A Method To Characterise The Spatial Organisation Of Plots On Farms

Over the last fifty years, farms have undergone profound changes: specialisation, reduction of the agricultural workforce, increasing mechanisation. These transformations have led to their expansion and an increasing increase in the problems of work organisation in connection with the increase in the distances to be covered. On small territories, the spatial organisation of plots on farms is generally characterised by simple and explicit indicators ("grouped", "polarised", etc.). On the scale of regional territories, their characterisation mobilises complex and generally not very explicit indicators.The objective of this paper is to propose an original method to characterise, on the scale of large territories, the spatial organisation of plots on farms using a simple indicator. Using national data from the French Land Parcel Identification System, the method is based on a combination of supervised and unsupervised classification methods without resorting to assumptions about the location of farm headquarters. To do this, we propose a combination of two key factors in the organisation of plots on farms: the surface area of each plot and the distance "as the crow flies" separating each plot of the farms. This method has been developed on more than 350,000 French farms whose spatial organisations are described using a simple qualitative indicator. It highlights 4 main types of spatial organisation of plots on farms: grouped plots farms, farms with isolated plots, multi-site farms and scattered plots farms. This method can be reused to provide tools and guide the actions of certain territorial stakeholders.