Résumé
Researchers from Cirad and Inra, with the support of a Scenario Advisory Committee, have carried out an exploratory foresight exercise on 'Land use and food security in 2050' (Agrimonde-Terra) to prepare actors for different possible futures by providing them with elements for understanding and anticipating future issues. The method combines various approaches: a scenario method based on morphological analysis and applied at various system scales, the implementation of foresight forums to discuss hypotheses on evolutions of the system and the construction and use of a modelling and simulation tool, called GlobAgri-AgT. The land use system was broken down into sub-systems or external and direct drivers for which alternative hypotheses of changes to 2050 were constructed; then hypotheses were combined in plausible and internally consistent ways and gave shape to different traceable scenarios. At the global level, Agrimonde-Terra proposes a trend analysis on the global context, climate change, food diets, urban-rural linkages, farm structures, cropping and livestock systems, and explores five scenarios. Three scenarios entitled 'Metropolization', 'Regionalization' and 'Households' are based on current competing trends identified in most world regions. Two scenarios entitled 'Healthy' and 'Communities' involve potential breaks that could change the entire land use and food security system. For six regions of the world (OECD, FSU, Latin America, North Africa, SSA and Asia), past and on-going trends towards each scenario have been identified. The method has been used at the national level, in Tunisia. During several foresight fora, stakeholders and decision-makers of the agri-food system designed their own "land use and food security system", defined their hypotheses for each driver, built scenarios with these assumptions, compared scenarios using a number of criteria and discussed consequences for policy-making. GlobAgri-AgT can be used for quantifying the consequences of scenarios on areas and trade.