Résumé
Over the past seventy years, the French Riviera and its surrounding Alpine hinterland have undergone intense urbanization, driven by tourism development and the expansion of secondary residences. This process has resulted in a significant reduction and fragmentation of agricultural land, especially in periurban and coastal areas. More recently, under the impetus of national legislation and growing ecological concerns, local authorities have begun integrating farmland protection and restoration into urban and rural planning agendas as a way to develop sustainable local food production. Yet, such farmland reclaiming in this area is hindered by a multitude of difficulties related to urbanization pressure and the region's topography. This short paper presents initial results from ongoing research conducted in the Alpes-Maritimes department. The objective is to support local planners in identifying and characterizing abandoned agricultural land and defining the future of agriculture in the region. The ultimate goal is to co-develop future land-use scenarios (5, 10, and 25-year horizons) in collaboration with public actors at various territorial levels. The methodology consists of mapping abandoned agricultural plots and evaluating their potential using spatial indicators such as soil texture, solar exposure, slope, field size, and overlay with protected areas. Preliminary findings reveal that although thousands of hectares benefit from favorable soil conditions and southern exposure, the majority are located on steep slopes exceeding 20°. This topography, once adapted through terracing for agricultural use, poses serious challenges for current farming practices, especially given economic profitability constraints and labor demands. In addition, most identified plots are smaller than three hectares, and many are situated in protected areas, further limiting their attractiveness for prevailing conventional farming models. Despite such constraints, these specific characteristics of the studied farmland may align with agroecological practices such as agroforestry, low-input farming with minimal mechanization or extensive grazing. The set of indicators and their spatial distribution developed in this research will be further submitted to local and regional stakeholders using geoprospective approaches to explore how these lands might contribute to a sustainable food strategy in the studied region. This contribution invites discussion within the AESOP Sustainable Food Planning community on methodologies for integrating geospatial data into participatory scenario-building processes. In particular, it seeks input on how spatial data and interactive mapping can be effectively used in workshops with local authorities and planners to support informed, context-sensitive decisions on the reuse of abandoned farmland within a sustainable food planning.