Montpellier, a breeding ground for tomorrow's agriculture

With an eye to the South, 2,500 researchers in Montpellier are inventing the agricultural models of tomorrow, between the rediscovery of ancestral techniques and the contribution of new technologies. new technologies.

Laurent Bruckler is unequivocal: "There is no longer any agronomy that does not take the environment into account". The President of INRA's Occitanie-Montpellier center traces the evolution of a discipline whose face has been profoundly transformed. " Before the 1970s, the focus was on feeding the country in the context of post-war reconstruction. The emphasis was therefore on fertilization, crop protection and the artificialization of the environment... Then came the realization of the consequences of agriculture on the environmental crisis and on health. A long period of transition culminated in the widespread adoption of new principles in the early 2000s, in a globalized understanding of issues such as climate change, demographics and the risks to biodiversity..." .

Jean-Luc Maeght © IRD

Bio-inspired agriculture

This slow evolution has led to the emergence of new concepts, such asagroecology. " Agroecology consists in using biological mechanisms present in nature to enhance agricultural production: taking inspiration from a forest environment that maintains itself through internal fertilization, using the microbial biomass already present in the soil to fix nitrogen..." explains the research director.
"Marie-Laure Navas confirms: " The productivist approach was focused solely on the study of the plot . "Today, on the contrary, we have to work in relation to a watershed, a landscape or even a region, to integrate these environmental dimensions. Agroecology reflects this. The issues are more complex. In fact, we're no longer talking about agriculture, but about agriculture in the plural," points out the Director of Training and Scientific Policy at SupAgro Montpellier. Located north of Les Arceaux on the La Gaillarde campus, this prestigious school trains the future leaders of French agronomy. On the campus, which also houses the INRA, vines and greenhouses grow like mushrooms, forming an unexpected oasis of greenery just a stone's throw from the city center.

Lavalette: agricultural Tower of Babel

The La Gaillarde site is not the only nerve center for agronomy in Montpellier. On the other side of town, at the foot of the Lunaret zoo, the Lavalette campus is home to hundreds of researchers, many of them from developing countries.
As Michel Salas, CIRAD 's Regional Director, explains: " The key word here is partnership. We work with and for the South, not in a top-down approach, but on the contrary in full cooperation". For the researcher, we need to move away from an archaic vision of North/South relations. " The South is an immense repository of know-how, different approaches and genetic material to be explored. Innovative techniques are also developed in the South. Sowing under plant cover, for example, dates back more than 20 years in Brazil," notes Michel Salas. " Working for the South meansworking for the planet. Whathappens in the South has repercussions on the North: the level of development in the countries of the South has a major impact on the present and future of the entire planet," sums up the researcher. To fine-tune its international strategy, the site can also count on the presence of theInstitut de recherche pour le développement (IRD ), whose researchers, present in the four corners of the globe, provide invaluable expertise on development projects.
A veritable Tower of Babel, Lavalette boasts one of the world's richest genetic collections of rice, cocoa, rubber and sugar cane... In high-security containment greenhouses, it also scrutinizes the relationships between plants and parasites, which are also being turned upside down by climate disruption.

World capital

The Lavalette campus has been home to the headquarters of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, or CGIAR, since 2014. This international organization, which coordinates more than 8,000 people and 15 research centers around the world, chose Montpellier over other candidates such as Rome or New Delhi as the location for its HQ. A fitting recognition of Montpellier's status as the world capital of agricultural research.