Four published papers and several parts of a book are presented herein, together with a previously unpublished short paper explaining the intellectual background against which they were written and summarising their findings on the development of agricultural termology in England in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This outlines the contribution of economic and sociological the^pries to the study of technical change, but makes the point that historical studies, although clearly influenced by these theories, tend to use a multifactorial approach which avoids privileging any single explanation. Nevertheless, several themes arising in all of this material are identified, especially the gap between innovation and the adoption of technology, and the influence upon it of scientific, systemic, and socio-economic changes. Brassley (1995a) exaiftmes the criteria against which the success of agricultural science should be judged, and concludes that for most of the nineteenth century in Britain it was a failure. It identifies the establishment of the university departments of agriculture in the 1890s, and the Development Commission in 1910, as the main factors which reversed this trend, and, in an appendix, examines the impact of changing output prices upon the supply curve. In Brassley (1995b) the life of a single farmer, Primrose McConnell, is considered. In adoptiondiffusion theory terms, McConnell is a classic example of an innovator, and this paper reveals the various ways in which, as a writer and a practising farmer, he influenced the agricultural industry of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Brassley (1996) concentrates on a single example of technical change, in this case silage, and explains why its widespread adoption took about a hundred years. The principal conclusion is that silage, like many examples of agricultural technology, is not a single change but a complex system of interacting individual components, all of which need to be available or in place before widespread adoption can occur. The significance of this process is studied in Brassley (2000a), which examines the relationship between technical change and output in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and concludes that innovation was not necessarily as important as the adoption of pre-existing technology in accounting for output expansion. Brassley (2000b) is divided into three parts. The first introduces the concept of farming systems in late nineteenth century England and Wales and analyses the principal arable and pastoral systems of the period; the second examines individual aspects of farming technology, with the exception of farm buildings and machinery; and the third traces the development of agricultural science and education in England and Wales between 1850 and 1914. Clearly these three are inter-related, in that science and education had some impact on techniques, which, in turn, influenced farming systems, but one of the main themes to emerge from this study, as from the other papers in this collection, is the restricted rate of change and the gap between technical leaders and laggards.

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Between 1780 and 1840, estates, farms and methods of husbandry developed which were to persist in the valley unti11 930. By 1840 a pattern of large farms on which sheepcorn husbandry was practised had been established and from that date the agriculture changed only slightly until the 1890s, from when some adaptions were made by 1930. The thesis consists of two parts. In the first part the author discusses the changes that occurred between 1780 and 1840. These resulted in the evolution of both the farms and the system of husbandry. In the second part she seeks to explain why there were few changes in landownership, tenancy and agricultural practice during the fifty years between 1840 and 1890 when the pattern of the supply of cereals and sheep products changed to favour importation. The reactions of owners and farmers from 1890 to 1930 are discussed. Each stage, as the maps show, has spatial significance.

Aujourd’hui, dans un nombre croissant d’initiatives de la R&D agricole, on cherche à apprendre de pratiques ‘innovantes’ d’agriculteurs, pour soutenir l’évolution des systèmes agricoles, souvent dans le projet de l’agroécologie. Ces initiatives émergent dans un contexte où, en agronomie, on explore de nouveaux itinéraires de production de connaissance pour faire face aux enjeux contemporains qui induisent des questions inédites comme : Comment prendre en compte, dans la conception de systèmes agroécologiques, des équilibres naturels peu prédictibles et en partie inconnus ? Quelles représentations des processus agronomiques permettent d’imaginer des systèmes affranchis des intrants de synthèse? Ou encore, quelles connaissances produire pour concevoir des solutions techniques propres aux situations et attentes de chaque agriculteur ?… Dans cette thèse, nous faisons l’hypothèse que l’étude de pratiques innovantes d’agriculteurs serait une voie, empruntée par certains acteurs, pour explorer de nouvelles manières de produire dans le contexte actuel. En particulier, nous explorons comment et à quelles conditions l’étude de pratiques jugées innovantes d’agriculteurs peut stimuler la conception de systèmes agricoles aujourd’hui.Un détour par l’histoire de l’agronomie nous permet de mettre en perspective cette dynamique contemporaine avec les façons dont des agronomes ont, par le passé, étudié des pratiques d’agriculteurs pour générer des prescriptions visant à faire évoluer les pratiques en ferme. Dès les fondements de l’agronomie, au 18ème siècle, certains s’inspiraient de pratiques d’agriculteurs ; puis, en lien avec l’évolution de la discipline, ce lien aux pratiques est devenu marginal dans de nombreux travaux. Nous montrons que le rapport aux pratiques d’agriculteurs se renouvelle face aux enjeux contemporains de l’agriculture et c’est ce renouvellement que nous approfondissons ensuite avec un focus sur l’étude de pratiques innovantes d’agriculteurs. Par l’étude d’un panorama d’initiatives contemporaines, nous montrons qu’il existe différentes manières d’étudier des pratiques innovantes d’agriculteurs et nous proposons une manière d’organiser cette diversité. D’abord, nous montrons ce qu’apporte l’étude de ‘pratiques innovantes’ à ceux qui la réalise (fédérer une communauté de concepteurs, renouveler les représentations agronomiques, acquérir des connaissances sur des systèmes techniques inconnus…). Nous identifions des traits communs dans les raisonnements sous-jacents à l’étude de pratiques innovantes (ex. s’orienter vers des pratiques innovantes en formulant un inconnu désirable), et des variantes dans leurs réalisations (ex. différents types d’analyses systémiques) qui, parfois, influent sur ce qu’en apprennent leurs initiateurs. Enfin, nous montons que ce travail permet d’enrichir de différentes façons des dynamiques collectives de conception de systèmes agricoles innovants : à la fois en stimulant, par l’étude de pratiques, l’émergence de nouveaux systèmes techniques en ferme ; et en contribuant à la génération de prescriptions agronomiques originales venant soutenir la conception par les agriculteurs (témoignages contextualisés, logiques d’action génériques ...).Ces initiatives illustrent l’émergence, en agronomie, de formes originales de contributions à des dynamiques de conception distribuée dans les territoires agricoles. Cette thèse éclaire des ressorts et des modalités de réalisation de l’étude de pratiques innovantes d’agriculteurs et ses relations à des activités de conception, et elle contribue à la formulation de repères pour penser leur articulation dans l’action. / Today, in an increasing number of initiatives in the R&D agricultural sector, we want to learn from farmer’s innovative practices to foster change in agriculture toward agroecology. These initiatives, still poorly known, emerge in a context where agronomists explore new ways to produce knowledge to face current issues and answer new questions such as : while designing agroecological farming systems, how to deal with natural regulations, partly unknown and poorly predictable? What kind of models of agroecosystems allow to imagine chemical-free cropping systems? Or, what knowledge should we produce to design technical options adapted to every farmer’s expectations? … In this thesis, we assume that studying farmer’s innovative practices would be one way, taken by certain actors, to explore innovative farming systems today. More precisely, we explore how and in which conditions the study of farmer’s innovative practices could foster the design of agricultural systems.First, by exploring the history of agronomy, we show that since the foundation of the discipline, in the 18th century, agronomists draw inspiration from farmer’s practices; then, with the evolution of the discipline, the study of farmer’s practices marginalised. Today, new ways to study farmer’s practices emerge, in relation with contemporaneous challenges and we then propose to focus on ways to study ‘farmer’s innovative practices’. Through the analysis of a panorama of 14 initiatives from the agricultural R&D sector we show that it exists various ways to study farmer’s innovative practices, and we propose to organize this diversity. First, we shed light on what people get from the study of innovative practices depending on their own situation (to federate a designer’s community, to renew agronomic models, to get knowledge on unknown technical systems…). We then shed light on common traits in agronomist’s reasoning underlying the study of farmer’s innovative practices (ex. They all spot innovative practices formulating desirable unknown), and we show variants in ways to analyse them (ex. various systemic analysis). We finally show that studying innovative practices allows to enrich collective design dynamics: by fostering the emergence of new technical systems on farm, and by contributing to the emergence of original prescriptions aiming to support the design on farm of innovative systems (contextualised testimonies, generic action logics…)These initiatives illustrate the emergence of original forms of contributions, in agronomy, in a distributed design organisation, spread in territories. This thesis contribute to the understanding of what’s studying farmer’s innovative practices in relation to a design activity, and it gets to the formulation of reflexive keys to study farmer’s practices while designing in agronomy.