media, enriching the collective’s initiatives to spread the approach.

One of the outcomes is a methodology for ‘gourmet landscape reading’. Adapted to different types of events, it is designed to mobilise and help transmit local knowledge. The action research enabled actors with different approaches to the theme of water to come together. Building on the field research and actions proposed by residents during the serious game, one of the outcomes of this action research is a project aimed at making water architecture visible, restoring it and reinventing it to promote sustainable resource management.

The concept of the food landscape was a common thread running through the activities and also a difficulty in the approach.

This concept made it possible to raise awareness among the inhabitants of this territory about water issues without causing excessive controversy about the responsibility of farmers in the reduction and alteration of this local resource. As a theme integrating all the dimensions and approaches of their territory, the idea of a food landscape invited residents to look differently at their living environment and what happens there. This approach brings a spatial dimension to the reflection on food resilience and focuses the debate on the territory’s resources. The landscape thus makes it possible to raise questions by establishing a cross-cutting framework for the issue.

However, some participants found it difficult to grasp the concept: in these areas of large-scale farming, one resident clearly stated that she could not imagine a local landscape that would provide her with her daily food. Respondents sometimes expressed nostalgia for the sometimes radical transformation of the agricultural landscapes around their homes. The introduction of the theme of landscape into PATs needs to be explored further, as, more generally, do all the actions carried out in France on this issue.

The concept of food landscapes raises questions about the links between agricultural production aimed at export and production that, originating from specific terroirs, has economic as well as local cultural and historical value. Reflecting the agricultural practices that have shaped them over time, landscapes have illustrated farmers’ know-how and have been embodied in culinary practices and local festivals. The concept of food landscapes makes it possible to reconnect with history and reconnect residents with the issue of potential and sustainable production in their region.

Moving away from reducing the local base of human settlement to an agrarian system that fits soil, geological or hydrological parameters into economical or non-economical water resource management, the concept of food landscapes still needs to mature. It allows us to imagine farming systems that are not geared towards financialised exports but oriented towards the goal of local food production. It has also made it possible to address the issue of individual food choices, which make or break the landscape. All of these themes are driven by the relational approach established with the participants, which must be maintained over time. Finally, some members of the team emphasised the importance of the landscape in linking visible landscape diversity with the agro-diversity necessary for the resilience of territories, thus making landscapes tools for regional food policies.

Bringing rural landscapes out of the oil age?

The approach taken has enabled the CPIE to develop an original regional coordination mechanism and to foster cooperation around projects where the theme of landscape offered potential for transformation. The multidisciplinary nature of the project team is one of the strengths of the approach, but also one of its greatest challenges. Bringing together local organisations and remote researchers was another challenge.

Only a long-term cooperation process will be able to engage the region in a renewed respect for its landscapes, a respect based on attention to places, the preservation of soil and water vitality, and the reconstruction of food practices that take care of what can be produced locally.

The vital link between food and the environment is proving capable of reconnecting inhabitants with the issue of the health of the earth’s foundations by mobilising their sensibilities, emotions and imaginations. The food landscape approach, a possible support for territorial food projects, thus seems a promising way to initiate a change in perspective on agricultural landscapes that have been trivialised and impoverished by the oil era. All too often, local authorities are still only tentatively embracing this new paradigm, when what is urgently needed is a comprehensive approach to the interactions between our agricultural and food production and the environment and landscapes.

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