M2 internship: MFA of agricultural sectors France and regions

Background

SCALABLE is a research project funded by ADEME, which associates the LESSEM laboratory (INRAE Grenoble), the STEEP team of Inria Grenoble, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Energie Environnement, the company TerriFlux and the Parc Naturel Régional de Chartreuse for all the members of the Inter-Territorial Food Project "Alpine region". SCALABLE is interested in biomasses of agricultural origin (BOA), at the different stages of the transformation chain (chain) from production to consumption, at different territorial scales (national, regional, local). It aims to improve knowledge on the material and organizational vulnerabilities of territories in relation to these chains: to what extent are the needs of the population met in a sustainable way, and without transfer of vulnerabilities to other territories? This work will be done by combining analytical (use of descriptive models) and deliberative (evaluation by the actors of the territories) approaches. It will ultimately contribute to shed light on the debate on the relevant scales of relocation of the different links of the different sectors.

Objectives

The internship aims to contribute to the realization of Material Flow Analyses (MFA) of agricultural commodity chains at the level of France and French regions (see the pre-existing work on https://www.flux-biomasse.fr/alimentation_animale). It will be based on tools of the STEEP team allowing to quantify and represent the material balance of a given sector (production of raw materials, processing, consumption, transport …) from existing data sources incomplete and inconsistent between them.

The work will consist in taking in hand the method and the tools, to understand and model the functioning of certain production chains not yet studied at the national level and/or to regionalize the existing national studies. This will involve research and editing of data relating to these chains (on the internet and by contacting certain experts). It will be supervised by the STEEP team, in close collaboration with the company TerriFlux (currently in incubation in the Inria business incubator).

Required profile

• Prior knowledge of sustainability and environmental accounting issues,
• And / or a prior knowledge of agricultural sectors and environmental issues related to agriculture,
• Ability to collect information and manage a large amount of data (mastery of excel), knowledge of statistics,
• Interest in modeling.