Abstract
This article offers a reflection on the relationship between work and nature in agriculture. Agroecology calls for reconsidering the status of non-human species (animals, plants, microbes, etc.) in agricultural work, which agronomy and zootechnics have long defined as means/objects of production. In a context of the injunction to “work with nature”, the objective of the article is to clarify what we call the living part of work in agriculture. Namely the inter-species collaborations which constitute the relational rationalities of work. We will characterize these collaborations based on work with animals and plants, which are at the center of our research work. We will start from the conception of work with nature according to three rationalities (instrumental; relational; identity), to then clarify how animals are work partners, plants are companion species of work.