Citizen science for farmers: A dual tool allowing the monitoring of farmland biodiversity and the impacts of practices, but also a driver for change?

In ecology, citizen science is often seen as an efficient method to gather temporal and spatial data at large scales, but also as a way to increase the environmental commitment of observers. However these claims are rarely quantified at the same time. For instance, how may the requirements for robust data influence the social impact of a participatory science programme? We investigated concurrently these goals through the farmland biodiversity observatory (FBO), a French citizen science programme launched in 2011, wherein 1,216 farmers monitored biodiversity in 2,382 fields. First, FBO proved an efficient means to document changes in farmland biodiversity, as we observed significant temporal trends in abundance for different taxonomic groups and crop types and were able to relate them to agricultural practices. However, we noticed through a parallel social study a tension between such production of general knowledge on a national scale and the operational will of farmers; this tension is hard to satisfy given the contingent nature of biodiversity. Nevertheless dynamics exist to overcome these tensions, for instance through socio-political uses or production of “lay” knowledge in the field. These results illustrate the current ambiguity about knowledge production methods in agronomy, which oscillate between the temptation of large regulatory frameworks and the desire to integrate the more contingent local knowledge of farmers.