Axel de Martene
Food systems for thoughts in a disrupted world
Books
Here you will find my publications with their summary. They are available directly from the publishing house la Butineuse.
Change the rules of the game
Volume 1: Mon assiette, miroir du monde
Our history as a human species is intrinsically linked to our food, a key factor that has shaped our civilizations. From the development of our brain to the global pandemic of obesity; from the first great civilizations of antiquity to the metropolization of the world today; from the appearance of exchanges and money to globalized capitalism… the way in which we have organized, as a society, the production, processing, distribution, consumption and elimination of our food, imprints our way of inhabiting the Earth. This is what has allowed us to colonize most of the land, including the most inhospitable and to adapt in extremely varied territories. Eating bears witness to our relationships to time, to others, to our values, to our religions, to our education, etc. but also to our social organization. Feeding people is a very political issue. It ensures social stability and that of power, but also frees up surpluses and resources (labour, time, energy, capital, purchasing power, etc.) to fuel economic growth. The development and power of the great empires of Antiquity, of the great city-states or of the industrial metropolises are all linked to their capacity to produce or have produced, to transport and to distribute food to feed armies, officials, priests, craftsmen, workers or scientists. Our political cultures as well as our diets reflect globalizations; potatoes, tea, sugar or cotton still mark our history and political geography today. The arrival of fossil fuels has allowed us to solve the Malthusian dilemma: improving productivity to feed an exponentially growing population. But they will have profoundly shaken the organization of our food and, from there, that of our societies: it is the urbanization of Western countries, the commodification of the economy, the demographic explosion and «the great acceleration» resource and ecosystem withdrawals. Food forms a kind of double social contract for humanity: with nature to extract resources and for our model of development. Providing safe and diversified food while lowering its share in our budgets and in our organization of time will have allowed us the most formidable period of economic growth, peace and stability, social progress, education and life expectancy throughout the history of our Western countries. As we enter a new geological era, the Anthropocene, a more unstable and uncertain world, the globalized thermo-industrial model of our modern food is undermining this double foundation. Today’s major issues are putting this question in the spotlight. We have grown from 1 to 8 billion people on Earth over the past two centuries and we are expected to reach 9.7 billion, 70% of whom are urban in 2050. Can our food systems deliver on all these promises? Food will always have a special, heavy and demanding responsibility, facing the challenges of the world around us: by construction, it is the main human activity that touches all planetary limits: the climate, but also the soils, biodiversity, biogeochemical cycles of water, nitrogen or phosphorus, etc... But our current model of mass production for linear mass consumption (harvesting, manufacturing, transporting, consuming, discarding) takes away from resources and releases into ecosystems much more than the Earth is able to regenerate naturally. The reading of our world food draws new dividing lines: no longer overconsumption in «rich» countries and undernutrition in developing countries, but indeed coexistence of overweight or obese and under-nourished populationsfed within the same living spaces. This is especially true in our Western societies, where the middle classes are gradually sinking into these two facets of food insecurity. Our poor diet also risks reversing for the first time in centuries the increase in our life expectancy and we could be intellectually less developed than the generations of our parents because of dietary deficiencies and imbalances. The other big losers of this slow agony are the farmers themselves: race to productivism, economic fragility, debt, suicide, non-renewal of generations… weigh on the future of the trade, agricultural areas and rural territories, on our ability to lead the necessary transitions, even on our own ability to feed ourselves sovereign. We see emerging systemic phenomena of land grabbing and the financialization of agricultural land that further widens the gap between countries or populations, with conflicts, migration or the shift to drug trafficking or terrorism. Yet agroecology, bioeconomy, and nature-based solutions hold many hopes to help us rebuild a world that is not only sustainable, but regenerates resources and ecosystems. Starting from concrete examples on the ground, we can begin to draw the portrait of an agriculture that provides solutions for all our economic activities: food, of course, but also energy, health, cosmetics, construction, plastic or automotive industries, land use planning, urban planning, urban and environmental services, transportation, mining, social inclusion, and many other parts of our societies… Above all, it draws models of progress based on collaboration and sharing; raw materials, funding or knowledge for a world that is ultimately more decentralized, based on its territories, more resilient to hazards, more inclusive, more innovative. In short, a new narrative for a model of progress that allows us to face major global challenges without being punitive, but on the contrary stimulating and incentive.
Change the rules of the game
Volume 2: La cuisine de la transition
At the convergence of all the major struggles of our time, the transformation of food systems is becoming a strategic question, as much ecological or political as economic, financial and public health. To carry out these transitions, we cannot say that we do not know how to do it: we have all the tools; scientific, agronomic, economic, financial, political or technological…. to act. Restoring ecosystems, moving to agroecology, deploying nature-based solutions are profitable if we think in full costs. Financial players are starting to take an interest in it, consumers are showing themselves ready to pay more, economic remuneration schemes for environmental services are growing and becoming more and more mature... Nevertheless, these new methods of financing or remuneration raise profound questions the traditional income scheme for the farmer and the organization of current food systems: they call for new global, integrated reflections on the management of the farm which take into account new forms of outlets or valorization. This also opens up new areas of reflection on governance and the role of the company in its environment. Above all, field experiences demonstrate the importance of collaboration between actors from very different backgrounds to pool funding, risks, expertise and needs. Agriculture and food is today a field of experimentation "of possibilities", undoubtedly the place where the most inspiring solutions are built to reorient production models and organizations in the face of the adversity of economic challenges. , social or environmental. Basically, it is new collaborative governance that we need to scale up these solutions. New technologies, such as blockchain, satellite remote sensing, data, fintech, artificial intelligence or even low tech, are fantastic tools that demonstrate their relevance in the four corners of the world to help players build new representations of the world, to decentralize and coordinate action as close as possible to those in the field or to accelerate knowledge. Despite these tools and the – considerable – resources that we currently have at our disposal, we are not able to scale up these solutions. Because our food responds to systemic dynamics based on the polarization of production and consumption zones, hyperconnectivity, the simplification of processes, the concentration of actors, decoupling and volatility which unfold at a completely different pace than the solutions. innovations in the field. This collective organization permeates the mental models of the actors in place: the representation of performance, the prisoner's dilemma, path dependence or even the social codes between decision-makers increasingly lock the system into its destructive trajectory. The challenge of transforming our food systems for our civilizations is ultimately not so much economic, financial or technological as in the impasses of our collective organization and our representations. This is indeed the whole system, as it is designed; its rules of the game, its mode of operation, its fuel which guides our behavior. It is therefore within an integrative logic, which effectively articulates these instruments together, that a transformation can be envisaged; on the scale of the farm, the territory, the sector or even an entire country. In other words: we need less technical innovation today than social or organizational innovation to face tomorrow's challenges, but this requires recreating a powerful incentive that aligns collective behavior in the same direction.
Change the rules of the game
Volume 3: Manger, régénérer
How can we recreate an incentive so mobilizing that it can align the behavior of all stakeholders – from producer to consumer, from the State to scientific research – towards the regeneration of resources and ecosystems? Currency can play this role. It allows consumers to actively engage in the ecological transition without altering their purchasing power. It is an inclusive and democratic approach, encouraging and no longer punitive for everyone. This change in approach redistributes the competitiveness cards between companies, favoring those which reduce their footprint, or even which store carbon, and penalizing others. Carbon currency integrates regeneration into economic models, impacting decision-making processes, governance and investments. This concept of carbon currency goes far beyond the food sector. It invites us to rethink our relationship with money in all spheres of economic life, from paying taxes to daily choices, promoting more sustainable decisions. It is an instrument for the relocation of activities, for the revitalization of rural spaces, no longer as natural spaces to be (over)exploited to fuel distant urban bulimia, but as places of services and innovation, as a fundamental link in cycles and value chains. Food products, renewable energies, biomaterials, circular economy, new technologies... but also reconstruction of water cycles, protection of resources, resilience in the face of hazards, etc..., activities now better financed to recreate calls for qualified workforce, to redevelop local sectors for endogenous development, based on its own assets: natural, human and heritage, seeking to maximize synergies rather than the division of labor and the search for productivity gains. Changing the way we look at money and integrating the “carbon” value opens up numerous perspectives for economic and societal transformations. The Bretton Woods conference rebuilt a global monetary order in the face of rising economic and political confrontations between states. Today's issues are no less critical and all States have nonetheless returned to competitive devaluations transposed to fiscal, social and environmental levels. Despite the success of the Paris Agreement in 2015, there is, strictly speaking, no international mechanism for cooperation, prescription and support in the transformation of economies. A Bretton Woods III which would acknowledge the existence of this complementary carbon currency, validate its methodologies, the reference price per tonne of carbon and which would build the carbon IMF while expanding the missions of the World Bank on these questions would then be based the foundations of the next world.
