The Ghosts of Agriculture's Modernisation. an Inquiry into Biocontrol Innovation in France from the Lab to the Field.

Outside of the domain of agriculture, agroecology can appear as a clear cut conflict between old an new. From the point of view of public debate, pragmatists approaches have more precisely mapped conflicts between visions of the future (Chateauraynaud, Debaz, 2017) or between modernities (Lemieux, 2018).

But the lines appear to blur, or to multiply, as soon as one enter the field. From the inside of agriculture, sides are largely lost. We analyse here a particular trope that we met regularly in all shapes and situations : bits and parts of "modernisation" are defended even by long time defenders of agroecology who can not be suspected of bad faith. "Modernity" appear at each corner of professionnal competency and institutional organisation, in the form of narratives that we call here "ghosts". We can trace them to their origin, but the fact of their persistence is the more interesting for us.

The pragmatist approach appears here particularly adapted to the investigation, as it invites and equips us to follow precisely the perspective of the different professionnals involved, and to trace their valuations - both emerging ways to understand their actions and the tests by witch they, publicly, exhibit the reality and establish the value of that new understanding. Ghosts are valuations inscribed in professional standards and institutionnal practices that, as such, live beyond the collapse of the project they were once part of, and can not be fought simply by other projects or even other values, but only by other valuations.

For eight years, we followed researchers from the inrae (national research institute for agriculture and environment) involved in innovation projects of "biocontrol". We followed the innovation process and all its actors from the farms to the labs to the ministry etc. This is the story of that interdisciplinary struggle to agroecology.