Research
SAD-APT (Sciences for the Action and Development – Activities, Products, Territories)
February 11 2022UMR (Joint Research Unit) 1048 AgroParisTech, INRAE
General scientific orientation
Resolutely committed to an interdisciplinary approach, the research work of the SAD-APT unit deals with complex research issues around the dynamics of socio-technical and socio-ecological systems, linked to transformations in the worlds of agriculture and rural areas. The unit has a strong preference for research work via partnerships, with actors and organisations in agricultural and territorial sectors. Producing both fundamental and applied scientific knowledge, the unit is interested in research issues that are grounded in the essential questions of our times :
- the contradictions and complementarities of the use of spaces and resources ;
- the expression of multiple functions attributed today to agricultural practices, systems of activity and organisations ;
- environmental, sanitary and cultural imperatives which impact so heavily on both the methods of production and innovation within the agricultural sector…
Fields of research
The unit is organised into three pluridisciplinary teams :
- Analyse the diversity of urban agricultures, professional or not, the functions that it fulfils, the ways in which it operates, their business models and the technical, social and territorial practices of the actors concerned.
- Develop methods to characterise urban food systems, from production to waste management, by addressing innovations along the chain.
- Develop concepts, tools and methods to design and evaluate new organisations in agricultural systems to reconcile the stakes for production, the environment and biodiversity ;
- Use modelling to address the interactions between the processes of agricultural production, the environment and biodiversity ;
- Implicate the actors in the design and/or evaluation of new types of organisation of territories and channels.
- Describe, understand and interpret the processes of governance which give structure to the production and the management of agricultural, food and ecological assets ;
- Examine how geographical or managed proximity plays a part and participates in the process and in the makeup of territories, especially in urban regions.