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System dynamics and agent-based simulation modelling approaches have a potential as tools to evaluate the impact of policy related decision making in food value chains. The context is that a food value chain involves flows of multiple products, financial flows and decision making among the food value chain players. Each decision may be viewed from the level of independent actors, each with their own motivations and agenda, but responding to externalities and to the behaviours of other actors. The focus is to show how simulation modelling can be applied to problems such as fairness and power asymmetries in European food value chains by evaluating the outcome of interventions in terms of relevant operational indicators of interorganisational fairness (e.g., profit distribution, market power, bargaining power). The main concepts of system dynamics and agent-based modelling are introduced and the applicability of a hybrid of these methods to food value chains is justified. This approach is outlined as a research agenda, and it is demonstrated how cognitive maps can help in the initial conceptual model building when implemented for specific food value chains studied in the EU Horizon 2020 VALUMICS project. The French wheat to bread chain has many characteristics of food value chains in general and is applied as an example to formulate a model that can be extended to capture the functioning of European FVCs. This work is to be further progressed in a subsequent stream of research for the other food value chain case studies with different governance modes and market organisation, in particular, farmed salmon to fillet, dairy cows to milk and raw tomato to processed tomato.

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Since 1946 and the integration of land lease in the French rural law, the « pas-de-porte », which consists in paying an entrance fee in order to access to land rent to the previous farmer, and eventually to the land owner, became illegal. Economic approaches show how this custom derives from a tension between familial logics and entrepreneurial logics inherent to the French agricultural politic and to farms’ management. We lack empirical studies though, that allow understanding the power relations at stake and the way this illegal fee is integrated in the accountability of farms, in order to consider regulation matters. This article aims to fill this gap. First, it presents the historical roots of this « pas-de-porte » and the transformation of its economic meaning within a more and more capitalistic context. Second, it describes the three-party relations that takes place between the landowner, the former and the new tenants ; it also analyses the role of middlemen such as « experts agricoles » and management consultants in the calculation of the value of the transaction and its integration in the accountability of the farms. Finally, the article shows how the evolution of the legal status towards corporations accounts for a more general evolution of financialisation of farms within which the pas-de-porte has greater value and is harder to regulate. The recent evolutions of the land policy reveal how hard it becomes to frame this financialisation movement.Le pas-de-porte est une pratique sanctionnée par le droit rural depuis 1946 qui consiste pour le locataire d’une terre agricole à payer un droit d’entrée au locataire sortant et éventuellement au propriétaire de la terre. Si des travaux d’économistes montrent en quoi cette pratique traduit l’existence d’une tension entre logique familiale et logique entrepreneuriale dans la politique agricole française et la gestion des exploitations agricoles, il manque des études empiriques qui mettent en évidence les modalités concrètes de son inscription dans l’économie des exploitations agricoles ainsi que les rapports de force qu’elle charrie afin d’en penser les formes de régulation possibles. C’est l’objet de cet article. Dans un premier temps, il présente les racines historiques de cette pratique et la transformation de sa signification dans le cadre d’une économie agricole de plus en plus capitalistique. Dans un second temps, il décrit la relation tripartite entre locataires entrant et sortant et propriétaire, puis analyse le rôle des acteurs intermédiaires des transactions foncières tels que les conseillers de gestion et les experts agricoles dans le calcul de la valeur du pas-de-porte et dans son intégration à la comptabilité des exploitations. Finalement, l’article montre que l’évolution des statuts juridiques vers des formes sociétaires traduit un mouvement de financiarisation des exploitations, au sein duquel le pas-de-porte est mieux valorisé et plus difficile à réguler. Les récentes évolutions de la politique des structures révèlent la difficulté du législateur ...

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