Conclusion

Abstract

The Agrimonde foresight study enabled us to address questions that had not yet been formulated as such in mainstream scientific debates. Not that the facts reported or the assumptions put forward were entirely unpredictable or unknown; but they prompted the experts, followed by the various audiences to whom the results were presented, to consider the actions to be undertaken from a different point of view, primarily in relation to the type of future wished for—or not—in the decades to come. The value of baseline scenarios is not that they predict a sure future—which no one can actually anticipate as far ahead as 2050—but that they define the narrow path of possible futures that are likely to unfold if we fail to broaden our options now. Alternative scenario(s) can thus be mobilised to identify the objectives that we need to set when broadening the options explored. This has been the role of the Agrimonde 1 scenario, in contrast to the baseline scenario provided by Agrimonde GO.