Résumé
The theme of "Nature and culture in the Pacific" is an opportunity for our team of rural development agro-economists and socio-economists, who often conduct research on farming sectors or systems, to take a different look at our study area: agriculture and the rural world in New Caledonia. What is the reality of the rural world, closely associated with images of "bush" areas, and its changes over the past 15 years (Boyer 1994)? Where does agriculture stand in society, contributing only 2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) to an economy dominated by mining and nickel processing, retailing and tourism? In discussing GDP, moreover, we refer only to commercial agriculture. What is the weight of non-commercial agricultural and rural activities? The statistics reveal a total agricultural population of 28 per cent, two-thirds of whom live in the Northern and Loyalty Islands Provinces. In other words, what does the rural sector in New Caledonia represent and which rural activities make sense in terms of economic integration? The first part of this paper describes the context of rural New Caledonia. We look at the rural "heritage" of New Caledonia, to use the term coined by Saussol (1979), covering both what may have become common to the various communities or groups and what remains specific. The second part analyses some instances of activities characterised by interaction or complementarity between commercial and non-commercial dynamics from research in the Northern Province, in the Melanesian environment in particular. We are referring to the economic use of subsistence crops and the dynamics of community markets.