Advising and selling. Agribusiness companies in innovation and farm advisory services

This article contributes to highlighting the practices of private actors in terms of technical advice to farmers. We observe the way that agribusiness firms combine communication, trading (sales of inputs) and cognitive (accompaniment and advices) dimensions in their activity. Based on research about seed drills and agrochemical firms involved in conservation tillage extension in France, it shows that advising, as a production of knowledge for and with farmers, is a crucial element of these firms' strategies to develop markets. To customers in search of technical references on innovative practices, they put forward their expertise, their capacity to advise farmers and to connect with them. They build relationships based on trust and nearness in action, on immateriality (knowledge) more than materiality, remaining distant from their trading functions or activity. Development and operation of such extension systems can be understood only by tack into account transformations affecting both the offer and field of the agricultural extension and the request formulated by the farmers.