Farm machinery cooperatives: a new arena for agroecological innovation?

In France, new agroecological policies demonstrate a movement of collective innovation experienced by farmers within machinery cooperatives. The present paper aims at understanding how French farmers recompose machinery- and labour-sharing arrangements by developing agroecological practices. Our methodology is based on six case studies, by combining a farming system and a sociological approach. Farmers implement new practices that reconfigure more diversified farming systems with fewer inputs. The collective organisation provided by the machinery cooperative and its associated labour-sharing arrangements shape a niche of innovation conducive to agroecology.These results provide a better identification of the current lock-ins that limit agroecological transition at the farm level.