Currently on display at the Belle de Mai in Marseille, the exhibition Taking the Country’s Side, imagined by Sébastien Marot, shifts the gaze: it is not a question of knowing what is invented in the city to accommodate agriculture, but of seeing what is invented in the countryside to conceive the urban models of tomorrow. Permaculture, since it develops principles of design of inhabited spaces, occupies a very special place.

The Transversal Plan on Water Management, Agriculture and Regional Planning in France (PTEAA), published by the French government in 2024, is a major historical turning point for French agriculture, breaking with more than a century of industrialisation and productivism. Indeed, the calamitous drought of 2023 has forced all political parties to face the facts: there is an urgent need to build a different relationship with the land. Continue reading →