S09 - Session P4 - Will lettuces and tomatoes thrive in peri-urban wheat fields? Strategies, factors and implications of horticultural diversification for large-scale field crop farmers in the Parisian area

Authors: Kevin Morel *, Hector Mussillon

In French peri-urban regions, more and more large-scale field crop farmers, historically long chain-oriented, are willing to diversify production with vegetables sold through local and/or short marketing channels. This horticultural diversification seems mainly drawn by the commercial opportunity of increasing urban demand for local vegetables but could potentially bring other benefits: better added value and image (in peri-urban areas where neighboring inhabitants can have a negative perception of industrial farming), job creation or extending crop rotation as an agroecological strategy to reduce inputs. However, this horticultural diversification is very little documented and farmers can face many doubts and challenges that may limit the transformation of peri-urban production systems. Our research objective is to analyze (i) the different modalities of horticultural diversification at the farm level: which vegetables are integrated? on which acreage? how are vegetables integrated in the production system (as part of field crop rotations or on dedicated acreages?) for which objectives? and (ii) the consequences, impeding or favoring factors of horticultural diversification for peri-urban field crop farmers (workload organization, skills, equipment and investment, farming practices, marketing strategies, profitability etc.). To answer these questions, we will carry out 20 comprehensive semi-structured interviews with peri-urban field crop farmers in Spring 2022 in the Parisian region. We will interview farmers with contrasting profiles and levels of involvement in horticultural diversification (already implementing, interested in, reluctant to). The collected material will be processed with the qualitative analysis software NVIVO allowing thematic coding and transversal analysis of topics across the sample of farms. By IHC 2022, we will be able to share our main results. We will discuss their implication for developing tools, policy, advisory, training programs to better support peri-urban field crop farmers in horticultural diversification. We will discuss the role that those farmers could play in relocating vegetable production around cities.