The place of agroecology in the new dynamics within the agricultural world in Brazil and in France

Based on the first results of a Franco-Brazilian research project aimed at studying the trajectories of agroecology, this paper shows how the increasing place of agroecology in the landscape of alternative agricultures reveals profound reconfigurations within the agricultural world which involve and affect in return the academic and the professional worlds, the public policies and the social movements. A study of the processes of institutionalization of agroecology within agricultural institutions shows how agroecology appears as a new candidate for the ecologisation of agricultural policies and practices, also differently in Brazil and in France, where the legitimation through international institutions appears more significant. Complementarily, an analysis of a dozen key actors' trajectories in each country shows how agroecology finds its success at the crossroads of the academic world, the social movements and CSOs, the public policies and the leading agricultural institutions, although in different ways in the two countries