Moving towards sustainable agriculture through transformational conflict science OR Why is it so hard to transform agriculture?

International audienceAgriculture provides essential goods and services supporting human wellbeing, but in a changing world there is a need to transition to sustainable food production systems, as highlighted in recent assessments such as IPBES, and policies including the CAP. This process, however, creates conflicts between actors with different views on how best to achieve such a transition. Reframing the agricultural crisis as a conflict offers the potential for achieving innovative and sustainable solutions, implying fundamental changes in 1) individual perceptions of the conflict, 2) the approaches used to mitigate conflict, and 3) the relationship between people in conflict. We present a novel transformation framework applied to conflicts in agricultural contexts before outlining results from three French case studies (around apiculture, viticulture and water quality), where conflicts exist over the reduction of pesticides. Qualitative interviews from these case studies outline a range of conflicts and how conflict and crisis across these case studies can act as positive tipping points for transformation towards more sustainable agriculture