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Ancrage territorial des systèmes de production : le cas des Appellations d'Origine Contrôlée

Année de publication2002
Auteur(s)Dominique Barjolle
Co-auteursErik Thevenod-Mottet, Service romand de Vulgarisation agricole, Lausanne
Languefr
Forme de documentJournal, brochure
This paper focuses on the social, economic and territorial dynamics of the “Appellations d'Origine Contrôlée” (Protected Designation of Origin, AOC) sector as illustrated by the case of the “AOC Abondance” cheese , in Haute-Savoie (France). The authors explain how AOC can foster local economy (mostly through agriculture and tourism) and local identity. In the Abondance region, the label have fostered the milk production, improved the income for producers, generated the creation of a cheese restaurant, a small museum and different products associated with the cheese. Local farmers have been encouraged to develop home-made products (“fromages fermiers”), getting more added-value than in industrial processing, and to trade mainly with direct sale. This “local re-localisation”, as the authors say, results from the will expressed by several farmers to produce “less but better”, sometimes combining a cheese production and rural tourism for getting a year-round income. If the AOC process give room for individual for developing personal and familial strategies, it provides a decisive added-value with the collective level of initiatives it arouse: the promotion of the brand itself, the improvement of the know-how, the networks between producers and traders, for example. However, this locally-based and endogenous development strategy has to be adapted to national and global economic prerequisites : The need of a good accessibility, for example, led local firms to settle their production units in urban areas, instead of in the core alpine region of milk production. Moreover, the authors underlines that the size and shape of the AOC area was a major issue: various social groups, firms, political leaders, associations had different conceptions of the “right delimitation”, and had to adjust their perceptions for making a common project from this initiative. The authors conclude that an AOC label does not automatically generates local development, nor is a guarantee to keep alive traditional farming. The effects of such a label strongly depend on the actors involvement and their ability to combine global market context and local needs and initiatives. This example suggests that governance capacities in such contexts rely on the local capacity to escape exclusive sector-based approaches, to combine various scales and levels (local, regional, global) of perception and action, and to adopt a very collective way of building a territorial project.
Communication au colloque SYAL 2002, Montpellier, 19p.