This paper analyses the conditions of transition towards more sustainable crop protection practices from a sociological point of view. It is centred on farmers’ transitions, but also takes into account the interdependencies at the scale of the ‘agro-food system’. This includes the determining role of certification systems and retailers, but also NGOs and civil society, research, extension and regulatory bodies. This agro-food system has progressively stabilised itself around the ‘paradigm of intensification’ due to a convergence of innovations (homologation of new pesticides, changes in fertilisation methods, earlier sowing, etc.) and of actors’ strategies, which has led to a change from a curative use of pesticides to a more systematic one. However, some minor trends may highlight the conditions for an evolution towards more sustainable crop protection strategies. In this paper, the comparative analysis of exemplary cases (in apple and wheat production) of transitions towards integrated protection (IP) strategies is based on extensive sociological fieldwork achieved through ENDURE sub-activity RA3.5 (sociological approaches) in France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the UK, and Denmark.