Foresight study on Guadeloupean Agriculture

While greening agriculture has emerged as a new paradigm in agricultural research and development, one of the UNEP's findings is that transitions of agricultural systems away from "Business-as-usual" are required if negative externalities of agriculture are to be reduced. To make these transitions effective, actors collectively need to be able to anticipate the future so that planning can be implemented and steps taken for action. As decision support tools, foresight studies can help build this representation of the future and identify possible avenues to meet the desired ones. We have implemented a foresight study on agriculture in Guadeloupe (French West Indies). We adopted a participatory approach and a scenario based methodology. Fifteen experts were chosen on the basis of their diversity of disciplinary and professional backgrounds, their knowledge of, and implication in the territory, as well as for their geographical representativeness. Additionally, two non-Guadeloupian experts were selected as outsiders both from a geographic and a conceptual point of view in order to help us broaden our thinking horizons. Several workshops, of which two have already been held, are planned with this group of experts. Steps of the methodology include: 1/building up a common representation of the system at stake; 2/identifying the past tendencies of the variables that define and influence the system; 3/inferring hypotheses on their future evolution and 4/ building up the "Futuribles" (i.e. the possible scenarios for the future of the system). The scope of the foresight study is the year 2040. Such a pace of time allows taking breaks into account in the analysis of past tendencies and liberating the discourse of participants. Among the first findings are the fact that agriculture in Guadeloupe needs to be re-defined to better take into account small holders into agricultural policies, and that adequate mechanisms needs to be identified to help both agricultures (conventional mainstream agriculture and small scale agriculture) meet an evolving demand while being sustainable.