A simplified but not simplistic representation

​Drawing inspiration from socio-ecological system concepts, La Grange offers a synthetic yet realistic representation of the services and impacts provided by agriculture in a given territory. This representation is based on a representation of the characteristics of the socio-ecological system (plot size, landscape matrix providing ecosystem services, monetary value of production and jobs generated, etc.), in which agricultural systems interact with five interfaces: markets, labor and employment, inputs external to the territory, the environment and climate, and social and cultural issues. This representation is called a "barn" in reference to the shape of the central pentagon, which represents the livestock territory (or system) analyzed.

It can be applied at different levels of organization: a single system (a farm or a coordination of farms), an entire territory or sector, a region, and even a country. It allows for a diagnosis of the current state of agriculture at a given scale, characterizing its strengths and areas of vigilance to consider in emerging innovation dynamics, representing developments, and comparing the strengths and threats facing stakeholders.

The central pentagon represents an agricultural territory (in this example, the AOP cheese-making areas of the Massif Central) and its main characteristics. Land use is represented by a plot in two shades of green to symbolize the diversity of permanent grasslands and the presence of temporary grasslands, and in two shades of yellow to represent the diversity of crop rotations. In this territory, livestock farming interacts with five interfaces, the sides of the pentagon, which stem from the choice to highlight its interactions with all components of the socio-ecological system. The meaning of the pictograms used is summarized next to La Grange. The nature and magnitude of the effects are visualized by an outgoing arrow, of varying width, whose color indicates whether they are positive (green), negative (red), or mixed (hatching). Incoming arrows can symbolize the delocalized effects of animal feed (inputs), vulnerability to price fluctuations (markets), ecosystem services (green, environment-climate interface), or pressure from environmental factors (red).