WS4.4 – Transitions towards sustainable agriculture: from farmers to agro‐food systems 9 th European IFSA Symposium, 4‐7 July 2010, Vienna (Austria) 1943 Reducing the dependence on pesticides: a matter of transitions within the whole agri‐food system Claire Lamine a , Marc Barbier a , Julien Blanc b , Jan Buurma c , Isabelle Haynes a , Jozsef Lehota d , Elisa Maraccini e , Egon Noe b , Réjane Paratte a , Zoltan Szabo d and Anna Wierzbicka f a INRA. National Institute for Agronomic Research, France. c.lamine@grignon.inra.fr; barbier@grignon.inra.fr; ischerer@grignon.inra.fr; rparatte@avignon.inra.fr b Faculty of Agricultural Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark ‐ jblanc@mnhn.fr, Egon.Noe@agrsci.dk c LEI/ WUR Wageningen University, The Netherlands. Jan.Buurma@wur.nl d SZIE Szent István University, Hungary. Szabo.Zoltan@gtk.szie.hu; Lehota.Jozsef@gtk.szie.hu e SSSUP Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna di Studi Universitari i di Perfezionamento, Italy. elisamar@gmail.com; moonen@sssup.it f IHAR Plant Breeding and Acclimatization Institute, Poland. a.wierzbicka@ihar.edu.pl Abstract: This paper, built as a synthesis of the sociological part of the Endure European Network of Excellence (2007‐2010) analyses the conditions of transition towards more sustainable crop protection practices at different levels of the agri‐food system: farmers’ practices, interactions between farmers and advisors, retailers strategies, governance of research and extension, and involvement of civil society. Within Endure, different components of agri‐food systems (farmer’s practices, extension services strategies, retailers guidelines, research governance and involvement of civil society) have been studied in France, Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the UK, Denmark, Poland and Hungary. The confrontation of National situations allows identifying common obstacles and conditions for achieving robust transitions towards more sustainable crop protection practices. These transitions are not only a the responsibility of farmers but involve the larger socio‐technical system, its interdependencies and/or lack of coordination. In this perspective this paper intends to be a contribution to current debates within transition theories and also to characterise the different national context specificities to which these obstacles and conditions can be related. Keywords: transitions, low‐input practices, IPM, agri‐food systems, pesticides Introduction This paper is based on different complementary studies achieved within the sociological work package of Endure, a Network of Excellence on pesticide reliance reduction (2007‐2010). It analyses the conditions of transition towards more sustainable crop protection practices at different levels of the agri‐food system. Based on a path‐dependency analysis, the paper will first demonstrate (section 1) how the current agri‐food system has embraced the “paradigm of intensification” on the long run following a convergence of innovations (homologation of new pesticides, selection of cultivars, changes in farming practices, etc.) and of actor strategies, which has led to a change from a curative use of pesticides to a more systematic one. Second, from a variety of qualitative interviews in France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the UK, Denmark, Poland, Italy and Hungary, we will present the complementarities of our results with respect to different components of this agri‐food system: evolutions in cereal and fruit growers practices, interactions between farmers and advisors, retailers guidelines regarding fruit production, governance of research and extension in the current context of the revision of European regulations regarding crop protection issues, and the involvement of the civil society through the evolution of public debates (section 2). This confrontation of results from different national settings will lead us to identify common obstacles and conditions for robust transitions towards more sustainable crop protection practices (section 3). Also it will allow us to show that these do not only involve farmers’ practices but the larger socio‐technical system and its interdependencies and/or lack of coordination. From this