Résumé

This thesis dissertation aims to produce knowledge on the supply and demand of products sold in short food supply chains (SFSC) in metropolitan France, studying more precisely the location of farmers and consumers. Defined by the Plan Barnier in 2009, SFSCs are food supply chains with one intermediary at most between farmers and consumers. This limitation of the number of commercial intermediaries may cause farmers to carry out more logistical and commercial tasks such as delivery, order preparation, etc. We hypothesize that the geographical proximity between the farms and the consumption basins can make it possible to remove some of these constraints and therefore encourage the meeting between supply and demand for SFSC products. We thus target the study on peri-urban areas, where there is a geographical proximity between farmers and consumers, and where the challenges of developing sustainable food systems are significant. The work is organized in two parts: the study of the spatial distribution of SFSCs farms in France using data from the 2010 Agricultural Census and spatial econometric modeling; followed by a study of demand according to the location of consumers using econometric modeling, using data from the CODIA project dating from 2013. The results show that geographical proximity has an effect on supply and demand for SFSC products, farmers and consumers located in dense peri-urban areas having statistically more chances of buying or selling in SFSCs. However, other mechanisms are involved. Farms selling in SFSCs are located mainly in areas where agriculture is marginal, in the sense that the share of Utilized Agriculture Area land use is low: dense peri-urban territories but also landlocked rural territories, often in mountainous areas, where the accessibility of farms to consumption basins is very low. This may be linked to other forms of proximity between farmers and consumers (like relational proximity) but also to the fact that long food supply chains are less present in these territories. In order to see if these mechanisms, revealed by data from 2010, are still present, and in order to approach more closely the meeting between supply and demand for SFSC products, we also carried out two stated preference surveys (2022), studying the criteria for choosing an outlet in SFSC for market gardeners, and those for a point of sale in SFSC for consumers, systematically taking into account the location of the respondents. The variables studied are similar in the two surveys, namely the prices, travel times to deliver or go to the point of sale, and other forms of proximity (relational proximity between consumers and market gardeners, consideration of mutual aid for market gardeners). Using the choices made, we determine the travel times and prices that consumers and market gardeners would be willing to accept, depending on the points of sale and their location. These results show the importance of taking travel time into account to better understand the choices of buying/selling in SFSCs. They also show dynamics that seem partly similar to those observed in 2010. The travel times and prices accepted seem lower in the sparsely populated peri-urban areas. On the other hand, mutual aid is particularly valued in all types of areas, in particular in those of sparsely populated peri-urban areas. This result thus illustrates the need for support in these areas, in particular solutions promoting mutual aid between farmers

Source: http://www.theses.fr/2023UEFL2012

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