Climate: Building Resilience

In this episode, four guests combine scientific perspectives with real-world experience to explore a shared challenge: how specialized Sectors are adapting, innovating, and weathering the storm in an increasingly unpredictable climate.
Louis Amiot, an engineer-researcher and Ph.D. in geography, sets the stage. The four major climate risks—heat waves, late frosts, drought, and excessive rainfall—are all on the rise, with direct impacts on crops: yield losses, timing shifts, and strain on water resources. An apparent paradox but a well-documented reality: the risk of frost is increasing because trees now bloom three weeks earlier than they did fifty years ago. In response, he identifies three levels of response—immediate reactivity to hazards, the adjustment of practices and varieties, and a more profound transformation of agricultural systems.
Mélissa Merdy and Esteban Fortin, both involved in the Vitilience project, demonstrate how the sector has organized itself on a national scale to address this challenge. Vitilience relies on a network of seventeen regional demonstration sites—including Rési Loire, based in Montreuil-Bellay at the Edgard Pisani wine-making school. There, they are testing various combinations of approaches: shade sails, southern grape varieties, new vine training systems, agroforestry, and eco-grazing with sheep, geese, and ducks. The goal: to identify technical approaches that are effective, economically viable, and environmentally friendly—a demanding trifecta, yet essential for these solutions to truly gain traction within the industry.
Régis Chevalier, a market gardener from Nantes, brings the voice from the field. For him, uncertainties have always been part of the trade—but today they are more frequent, more brutal, and more unpredictable. His response: diversify (his farm has expanded from two to seven crops), stagger planting schedules, build shelters, and above all, irrigate. Because without stored water, nothing is possible. And while the French West offers real opportunities for tomorrow’s vegetable production, the limitations are often regulatory.
An episode grounded in reality, between urgency and hope.