The third-place incubator farm project aims at incubating and developing agro-ecological projects, raising ecological awareness and rebuilding social ties in peri-urban areas (near Toulouse, southwest France). The project is based on a citizens’ initiative launched in 2015, which is now being institutionalized through the MSC (Multi Stakeholders Cooperative), 100^e Singe. The project for a third-place incubator farm was initiated by the town of Ramonville-Saint-Agne, which will draw on the experience and engineering of 100^e Singe to deploy it within a framework of shared governance. Indeed, Since 2015, 100e Singe’s experience and expertise has already enabled the development of agro-ecological activities in the form of an archipelago of agricultural test areas in peri-urban zones that constitute the beginnings of a future “green belt” for the metropolis. There are currently 7 market garden incubation sites managed by 100e Singe, hosting more than a dozen producers testing their agricultural activities.  

The project aims to address a series of problems:

• Ecological problem: so-called conventional agriculture (intensive and based on global value chains) is one of the causes of the climate crisis, responsible for almost a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.
• The problem of renewing the farming population: the number of active farmers is falling sharply, and the cessation of activity is not being offset by a sufficient number of new start-ups. According to projections, almost half of all farmers in France will cease farming by 2030. Generational renewal is not assured, at a time when the challenges of food sovereignty are becoming ever more acute.
• Land issues: many new farmers are neo-ruralists who did not inherit the land. They suffer from a lack of knowledge of the system, a lack of social contacts in the farming community and a lack of experience that makes them less credible when dealing with landowners or landowners, all of which are obstacles to access to land.
• Territorial problem: peri-urban areas are subject to intense land speculation. They suffer from the loss of meeting places and social exchanges, the sprawl of commercial and residential areas, the loss of agricultural land and a lack of local identity.

After a co-design and financing research phase, they are now in the operational deployment phase. They are pursuing their 2023 objectives of:

• install 4 agroecological market gardens,
• support 4 market gardeners ready to set up nearby,
• possibly host 30 agro-ecological and societal transition professionals in shared workspaces,
• and finally, to make 150 children and citizens aware of ecological issues.

The longer-term objective of this project is to multiply this type of farm-incubator around Toulouse to recreate a peri-urban green belt, with 100 agroecological market gardens re-established and over 150 ha of green lung preserved by 2030.