Ex-post consequences of participatory foresight processes in agriculture. How to help dairy farmers to face agroecological outcomes of collective decisions planning?

Open Access

Abstract

The analysis of the consequences of participatory foresight in agriculture over the long term is little studied in the scientific literature. In particular, it questions how farmers deal with the proposed scenarios afterwards and the modalities of their implementation. This article aims to overcome this by proposing an ex-post analysis of a foresight process with Kirkpatrick's model carried out in mid-2018 in a PDO territory in the Massif Central (France). A set of 24 semi-structured interviews was conducted in spring and summer 2020 with the dairy farmers involved. Moreover, collective organization has been investigated through participatory observation and an analysis of project's progress reports until March 2021. The results show that while the engagement of farmers in the collective dynamic remains, it needs to be continuously rebuilt over time, particularly in order to overcome the effects of social risk-taking that farmers must face. The article proposes a series of guidelines based on the project's experience and demonstrates the importance of establishing long-term follow-ups of foresight approaches to encourage farmers into action.