Since the end of World War II, the green revolution has been going on. Consumers would buy products coming from all around the world, with no synchrony with seasons, and produced with an intense use of pesticides. For about ten years, food chains sustainability has been questioned by political organisms and consumers now tend to promote alternative and eco-friendly food chain models, economically stable and socially acceptable. These alternative food chains encounter bottlenecks, e.g. a lack of technical knowledge in case of organic food. This raises the question of the ability of current sustainable food chains to stay sustainable. ILLIAD aims i) to propose a methodology to analyze the system sustainability of food chains; ii) to test it through the analysis of different food chains ; iii) to use it to propose organizational and technical innovations in the food chains of bread wheat and rice (which cover a high part of human food), peach and apricot. The project, which can be classified in the 2nd axis as defined by the ANR, for a requested grant of 888k€, will take place during a 48 months period, including 4 harvesting seasons in order to get rid of climatic vagary and obtain usable results. The consortium gathers all the abilities necessary to answer these sustainable food chain issues: researchers in management (UMR MOISA, coord; CIRAD and IAMM), agronomy (UE Gotheron), genetics (UGAFL), product quality and processing (UMR SQPOV); technical advisors in organic agronomy (ITAB). The consortium will lean upon subcontractors, whose skills are recognized not only in technical terms but also for their knowledge of the food chains and their actors: CA Drôme, SEFRA, SICA CENTREX, ELSA Platform, CASRAD, CIVAM gard, conseil des équidés. ILLIAD aims firstly to propose a set of indicators on the system sustainability. This set will be defined with the help of the results of the SUS-CHAIN project, improved with the work of Fresco (2009) on the sustainable food system, the researches on local agri-food systems and research in food chain analysis. Then the ILLIAD's practical cases allow to test the set of indicators in the three typical trajectories of constructing sustainable food chains chain innovation (stone fruits); chain differentiation (rice), territorial embedding (wheat). For each of the studied food chains, technical and organizational innovations will be proposed : i) wheat bread : ILLIAD develops a territorial exchange system of animal turd and feed for animals between organic farmers (bread wheat and animals) and equastrian centers. This system is expected to reduce bottlenecks of organic farming (e.g. nitrogen nutrition of bread wheat). ii) rice: ILLIAD proposes guidelines for stakeholders and policy-makers to increase the environmental and economic sustainability of a geographical indication. The rice protected geographical indication set in 2000, reduces use of chemicals but didn't give significant pricing advantages. iii) peaches: ILLIAD develops new alternative food chains characterized by low-input or organic practices, short marketing channels (catering or direct sales to far consumers) and various dates of harvest. These food chains are expected to have positive effect on health, environment (peaches receive 20 to 33 yearly treatments) and profitability. Iv) apricot: ILLIAD develops alternative food chains similar to the peaches case but also a specific chain dedicated to processing. This food chain is expected to have a positive effect on nutritional and taste quality of processed orchards (apricot's dual purpose implies low quality inputs for industry). The project explores the conditions and consequences of this dedicated orchards from technical to economics. With the help of chambers of agriculture and LRIA, the consortium will disseminate these results to the attention of different actors in food chain through various communication modes: scientific articles, news paper articles, workshops, conferences etc.

The consideration of issues related to sustainable development for French agro-food industries will induce them into challenges, as including food into an integrated life cycle from “cradle to grave”. Nowadays, the environmental life cycle analysis is framed by an international standardized methodology designed mainly for agricultural products. In proceeds food many firms has implemented methodologies to assess the environmental impacts of their products but there is still a lack of scientific validation of these methodologies. There is a need to provide an harmonized tool that could be used in different agro-food sectors. Morever, regarding to the consideration of social responsibility in its human, social, economical and territorial points of view, new methodologies need to be developed by research teams. The aim of the ACYDU project is to develop environmental, economic, social and territorial methodologies for analyzing life cycle conditions and to test them in three typically French agro-food industries: wine, Comté cheese and foie gras. This project, which type is "industrial and fundamental research" will be realized via an interdisciplinary collaborative work between: - Specialists from food chains studied (centers and technical institutes of food-processing industry, joint-trade organizations and unions) - Researchers in environmental impact assessment, economics, sociology - Specialists in consumer approach - Actors of distribution network and French food-processing industries representatives In addition, the ACYDU Project aim to identify different food sustainability attributes for the consumer, to test different sustainability information display and to propose recomandations for agro-food and actors and public institutions. Thus, we propose in ACYDU to participate in building knowledge in conceptual and empirical life cycle analysis methodology for food application on food, dealing with environmental social and territorial impacts added to an economical analysis, applied to three agro-food industries chosen in order to find where key locks and critical points are. Also, we will look for linking all the life cycle analysis results to supply to consumers “sustainability” information about the product they are consuming. Finally, we are looking forward to evaluating the replication potential of these methodologies to other agro-food industries and for their direct application in sustainability measurement by producers.

In a context of climate, socio-economic, policy and institutional changes, the Mediterranean region (MR) needs to strengthen its food and nutrition security, while improving its natural resource management. The major challenges are therefore: i) making agricultural food production systems highly resilient to water shortage and climate and market shocks; ii) combining food production and provision of ecosystem services in a “sustainable intensification” of farming systems to meet the ever growing food demand; iii) sustaining rural populations, ensuring farming profitability and employment and iv) providing rural and urban consumers with safe and nutritious, culturally acceptable and economically accessible food. Using the multi-scale and multidomain Integrated Assessment of Agricultural Systems (IAAS) approach, the SEMIARID project aims at assessing the resilience of Mediterranean farming systems in relation with their crop diversity, water management, farm structure and food production strategy, in order to evaluate whether they can maintain high productivity and provision of ecosystem services in the face of possible climate and socio-economic changes/shocks. The combination of biophysical and household bio-economic models will allow capturing both production and consumption decisions of farming households and environmental facets of farming activity and to identify levers of action to improve these performances. Combining model insights and local stakeholder collaboration, scenarios will be designed for resilience simulation and trade-off analysis to test scientific hypothesis and for strategic thinking with stakeholders. On the basis of representative household farm types in three contrasting case studies in Morocco, Algeria and France, original knowledge and innovative methodological tools will be developed in three fields. 1. The exploration of the role of intra-farm and inter-farm diversity in determining the resilience and adaptability of Mediterranean agricultural systems. Overall, the question addresses the assessment of the resilience of Mediterranean farming systems to global change (climate, socio-economic) and how it is affected by diversity in cropping systems (annual vs. perennial ; succession vs. association), water management (rain-fed, irrigated), farm structure (size, number and nature of activities, availability of irrigation, etc.), local resource availability (water, labour, land) and access to facilities (technical supports, market, etc.). 2. The implementation of a modelling framework for integrated impact assessment to explore how different scenarios of diversity and adaptiveness developed in interaction with local stakeholders, might improve the resilience of Mediterranean farming systems to reduced water availability and quality in a context of global change. 3. The emergence of a multidisciplinary group of Mediterranean researchers and students supported by an international course on integrated modelling for resilience assessment and integrated impact analysis, using the Case Studies as illustration.