Thank you for this discussion proposal, and the information on TAPE that I did not know. My experience as an evaluator of many agri-environmental and agri-ecological programs and policies in France and in Europe leads me to say that the main issue of these evaluations is the definition of the evaluation frame of reference: how to define precisely what are agri-ecological agricultural practices and those which are not? Agroecology is indeed defined by principles, but the translation of these principles into concrete practices that can be compared to existing practices is difficult because it is the subject of an unstabilized expert debate. For example, what level of fertilization or phytosanitary treatments is compatible with agroecology? There is no single answer to this question.
A second important issue is the knowledge of agricultural practices in a given territory, practices that vary according to the type of farm. This knowledge requires the use of efficient statistical tools - such as the farming practices surveys in France - and the regular repetition of these surveys to understand the evolution of average practices over time. Finally, access to these data must be easy for evaluators, which is far from always being the case.
RE: Evaluating agroecology: what is your experience?
Hello
Thank you for this discussion proposal, and the information on TAPE that I did not know. My experience as an evaluator of many agri-environmental and agri-ecological programs and policies in France and in Europe leads me to say that the main issue of these evaluations is the definition of the evaluation frame of reference: how to define precisely what are agri-ecological agricultural practices and those which are not? Agroecology is indeed defined by principles, but the translation of these principles into concrete practices that can be compared to existing practices is difficult because it is the subject of an unstabilized expert debate. For example, what level of fertilization or phytosanitary treatments is compatible with agroecology? There is no single answer to this question.
A second important issue is the knowledge of agricultural practices in a given territory, practices that vary according to the type of farm. This knowledge requires the use of efficient statistical tools - such as the farming practices surveys in France - and the regular repetition of these surveys to understand the evolution of average practices over time. Finally, access to these data must be easy for evaluators, which is far from always being the case.