Les relations agriculture-écologie : une remodélisation des évolutions en Lozère

Many attempts are at present being made to define the relationship between the development of economic activity and ecological evolution. Our approach is based on a comparison between the development of agriculture and of the ecosystems it creates or comes into contact with, for farming is an activity which has a particularly obvious and «r reliberate » effect on ecological cycles. The development of farming techniques in the present social framework leads to a modification of the way in which farming organises ecosystems. Two very clear aspects of this state of affairs are, for example, the intensification of farming in suburban areas and its gradual disappearance in areas where farming is difficult, especially hill-farming. Our research concerns this last category in Lozère. Our method consists in considering the development of farming in Lozère compared with its development in France in general. After considering the decline in the number of farms and the modification in their structure, their relations with ecology are studied especially with regard to the surface they occupy. Consequently the conflict ecology-economy is seen in this study as a concrete phenomenon, including both the logic of the reproduction of ecosystems and that of the decline of farming. In order to give as clear a context as possible to this confrontation we have used a model in which some variables are influenced mainly by economic development and others by the logic of ecological development. The building of a model enables several different agricultural policies to be simulated, modifying the rate or direction of the development of French farming.