Sustainable land management (SLM) is an essential pillar for ensuring long-term agricultural productivity, food security and resilience to climate change, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. It brings together a set of practices and technologies aimed at preserving soil fertility, reducing erosion, improving water conservation and minimizing the degradation of natural resources. These practices include, in particular, agroforestry, soil conservation techniques, the use of organic fertilizers, mulching, and anti-erosion structures. In France, the concept of SLM aligns primarily with Conservation Agriculture (CA), which rests on three pillars: minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil cover and crop diversification.

Yet, despite the benefits recognized at the agronomic, environmental and economic levels, the adoption of these technologies by smallholder farmers remains low and often short-lived. Many development projects observe a limited adoption rate. In France, although better supported by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the “4 per 1000” initiative, CA likewise remains marginal. This inefficiency in the adoption of sustainable land management technologies represents a major paradox for the development of modern agriculture.

Agriculture and Sustainable Wealth According to the Physiocrats

In the mid-eighteenth century, the Physiocrats regarded agriculture as the sole foundation of sustainable wealth. Led by François Quesnay (1694–1774), they represent the perspective closest to a “sustainable” conception of agriculture among classical thinkers. On the one hand, they hold that agriculture is the only productive activity, since it generates a surplus thanks to the bounty of nature. Indeed, Quesnay’s Tableau économique (1758) systematically represents the circulation of wealth: farmers, regarded as the productive class, generate the surplus that sustains landowners as well as artisans (the “sterile” class). This approach highlights an underlying sustainable management: in the absence of care given to the land, the net product tends to decline, thereby jeopardizing long-term prosperity. This is why the Physiocrats advocate an intensive agriculture that nevertheless remains in harmony with natural cycles, one in which nature “collaborates” freely with humankind.

Agriculture in the Age of Modernization

At present, modern agriculture faces significant challenges, among which are the adoption of innovations, insufficient crop productivity, aggravated by the inefficiency of agricultural technologies as well as by the persistence of traditional practices that harm natural resources.

In France, as in most developed countries, the State promotes precision agriculture and the integration of digital technology. This involves using, on the one hand, modern tools (drones, sensors, GPS/GNSS for automatic guidance, satellites, management software, robots, and so on) and, on the other hand, specialized software accessed through the internet. This situation is observed worldwide, except in sub-Saharan Africa, where research and development initiatives have not yet led to concrete and sustainable solutions that are widely accepted. Despite the agronomic potential of several innovations, such as improved seeds, organic fertilization, water and soil conservation techniques, as well as crop rotation, the adoption rate of these practices remains insufficient. Various factors, such as soil degradation, an insufficient level of mechanization and the intensification of climatic hazards, contribute to the low agricultural productivity observed in this region.