# Undesirable Systems, Undesired Ends: The (Un)Bearable Heaviness of Phasing-Out Pesticides?

Bruno Turnheim, Marc Barbier, Mireille Matt

► To cite this version:

Bruno Turnheim, Marc Barbier, Mireille Matt. Undesirable Systems, Undesired Ends: The (Un)Bearable Heaviness of Phasing-Out Pesticides?. Mathilde Bourrier. Decommissioning Ag- ing Installations and Declining Technologies, Springer Cham, pp.35-48, 2025, 978-3-031-88368-2. 10.1007/978-3-031-88369-9 . hal-05311468

HAL Id: hal-05311468

https://hal.science/hal-05311468v1

Submitted on 13 Oct 2025

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access
archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-
entific research documents, whether they are pub-
lished or not. The documents may come from
teaching and research institutions in France or
abroad, or from public or private research centers.

L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est
destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents
scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non,
émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de
recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires
publics ou privés.

<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>
<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>

Chapter 4
# Undesirable Systems, Undesired Ends:
The (Un)Bearable Heaviness
of Phasing-Out Pesticides?

Bruno Turnheim, Marc Barbier, and Mireille Matt

**Abstract** Abandoning harmful technologies and associated practices generating various types of risks is a considerable challenge. It supposes to address the discontinuation of socio-technical systems as a new class of governance problem. The phase-out of large socio-technical systems calls for the joint consideration of systemic structuration and the temporalities of socio-technical transformations. Phasing-out of a toxic world conjures up an overlay of different forms of risk, which requires new takes on the scales, temporalities, politics and uncertainties involved, as well as new conceptions of risks and how they can be handled. Focusing specifically on the removal of pesticides use from agriculture in France (1945–present), this chapter seeks to understand how injunctions to emancipate from dependence to harmful systems have been processed within society. Understanding the successive attempts to ban, reduce or phase-out pesticides request to appreciate the emergence of framings and their translations in a longitudinal analysis. We propose to consider the socio-historical conditions that can explain their (un)felicitous development in three phases of designating and problematizing pesticides: (1) as dangerous substance, (2) as object of reduction and removal, (3) as socio-political risk. We propose a retrospective exploration of the conditions of unveiling pesticide uses at a systemic level to issue the existence of a socio-political risk of not fulling the promise of opening a new era for agri-food systems. Phasing-out pesticides, like dealing with other kinds of persistent systemic issues, appears as if imbued with a still currently unbearable heaviness. Confronted with what appears as the impossible task of phasing-out undesirable (risky) systems while ensuring that such (risky) ends are not undesired, it becomes clear that what is needed is an appropriate framing of the new kinds of socio-political risks that are associated with effective phase-out governance.

<footnote>B. Turnheim (✉) · M. Barbier · M. Matt
Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Sciences Innovations Sociétés (UMR LISIS), INRAE-UGE-CNRS,
Marne-La-Vallée, France
e-mail: bruno.turnheim@inrae.fr</footnote>

<footnote>B. Turnheim
Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MloIR), University of Manchester, Manchester, UK</footnote>
**Keywords** Transitions · Discontinuation of socio-technical systems · Governance of systemic transformations · Longitudinal analysis · Phase-out and reduction of pesticides · Socio-political risks of transition

**4.1 Introduction**

Abandoning harmful technologies, associated practices or underlying socio-technical
systems is a considerable challenge of our time, one that bears relevance to a variety
of sectors, including energy, food, mobility or industrial processes (Koretsky et al.
2023). In contrast to a Schumpeterian approach of innovation as a process of creative
destruction, the harrowing hangover that the Anthropocene presents us with opens
radically different prospects for the discontinuation of socio-technical systems, since
it calls for an intentional governance of systemic transformations. From such a stand-
point, we can appreciate how systems framed as harmful (or “undesirable”) are
becoming the object of phase-out politics, policies and strategies.

The discontinuation of socio-technical systems—which includes system phase-
out—points to a class of governance problems (Stegmaier et al. 2014) that signifi-
cantly differ from the mitigation of risks posed by human activities (and in particular
large-scale productive activities) or from the development and deployment of (less
harmful) innovation. Indeed, according to such a perspective, the persistent forms of
risks associated with certain industries and their products (e.g. fossil fuels, nuclear
power, pesticides, etc.) cannot be dealt with effectively through incremental environ-
mental improvements or substitutes and instead call for dedicated strategies. Phase-
out has become an object of research, particularly within the literature on transitions
studies, which harbours a dedicated stream of research on destabilization, decline
and phase-out (Turnheim 2023a).

The starting proposition of this chapter is that abandonment, reduction and
removal differ significantly from adoption, expansion and addition at play in inno-
vation processes at the heart of socio-technical regime. Since phase-out appears
necessary but complex, then putting it into action is not at all trivial. Phasing-out any
socio-technical system calls then for dedicated heuristics and dedicated governance
strategies, that deserve to be studied and understood systematically in their socio-
historical contexts, as has been done elsewhere for the dismantling of tramways
(Turnheim 2023b), or as we are going to present it in this chapter dedicated to the
phase-out and reduction of pesticides.

While focusing specifically on the removal of pesticide use from agriculture
in France, this chapter seeks to understand how injunctions to emancipate from
dependence to harmful systems have been processed within society throughout and
beyond the “green revolution”. Before contributing to the research agenda on pesti-
cides (Mansfield et al. 2024) with some transition studies insights, let’s first present
some theoretical background to clarify how to approach phase-out as a problem for
research, governance and practice and to elicit what is at stake when one tackles
phase-out as a long-term process with its corresponding *scales, temporalities, politics and uncertainties*, as well as with a new conception of *risks and how they can be handled*.

## 4.2 Transitions Studies, Phase-Out, and Different Types of Risk

Having established that abandoning practices or substances that are deemed harmful constitutes a horizon for policy (i.e. phase-out) and for research, we first present a socio-technical perspective on transitions, and then specify some of the implications of such a perspective for the intentional phase-out of socio-technical systems.

### 4.2.1 Socio-Technical Systems and Transitions as Reconfigurations

Transitions studies (Geels 2002; Köhler et al. 2019; Rip and Kemp 1998) offer relevant approaches to capture the systemic characteristics of socio-technical configurations and problematize the patterns and mechanisms by which these may change. Indeed, this literature suggests examining production-consumption systems as socio-technical configurations, i.e. as bundles of heterogenous entities (scientific knowledge, technology and innovation, production organizations, rules and regulations, users...) that fulfil a particular societal function (e.g. food, shelter, energy, mobility) in a given place and time. Such configurations are understood as being relatively stable over extended periods of time, and hence particularly difficult to change, due to the tight couplings between their constitutive elements and due to their continuous reproduction through practices and institutional logics.

Significantly changing the structure and functioning of such systems hence appears as particularly difficult and rare. Indeed, socio-technical systems tend to absorb injunctions to change through incremental innovation (i.e. marginal and step-wise adjustment of some of its constitutive elements) or substitution (i.e. like-to-like replacement of individual constitutive elements without fundamentally questioning the overall configuration). More rarely, fundamental reconfigurations (i.e. transitions) involve the conjunction of three mechanisms: experimentation in alternative spaces more favourable to radical forms of innovation (socio-technical niches) (Raven et al. 2016; Smith and Raven 2012), the generalization of radical innovations through scaling, diffusion, institutionalization or interaction (Callon 1990; Kanger et al. 2019; Ockwell et al. 2018; Wigboldus et al. 2016; Wilson 2012) and the intentional destabilization of established configurations (Turnheim 2023a). The combination of these mechanisms can generate a variety of transitions patterns and pathways observable in empirical cases (Geels and Schot 2007; Smith et al. 2005).
## 4.2.2 Governing the Phase-Out

Joly et al. (2023) have further problematized how the phase-out of large socio-technical systems constitute a particularly tricky challenge, one that calls for the joint consideration of systemic structuration and the temporalities of socio-technical configurations. We here rehearse some of these arguments and specify how they relate to the problem at hand. An essential preliminary step consists in distinguishing (a) the discontinuation of governance from (b) the governance of discontinuation (Stegmaier et al. 2014).

On the one hand, dealing with crises (i.e. governing with the problems and emergencies raised by the exceptional circumstances and urgent temporality of crises and accidents) is essentially a strategic process that resides *outside* of the ordinary modes of governance. Indeed, the main inclination of crisis management, besides avoiding the most harmful and serious damages, is to generate the conditions for a return to the normal, manageable circumstances of governance, i.e. resuming *de facto* governance as swiftly as possible—leaving crisis as a parenthesis to be forgotten.<fnref n="1" /> In other words, it is a sort of conservative form of governance that is averse to change with its own institutional dynamic (Ansell et al. 2015) and associated technico-economical forms of lock-in (Arthur 1989).

By contrast, governing discontinuations requires a longer view, one that is specifically targeted at generating the conditions through which entire systems may be phased out, with a particular attention to the depth and far reach of socio-technical entanglements. This requires combining objectives (e.g. long-, mid- and short-term reduction targets) to address harms and risks, interventions explicitly aiming at de-aligning elements of socio-technical configurations so as to enable the detachment of the problematic features (e.g. pesticides dependence, “toxic” food, degraded soils and environments) and support to radically new ways to produce and consume food that alleviate or circumvent risks.

# 4.3 Illustration: Phasing-Out the Agricultural Use of Pesticides in France

## 4.3.1 Pesticide Use as Persistent Systemic Problem

From such a perspective, current conventional agri-food systems can be seen as locked-in through commitments to productivism and unsustainable intensification logics (Buttel 2006). The domination exerted by particularly powerful actors and

<footnote n="1">¹ While an important objective of crisis management may be to limit their structural implications in the name of overall stability, such objective cannot always be satisfied—in particular in the case of severe crises and disasters that may require adaptive or transformative change (Ansell and Trondal 2018) or in the case of “creeping” crises characterized by cumulative causation (Boin et al. 2020).</footnote>
general adhesion to formal and informal rules tend to frame accepted and acceptable practices, which reinforce the “pesticide treadmill” that locks farmers into pesticide dependence (Van den Bosch 1989) and impact the relations between agencies and policy making in the procurement of regulations (Pelaez et al. 2013). More broadly, pesticides reduction or phase-out contributes to the critical agenda of agri-food transitions towards a corporate-environmental food regime (Barbier et al. 2017; Levidow 2015)—understood as the renewal of “strategies for capital accumulation [through the incorporation of] “green” or “quality” products which were previously associated with alternative trajectories from social movements” (Levidow 2015: 86).

Pesticide use in agriculture is a typical form of persistent systemic problem associated to human activity (den Hond et al. 2003; Schuitmaker 2012; Tang et al. 2021). Indeed, since the 1960s, conventional agricultural production has followed a pattern of intensification marked by specialization, economies of scale, and growing dependence upon external inputs (fertilizers, pesticides, mechanization) as well as being place at the crossroad of a sectorial regulation and of more general regulation of food provision in society (Allaire and Boyer 1995). In this regime of intensification, the production, distribution and application of synthetic pesticides for crop protection have become a foundational sub-system upon which food production relies to achieve its current productivity levels. As a consequence, it has become particularly difficult to significantly change pesticide use without fundamentally challenging agri-food systems. In other words, phasing-out pesticide use is a systemic issue calling for systemic approaches to face the challenge of reducing chemical inputs at the level of the agri-food system (Brunelle et al. 2024).

Further, while “pesticides”—a shorthand for “synthetic pesticides”—refer to particular substances resulting from chemical engineering, it is much more than a technical artefact and its tradeable materiality. As such, it calls for a socio-technical perspective to fully appreciate the interlinkages between various sectorial matters of knowledge, innovation, market, health, controversies and regulation:

* the productive apparatus supporting its industrial development,

* the production of scientific and other forms of knowledge on pesticides,

* the innovation around active substances and pesticides product formulations (seeking for novelty of crop protection and blame avoidance or anticipation of molecules phase-out),

* their distribution to various users through specific forms of farming inputs markets,

* the on-site practices of pesticides application and supporting technical knowledge,

* the measurement of accumulation and circulations of active substances through soil, bodies, food and consumers,

* the various forms of knowledge produced and mobilized to support claims of effectiveness and/or toxicity concerning pesticides,

* the regulatory efforts to control or frame the “appropriate” uses of pesticides,

* the opinions and mobilization of various social actors around pesticides issues, as well as the career of controversies and their possible closure.

The governance of (pesticide) phase-out is thus likely to require the combination of explicit discontinuation governance—i.e. the cautious, patient and humble crafting
of phase-out pathways and supporting conditions—and more opportunistic seizing of emergent discontinuities such as crises that have the potential to accelerate change if adequately prepared for. But this governance of phase-out calls for critical concerns about the framing relations between science and politics (Boudia and Jas 2015) and the governmentalization of risk through regulatory sciences (Demortain 2011), pointing out that crises not only concern the impact of toxic substances but also the politics through which risks are framed and handled to enact reduction.

### 4.3.2 Framing Risks, Handling Risks, Enacting Reduction

As far as various actors and publics are concerned, the persistence and systemic attributes of the problems of pesticides use are not undisputable, invariable, or irreversible; they are a matter of framing and referential—theirselves constructed, stabilized, fragilized or defended along the definition of public problems. This means that we need to appreciate the emergence of framings and their translations in a longitudinal analysis, and to consider the socio-historical conditions that can explain their (un)felicitous development.

In terms of the development of problem framings, we observe a number of distinct framings at work:

* designating and problematizing pesticides as **dangerous substance,**

* designating and problematizing **dangerous substance** as object of **reduction and removal,**

* designating and problematizing **reduction and removal** as **socio-political risk.**

As our illustration will show, while there is a temporal sequence behind the appearance of these framings, it is essential to resist the urge to appreciate them as linear so as to consider how they interact, become layered and possibly forgotten or replaced.

### 4.3.3 Governing Phase-Out and Reduction of Pesticides: A Socio-Historical Overview

In this section, we provide a succinct analytical journey through the recent history of pesticides use in agriculture in France, focused on the framing of risks and the attempted handling of reduction challenges in mainstream decision-making settings. We distinguish four periods, which are characterized by relative coherence concerning the dominant handling of pesticides reduction in policy contexts, which tends to privilege certain problem framings and solution pathways over others, as well as opening new marginal spaces for alternatives.
## From biocides to the distribution of risks in bodies, environment and food

To understand the prospects of phasing-out pesticide use in the French case, one needs to apprehend it in the long run of a crop protection regime and the way risks have been established therein. The first period is related to the spreading of the US DDT<fnref n="2" /> ban in 1972 under the aegis of an environmental movement powerful enough to instigate its withdrawal (Maguire and Hardy 2009). Following the progress of the DDT ban in several countries after the USA,<fnref n="3" /> France banned DDT in 1976, although a number of exceptions (namely for curative use) were granted. The early whistle-blowing and environmental claim was clearly established under the auspices of both human and nature protection:

> Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called "insecticides" but "biocides". (Carson 1962: 7–8).

While the DDT ban could be seen as a significant landmark in the discontinuation of an insecticide substance, it has to be seen in the perspective of the continuation of the large list of organochlorine and organophosphate pesticides developed immediately in the wake of DDT’s proof of concept. In other words, DDT can be seen as a scapegoat substance—allowing its class to remain unharmed (for now...).

Following the concomitant DDT ban and creation of the US EPA, the governmentalization of pesticide uses through norms rested on a sophisticated approach to risk. This approach involved, on the one hand, justification through regulatory science, expertise committee and homologation principles and, on the other hand, a compartmentalization of risks in various problem areas, to be regulated separately: (a) at the level of workers (both in manufacturers and sprayers), (b) at the level of residues in food (the DLL) and (c) at the level of environmental impacts.

During these years, industrial manufacturers of pesticides developed intensive R&D programme to deploy new generations of molecules (such as the systemic pesticides like carbamates) and adapt molecules to homologation constraints. Substitution had thus become an industrial strategy to keep the ambition high with synthetic crop protection products.

In sum, this period saw the designation and problematization of pesticides as dangerous substances to be regulated under dedicated scientific expertise (regulatory toxicology) and administrative procedures (authorization regime), with notable differences between countries to render public contestation and re-stabilization of pesticide use (Levain et al. 2015).

## Taming reduction and removal according to risk evaluation

From the 1980s onwards until the Rio Summit in 1992, environmental movements took up the fight against pesticides, resulting in the production of an agenda for the withdrawal of many pesticides. In 1985, the newly-founded Pesticide Action Network

<footnote n="2">² DDT is a powerful insecticide used for civil and military purposes, notably to protect crops against insect swarms and to protect human populations against insect-borne diseases like malaria.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ Notably, Cuba, Sweden and Norway were early precursors of national DDT bans in 1970.</footnote>
(PAN) produced a first list of pesticides to be eliminated from the food supply (targeting consumers' health) and ten years after, during its first World Assembly in Vancouver, insisted on the withdrawal of 12 pesticides from human foodstuffs, which included organochlorine/phosphorus compounds, as well as industrial chemicals (HCB and PCB) and industrial byproducts such as dioxins. In relative alignment with the environmental struggles, OECD countries established a specific convention on the withdrawal of persistent organic pollutants, known as the Stockholm Convention, signed in 2001 and implemented by 158 countries by 2004.

Progress with pesticides regulation was largely driven by transnational dynamics impeded by industrial strategies and private governance (Kinniburgh et al. 2023). In fact, it is through European integration that France and a large number of other European countries bound themselves to the implementation of European decisions on assessing the risks posed by plant protection products. A pesticide reduction horizon became part of a political framework with the emergence of a European strategy against pesticides risk, among other toxicity issues (Bozzini 2017).

At the same time, in France and in the rest of Europe, alternative forms of agriculture were emerging, in particular organic farming, along with specific modes of production, processing and supplying that excluded the use of pesticides. The emergence of alternative food systems in an ethical frame of localism (DuPuis and Goodman 2005) signals a form of isolation of chemical pesticide-free agriculture on the fringes of the conventional agricultural production system. The institutionalization of this concrete utopia of a pesticide-free agriculture in farming systems and on specific markets formed a clear socio-technical answer to the withdrawal of pesticide use: radically transforming the cropping systems and the standards of food markets (Goulet et al. 2023).

In sum, his second sequence shows how the end of widely used substances does not mean the end of a socio-technical regime in agricultural production, since the use of pesticides increased during the post-war economic boom (the French “Trente Glorieuses”) with the extraordinary international growth in agri-food production as part of the green revolution. Concomitantly, the idea of getting rid of pesticides also proved to be feasible and sustainable in the clearly delineated (yet marginal) spaces of organic agriculture (Marsden 2013) and the growing discourses on alternative agri-food movements (Constance et al. 2014). During the 1980s, the agri-food production and distribution system then stabilized around the idea that there could be “bad pesticides” to get rid of and “good pesticides” to keep, as long as their uses complied with the specifications laid down as part of their approval by experts who, at the time, came mainly from the research and industrial R&D departments of the major phyto-pharmaceutical firms.

## The socio-political risk and wicked problem of phase-out governance

By the early 2000s in the European context, the brand awareness of organic products and public subsidies for sustainable agricultural practice has accompanied the rise of ecological politics parties and public policies (Lamine and Marsden 2023). National
action plans to reduce use started to emerge<fnref n="4" /> (Barzman and Dachbrodt-Saaydeh 2011) and initiated the design and implementation of directional public policies to achieve sustainable agriculture in light with nitrogen and pesticide reductions. PAN Europe's critical work at parliamentary level seemed to be bearing fruit. In October 2009, following extensive discussions between the Commission and Parliament, the European Union adopted the "Pesticides Package" (Bozzini 2017), which consists of:

* a regulation that tightens up existing practices for authorizing the marketing of pesticides,

* two separate directives that set out a strategy for reducing the use of pesticides while obliging Member States to draw up national action plans (Directive 2009/128/EC),

* a specific directive on everything to do with regulating the spraying of pesticides, and

* much less anecdotal than it might seem, a regulation obliges Member States to set up a statistical system to monitor domestic consumption and the use of pesticides.

In sum, linking pesticide reduction to sustainable agriculture in a policy referential with mandatory means of implementation had established a new context.

In France, a pesticide reduction horizon becomes part of a political framework with the emergence of this European strategy. Amidst the ongoing environmental battle against pesticides, an increasing number of socio-technical experiments unfolded on the peripheries of conventional agriculture. Moreover, scientific expertise pointed out deterrent effects of pesticides on human and environmental health. Firstly, with the Grenelle agreement of 2007, the reduction strategy spelled out an explicit target for reduction under the first Ecophyto Plan launched in 2008: decrease the use of 50% by the year 2018, "if possible"! Following this momentum, the "Agro-Ecological project for France" of the Ministry of agriculture launched in 2013 reinforced this objective while establishing a clear admonition to conventional agriculture. After the failure of the first Ecophyto plan (Guichard et al. 2017), the second Ecophyto plan (2015) revised the ambition (50% reduction target is maintained but pushed back to 2025, with an intermediate objective of 25% reduction set for 2020) and stressed that the reduction of pesticides must take place in conventional farming, with the emergence of a form of gradual conventionalization of organic farming and the experimentation of agro-ecological farming practices. Hence, the risk of pesticide use turned out to be political: would it be possible to generalize pesticide reduction with incentives and objectives addressed to the whole agricultural sector? Could such a policy combining pesticide-free agriculture and pesticide reduction be consistent? From today, the answer is no, as the existence of the third Ecophyto Plan

<footnote n="4">⁴ National Pesticides reduction plans were launched in Denmark in 1986, in Sweden in 1986 and in The Netherlands in 1991.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ How the qualification "if possible" was added later in the process (see Dedieu 2022) and denotes a depression of initial objectives by tying them explicitly to economic bottom lines and technological alternatives (i.e. appropriate substitutes).</footnote>
issued in 2018 (or so-called Plan Ecophyto 2 + ) deals with the concerning end of the glyphosate (a new scapegoat?), but largely prolonged the same objectives and means with the already declared targets of research and innovation efforts, stewardship for change and prevention towards exposure.

The succession of these plans affords for the existence of a socio-political lock-
in: three successive Ecophyto reduction plans have failed to reign in pesticide use,
which has even increased after the announcement of the first plan. The reason of that
failure has been documented, studied and analysed (Dedieu 2022) and it has become
a public proof of deep prevailing lock-ins, both technical and economical, linking
chemical crop protection efficiency to farm performance (Potier 2023, 2014). The
recent farmers’ movement in the Netherlands, Germany and France has ostensibly
shouted with tractor convoys that the European system of environmental and health
norms, among which pesticide reduction, was putting farmers at risk of closing-down
their activity—if not committing suicide, while the farmers’ poisoning by pesticide
use are known to be under-reported (Dedieu et al. 2015). The idea of phasing-out
pesticide use, or even the objective of pesticide reduction seems to have faded away
in a never-ending horizon.

The question of keeping the ambition high with the Green Deal is similarly on
the agenda at the beginning of 2024. In the face of the risk of economic collapse,
the French “thermometer” of pesticide reduction has changed from the NODU<fnref n="6" />
to European index HRI-1.<fnref n="7" /> HRI-1 clearly values the dangerousness of pesticide
and not substances units release independently. Meanwhile, the French government
has abandoned its ambition of reducing pesticide use by 50% by 2030. In this last
sequence, while agro-ecology for France initially appeared as a strong critical alterna-
tive, it is now associated with the definition of an ever-postponed reduction horizon.
The French case is thus emblematic of a dual political effort, both at the level of
those involved in ecological criticism and at the level of public policy “to reduce,
if possible”. The parenthesis of the agro-ecology project for France seems to have
been closed, all the more so since a new parliamentary report highlights the failure
to reduce the use of pesticides, and there is now talk of 2050 as the deadline for
achieving such a reduction.

<footnote n="6">⁶ The number of dose units of a substance per ha (NODU) measures the normalized quantity of an active substance obtained by dividing the quantity sold of each active substance by the “maximum dose” specific to each active substance that can be applied during an “average” treatment on a crop in a given year.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ This harmonized risk indicator for pesticides is calculated on the basis of sales of plant protection products, taking into account the toxicity of the molecule, it measures the sum of the quantities of active substances sold in a year, weighted by a coefficient that can take four different values depending on the toxicological classification of the active substance.</footnote>
## 4.4 Conclusion

A socio-technical and longitudinal transitions perspective on the (non) phase-out of pesticide use in agriculture allows us to shed light on some immediate features of such problem. The involvement of multiple actors and actor positions concerning phase-out is a matter of various types of mobilizations showing oscillations between the ontological claim of preserving various forms of life and the ontological claim of maintaining business-as-usual. The scientific arena is not positioned outside (above or under) the manufacture of various risks (worker, food, environment); it is the same for policy-making arenas (at various levels) of dealing with those risks as regulatory targets and with the procedures of putting the regulation at work through substantial sectorial changes. The socio-historical overview of the French case clearly shows an accumulation of framings at work, as pesticide phase-out or reduction appears to be loaded gradually with problematizations which are embedded in mobilizations about: (a) definitional struggles to designating and problematizing pesticides as dangerous substance; (b) procedural struggles to designating and problematizing dangerous substance as object of reduction and removal; and (c) directional governance to designating and problematizing reduction and removal as a socio-political risk.

But this process is far from being linear and cumulative since numerous questions of inertia, heritage and temporality are systematically at play to define and enact the condition of possibilities of a phase-out and reduction. Agri-food systems can be approached as systemic configurations held together by the tight couplings between heterogenous problematizations of phase-out and reduction.

New problems and concerns (e.g. raised awareness and problematization of toxi-city and health impacts pesticides) have certainly triggered the partial delegitimation of conventional agri-food practices and opened up new avenues for innovation; but our analysis also shows how intentional governance has a tendency to be folded back into the seemingly inescapable and overbearing constraints of “feeding the world”—in a particular formulation that currently appears impermeable to critique.

Removing pesticides from agricultural use through incremental or substitution logics (e.g. replacement by biopesticides) appears likely to be ineffective or marginal. More astonishing perhaps are the backlashs and the constant survival of the substitu-tion of molecules framework that tend to close down the framing in terms of phase-out and risk reduction. Removing individual phytosanitary substance(s) (classes) (e.g. DDT, glyphosate or nicotinoids) is unlikely to fundamentally alter agri-food configurations and their related dependence upon external inputs.

In sum, explorations of the possibility of phasing-out pesticides have unveiled what we have called a socio-political risk of not fulling the promise of opening a new era for agri-food systems. This confirms—in our view—that pesticide phase-out needs to be approached at a systemic level, in conjunction with support to radically alternative pathways for agri-food system development (e.g. the large-scale deploy-ment of agro-ecological practices). Phasing-out pesticides, like dealing with other kinds of persistent systemic issues, appears as if imbued with a still currently unbear-able heaviness. Confronted with what appears as the impossible task of phasing-out
undesirable (risky) systems while ensuring that such (risky) ends are not undesired, it becomes clear that what is needed is an appropriate framing of the new kinds of risks associated with phase-out. Having established what such a new framing entails, it becomes clear that this requires anticipating and frontally addressing the socio-political risks of phase-out, rather than leaving them as unattended afterthoughts. With this, phase-out may be bearable.

## References

G. Allaire, R. Boyer, *La grande transformation de l'agriculture: lecture conventionnalistes et régulationistes* (Inra-Quae, Paris, 1995)

C. Ansell, A. Boin, M. Farjoun, Dynamic conservatism: how institutions change to remain the same, in *Institutions and ideals: Philip Selznick's legacy for organizational studies* (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2015), pp. 89–119

C. Ansell, J. Trondal, Governing turbulence: an organizational-institutional agenda. *Perspect Public Manag. Gov.* **1**, 43–57 (2018)

W.B. Arthur, Competing technologies, increasing returns, and lock-in by historical events. *Economics* **J. 99**(394), 116–131 (1989)

M. Barbier, B. Elzen, B. van Mierlo, A.M. Augustyn, 2017. Conclusion: a curiosity cabinet of agro-ecological transition studies, in: *AgroEcological Transitions: Changes and Breakthroughs in the Making* ed. by B. Elzen, A.M. Augustyn, M. Barbier, B. Van Mierlo (Wageningen University, pp. 283–295)

M. Barzman, S. Dachbrodt-Saaydeh, Comparative analysis of pesticide action plans in five European countries. *Pest Manag. Sci.* (2011). https://doi.org/10.1002/ps.2283

A. Boin, M. Ekengren, M. Rhinard, Hiding in plain sight: conceptualizing the creeping crisis. *Risk Hazards Crisis Public Policy* **11**, 116–138 (2020)

S. Boudia, N. Jas, Introduction: science and politics in a toxic world, in: Toxicants, Health and Regulation since 1945 (Routledge, 2015), pp. 1–23

E. Bozzini, *Pesticide policy and politics in the European Union: regulatory assessment, implementation and enforcement* (Springer, 2017)

T. Brunelle, R. Chakir, A. Carpentier, B. Dorin, D. Goll, N. Guilpart, F.H. Tang, Reducing chemical inputs in agriculture requires a system change. *Commun. Earth Environ.* **5**(1), 369 (2024)

F.H. Buttel, Sustaining the unsustainable: agro-food systems and environment in the modern world, in *Handbook of Rural Studies* (2006), pp. 213–229

M. Callon, Techno-economic networks and irreversibility. *Sociol. Rev.* **38**, 132–161 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954x.1990.tb03351.x

R.L. Carson, *Silent spring* (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1962)

D.H. Constance, W.H. Friedland, M.C. Renard, M.G. Rivera-Ferre, The discourse on alternative agrifood movements, in *Alternative Agrifood Movements: Patterns of Convergence and Divergence* (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2014), pp. 3–46

F. Dedieu, J-N. Jouzel, G. Prete, Governing by ignoring: the production and the function of the under-reporting of farm-workers' pesticide poisoning in French and Californian regulations, in *Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies* (Routledge, 2015), pp. 297–307

F. Dedieu, Pesticides: le confort de l'ignorance, *Seuil* (2022)

D. Demortain, Scientists and the regulation of risk: standardising control (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

E.M. DuPuis, D. Goodman, Should we go “home” to eat?: toward a reflexive politics of localism. *J. Rural. Stud.* **21**, 359–371 (2005)
F.W. Geels, Technological transitions as evolutionary reconfiguration processes: a multi-level perspective and a case-study. *Res. Policy* **31**, 1257–1274 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0048-7333(02)00062-8

F.W. Geels, J. Schot, Typology of sociotechnical transition pathways. *Res. Policy* **36**, 399–417 (2007)

F. Goulet, A. Aulagnier, E. Fouilleux, Moving beyond pesticides: exploring alternatives for a changing food system. *Environ. Sci. Policy* **147**, 177–187 (2023)

L. Guichard, F. Dedieu, M.-H. Jeuffroy, J.-M. Meynard, R. Reau, I. Savini, Le plan Ecophyto de réduction d'usage des pesticides en France : décryptage d'un échec et raisons d'espérer. *Cahiers Agricultures* **26**, 14002 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1051/cagri/2017004

F. den Hond, P. Groenewegen, N.M. van Straalen, Questions around the persistence of the pesticide problem, in *Pesticides: Problems, Improvements, Alternatives* (Wiley, 2003), pp. 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470995457.ch1

P-B. Joly, M. Barbier, B. Turnheim, Governing the discontinuation of large socio-technical systems, in F. Goulet, D. Vinck, ed. by *New Horizons for Innovation Studies: Doing Without, Doing With Less*. Edward Elgar (2023), pp. 29–46. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781803925554

L. Kanger, F.W. Geels, B. Sovacool, J. Schot, Technological diffusion as a process of societal embedding: lessons from historical automobile transitions for future electric mobility. *Transp. Res. D. Transp. Environ.* **71**, 47–66 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2018.11.012

F. Kinniburgh, H. Selin, N.E. Selin, M. Schreurs, When private governance impedes multilateralism: the case of international pesticide governance. *Regul. Gov.* **17**, 425–448 (2023)

J. Köhler, F.W. Geels, F. Kern, J. Markard, A. Wieczorek, F. Alkemade, F. Avelino, A. Bergek, F. Boons, L. Fünfschilling, D. Hess, G. Holtz, S. Hyysalo, K. Jenkins, P. Kivimaa, M. Martiskainen, A. McMeekin, M.S. Mühlemeier, B. Nykvist, B. Pel, R. Raven, H. Rohracher, B. Sandén, J. Schot, B. Sovacool, B. Turnheim, D. Welch, P. Wells, An agenda for sustainability transitions research: State of the art and future directions. *Environ. Innov. Soc. Transit.* **31**, 1–32 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2019.01.004

Z. Koretsky, P. Stegmaier, B. Turnheim, H. van Lente, (ed.), 2023. *Technologies in Decline: Socio-Technical Approaches to Discontinuation and Destabilisation*. (Routledge)

C. Lamine, T. Marsden, Unfolding sustainability transitions in food systems: insights from UK and French trajectories. *Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.* **120**, (2023) https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2206231120

L. Levain, PB. Joly, M. Barbier, V. Cardon, F. Dedieu, et al., Continuous discontinuation—the DDT Ban revisited. International Sustainability Transitions Conference “Sustainability transitions and wider transformative change, historical roots and future pathways”, (University of Sussex. Brighton, GBR., Brighton, United Kingdom 2015)

L. Levidow, European transitions towards a corporate-environmental food regime: agroecological incorporation or contestation? *J. Rural. Stud.* **40**, 76–89 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jru rstud.2015.06.001

S. Maguire, C. Hardy, Discourse and deinstitutionalization: the decline of DDT. *Acad. Manag. J.* **52**(1), 148–178 (2009). https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2009.36461993

B. Mansfield, M. Werner, C. Berndt, A. Shattuck, R. Galt, B. Williams, L. Argüelles, F.R. Barri, M. Ishii, J. Kunin, P. Lapegna, A. Romero, A. Caicedo, Abhigya, M.S. Castro-Vargas, E. Marquez, D. Ojeda, F. Ramirez, A. Tittor, A new critical social science research agenda on pesticides. *Agric Human Values* **41**, 395–412 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-023-10492-w

T. Marsden, From post-productionism to reflexive governance: contested transitions in securing more sustainable food futures. *J. Rural. Stud.* **29**, 123–134 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jru rstud.2011.10.001

D. Ockwell, R. Byrne, U.E. Hansen, J. Haselip, I. Nygaard, The uptake and diffusion of solar power in Africa: socio-cultural and political insights on a rapidly emerging socio-technical transition. *Energy Res. Soc. Sci.* **44**, 122–129 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2018.04.033

V. Pelaez, L.R. da Silva, E.B. Araújo, Regulation of pesticides: a comparative analysis. *Sci. Public Policy* **40**, 644–656 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/sct020

D. Potier, Pesticides et agroécologie, les champs du possible (2014)
D. Potier, Rapport pour la création d'une Commission d'enquête sur les causes de l'incapacité de la France à atteindre les objectifs des plans successifs de maîtrise des impacts des produits phytosanitaires sur la santé humaine et environnementale et notamment sur les conditions de l'exercice des missions des autorités publiques en charge de la sécurité sanitaire (2023)

R. Raven, F. Kern, B. Verhees, A. Smith, Niche construction and empowerment through socio-political work. a meta-analysis of six low-carbon technology cases. Environ. Innov. Soc. Transit **18**, 164–180 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2015.02.002

A. Rip, R. Kemp, Technological Change, in *Human Choice and Climate Change*, ed. by S. Rayner, L. Malone. Resources and Technology, vol. 2 (Batelle Press, Washington, D.C., 1998), pp.327–399

T.J. Schuitmaker, Identifying and unravelling persistent problems. Technol. Forecast Soc. Change **79**, 1021–1031 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2011.11.008

A. Smith, R. Raven, What is protective space? Reconsidering niches in transitions to sustainability. Res. Policy **41**, 1025–1036 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2011.12.012

A. Smith, A. Stirling, F. Berkhout, The governance of sustainable socio-technical transitions. Res. Policy **34**, 1491–1510 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2005.07.005

P. Stegmaier, S. Kuhlmann, V.R. Visser, et al., The discontinuation of socio-technical systems as a governance problem, in *The Governance of Systems Change: Explaining Change*, ed. by J. Edler, S. Borrás, pp. 111–131 (2014)

F.H.M. Tang, M. Lenzen, A. McBratney, F. Maggi, Risk of pesticide pollution at the global scale. Nat. Geosci. **14**, 206–210 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00712-5

B. Turnheim, Destabilisation, decline and phase-out in transitions research, in *Technologies in Decline: Socio-Technical Approaches to Discontinuation and Destabilisation*, ed. by Z. Koretsky, P. Stegmaier, B. Turnheim, H. Van Lente (Routledge, (2023a)

B. Turnheim, The historical dismantling of tramways as a case of destabilisation and phase-out of established system, in *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences*, vol. 120 (2023b). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2206227120

R. Van den Bosch, *The pesticide conspiracy* (University of California Press, 1989)

S. Wigboldus, L. Klerkx, C. Leeuwis, M. Schut, S. Muilerman, H. Jochemsen, Systemic perspectives on scaling agricultural innovations a review. Agron. Sustain. Dev. **36** (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-016-0380-z

C. Wilson, Up-scaling, formative phases, and learning in the historical diffusion of energy technologies. Energy Policy **50**, 81–94 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2012.04.077

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /></figure>