Benoît Dedieu

Adaptiveness to enhance the sustainability of farming systems : A review

During the last decade the context in which farmers must manage their farm has changed rapidly, and often with little warning. Dramatic price swings for agricultural commodities, more stringent quality requirements, new environmental regulations, the debates surrounding genetically modified crops, extreme climatic events, the demand for energy crops, the revision of the Common Agricultural Policy and the consequences of the financial crisis all create uncertainty regarding future threats and potentials. During such turbulent times, a one-sided focus on efficient production is no longer enough. Farmers also need to be able to cope with unexpected events and to adapt to new developments. Based on a literature review, we identify three strategies that strengthen the adaptive capacity of a farm: learning through experimenting and monitoring its outcomes, ensuring a flexible farm organisation to increase the options for new activities by the farm family, and diversifying to spread risks and create buffers. Implementing these strategies enlarges the farmer’s room to manoeuvre and allows identifying transition options. These options do not depend only on the farm itself, but also on the farmer’s ability to mobilise external resources and to engage in collective action. Change is then no longer seen as a disturbance, but as a trigger for the reorganisation of resources, and for the renewal of the farm organisation and activities. Implementing these strategies comes at a cost, so that farmers need to tackle the inevitable trade-offs between efficiency and adaptability. However, unless farmers master this challenge they cannot ensure the sustainability of their farms.

Farming systems research into the 21st century : the new dynamic

Part I: Farming Systems Research in Europe 1. Farming Systems Research: An approach to inquiry Ika Darnhofer, David Gibbon, and Benoit Dedieu 2. The origins of the European IFSA: The first meetings and the agenda renewal Jacques Brossier, Caterina Contini, Luigi Omodei Zorini, and Artur Cristovao 3. Early Farming Systems Research and extension experience in Africa and possible relevance for FSR in Europe Jim Bingen and David Gibbon 4. Textual analysis and scientometric mapping of the dynamic knowledge in and around the IFSA community Marc Barbier, Marianne Bompart, Veronique Garandel-Batifol, and Andrei Mogoutov 5. Methodological themes in Farming Systems Research and implications for learning in higher education David Gibbon Part II: State of the art and key issues 6. How should we farm? The ethical dimension of farming systems Richard Bawden 7. Systems practice: Making the systems in Farming Systems Research effective Ray Ison 8. The role of action-oriented learning theories for change in agriculture and rural networks Chris Blackmore, Marianne Cerf, Ray Ison, and Mark Paine 9. Learning in European agricultural and rural networks: Building a systemic research agenda Bernard Hubert, Ray Ison, Nadarajah Sriskandarajah, Chris Blackmore, Marianne Cerf, Isabelle Avelange, Marc Barbier, and Patrick Steyaert 10. Extension systems and change facilitation for agricultural and rural development Artur Cristovao, Alex Koutsouris, and Michael Kugler 11. Agri-food system and territorial development: Innovations, new dynamics and changing governance mechanisms Claire Lamine, Henk Renting, Adanella Rossi, Han Wiskerke, and Gianluca Brunori 12. The Territory Agronomy Approach in research, education, and training Sylvie Lardon, Anna-Camilla Moonen, Elisa Marraccini, Marta Debolini, Mariassunta Galli, and Salma Loudiyi 13. Simulation models in farming systems research: Potential and challenges Giuseppe Feola, Claudia Sattler, and Ali Kerem Saysel 14. Reshaping boundaries between farming systems and the environment Stephane Bellon and Jean-Louis Hemptinne Part III: Insights from system sciences and new perspectives 15. Dynamics in farming systems: of changes and choices J.B. (Hans) Schiere, Ika Darnhofer, and Michel Duru 16. Farms and farmers facing change: The adaptive approach Rebecka Milestad, Benoit Dedieu, Ika Darnhofer, and Stephane Bellon 17. Observing farming systems: Insights from social systems theory Egon Noe and Hugo F. Alroe

Adaptiveness to Enhance the Sustainability of Farming Systems

During the last decade the context in which farmers must manage their farm has changed rapidly, and often with little warning. Dramatic price swings for agricultural commodities, more stringent quality requirements, new environmental regulations, the debates surrounding genetically modified crops, extreme climatic events, the demand for energy crops, the revision of the Common Agricultural Policy and the consequences of the financial crisis all create uncertainty regarding future threats and potentials. During such turbulent times, a one-sided focus on efficient production is no longer enough. Farmers also need to be able to cope with unexpected events and to adapt to new developments. Based on a literature review, we identify three strategies that strengthen the adaptive capacity of a farm: learning through experimenting and monitoring its outcomes, ensuring a flexible farm organisation to increase the options for new activities by the farm family, and diversifying to spread risks and create buffers. Implementing these strategies enlarges the farmer’s room to manoeuvre and allows identifying transition options. These options do not depend only on the farm itself, but also on the farmer’s ability to mobilise external resources and to engage in collective action. Change is then no longer seen as a disturbance, but as a trigger for the reorganisation of resources, and for the renewal of the farm organisation and activities. Implementing these strategies comes at a cost, so that farmers need to tackle the inevitable trade-offs between efficiency and adaptability. However, unless farmers master this challenge they may not be able to ensure the sustainability of their farms.

Farming Systems Research: an approach to inquiry

Initially, Farming Systems Research took the farm as a starting point for an analysis of a broad range of issues linked to agricultural production. Soon afterwards, it was recognised that to understand farming, the scale of analysis needed to be broadened, to capture the interactions between farms and their natural, social and economic context. Topics of research now range from on-farm issues such as interactions between crop production and animal husbandry, to farmer pluriactivity, civic food networks, and how cultural landscapes are shaped by farming activities. Underlying this breadth of topics, three characteristics are identified as being constituent of Farming Systems Research: systems thinking, interdisciplinarity and a participatory approach to research. In this chapter we discuss these three characteristics, and the challenges they pose in their operationalization. Given these challenges, we discuss the reasons why Farming Systems Research is demanding, and we highlight that the core quality of a researcher is reflexivity, in designing, in implementing and in evaluating research.

Re-design and co-design of farming systems. An overview of methods and practices

Agriculture is considered to be responsible for environmental degradation. At the same time, the demands for food and non-food products are increasing and the contribution of agriculture to a sustainable development of territories is at stake. All these elements require a shift towards new production systems. In line with Farming Systems Research, farmers and other stakeholders cannot be considered as recipients of inventions, but are actors of innovation processes. We present definitions and applications on how the design of innovative farming systems can be organised. Two approaches, i.e. ‘de novo’ and ‘step-by-step’ design, are described. Innovative design must mobilize a collective and distributed intelligence. We present concrete examples of interactive design processes either with heterogeneous stakeholders or with extension and public bodies, as well as the methodologies that support these processes.

Farms and farmers facing change: The adaptive approach

In the last decades, there have been profound changes in the understanding of farming systems: farms are no longer seen as facing a stable environment, thus allowing a focus on optimising production systems. Rather, farms are conceptualised as evolving and adaptive, so as to be able to respond to an ever-changing environment. The adaptive approach in Farming Systems Research focuses on ensuring sufficient room to manoeuvre, identifying transition capabilities and extending the degrees of freedom. The concepts of resilience, diversity and flexibility help in understanding how to make constructive use of unforeseen change. Understanding farmers’ rationalities; the interactions between the farming family’s activities; diverse approaches to production management; farm trajectories, and options to increase farmers’ autonomy are central issues of research. Farmers face the triple challenge of ensuring liveability, making efficient use of their resources, and keeping their farms adaptive so as to find responses to both external and internal drivers of change.

Qualification of the adaptive capacities of livestock farming systems

This paper aims at exploring what is covered by « adapting to last » with a farming systems approach. Long term dynamics can be analysed as adaptive cycles, the system being permanently exposed to disturbances and shocks. Mobilizing the concept of resilience, we analyse the factors that differentiate the principles for long term action the livestock farmers have, principles which give consistency to the family - farms trajectories. With the concept of operational flexibilty, we qualify the sources of flexibility the livestock farmers maintain to cope with hazards. They are internal, related to the production process regulation properties, to the technical (adaptive or rigid) specifications, to the sales policies, or external related to the information and commercial networks. Understanding the production process regulation properties require livestock farming systems models (i.e. combining decisional and biological sub-systems) that can simulate how herd dynamics operate under fluctuant rules or productive parameters. It also require to evaluate the room for manoeuvre the work organization let to the farmer. All these aspects are illsutrated with on farm studies in herbivore systems (sheep, dairy, beef).

Diversity of forage system work and adoption of intensive techniques in dairy cattle farms of Amazonia

Forest ecosystems of Brazilian Amazonia are cleared to allow livestock production. Deforestation contributes significantly to climate change and losses of biodiversity. Degradation by scrubs reduces pasture productivity after a few years, thus leading farmers to deforest new areas. For this reason, sustaining cultivated pastures is of major importance for cattle farms. Intensive pasture management techniques have been proposed to the farmers, with little success so far. Our hypothesis is that these techniques are not implemented by farmers due to weak work organisation. Here, we assessed the diversity of forage system work of dairy farms in a municipality on the Transamazon Highway. We analysed factors explaining the adoption of intensive pasture management techniques. We monitored seven dairy farms, with a specific work assessment approach to build synthetic qualification variables and an interview of 29 dairy farmers to characterise the diversity of forage system work. Our results show four tasks related to their technical content: pasture maintenance, renovation, land maintenance and exceptional work. The total duration of work is variable, from 17 to 278 days per year, depending on the technical management choices. Some farmers are autonomous in carrying out the work, but in several cases, wage workers may contribute significantly, from 33 to 100%. We identified five types of forage system work. They oppose very simplified technical management carried out in autonomy by the family workforce to intensive techniques based on a high level of delegation to permanent wage workers. The results show that forage system work is related to the technical management choices and distribution of work between farmers and permanent wage workers. Forage system work also depends on the amount of work dedicated to the dairy herd, the role of milk in the farm, and the weight of other farming and non-farming activities. Finally, intensive pasture management techniques are linked to a high quantity of work with pasture maintenance, hired permanent workers and specialised dairy farms.

How do pastoral families combine livestock herds with other livelihood security means to survive? The case of the Ferlo area in Senegal

Reducing vulnerability to hazards is a major challenge for pastoral settlements in the dry lands of sub-Saharan Africa. Accumulation of a stock of living animals is a major means of livelihood security that pastoralists use to cope with their constraints, amongst which is high environmental variability. Diversification and long-distance mobility are other means of livelihood security, implying specific family organization. We analysed the combination of these means in ensuring the livelihood security of 508 familial settlements in the rural community of Ferlo, Tessekre (Senegal). At least 40% of the settlements surveyed were small pastoral families, composed of one or two households with small herds (less than 50 cows and 50 sheep). Herds were the major means of livelihood security, but due to lack of a sufficient labour and other assets, the situation of these impoverished families was very precarious. In 28% of the settlements, families combined livestock, crops and non-farming activities as livelihood means. The remaining 32% of the settlements were pastoral settlements supported by large cattle herds and, in many cases, the production of Aïd el Kebir rams (for the major Muslim religious event). Non-farming activities were also present in these settlements with large herds, especially activities in the livestock trade. Diversification can reinforce the function of herds as savings accounts and might also enable the pastoralists to invest in livestock activities. There were three groups of settlements based on the characterization of livelihood security strategies used by pastoral herders. Over time, pastoralists have to utilize several means of security to cope with climatic shocks such as droughts, and familial events such as the death of the familial chief. Family organization (dispersal or grouping), diversification and mobility are important means used to recover after major losses of animals.

Simulation of sow herd dynamics with emphasis on performance and distribution of periodic task events

Currently, the diversity of sow herd management strategies has been described but there are no tools that explore how it promotes sow herd performance nor how it or performance are linked to work organization problems. The goal of the current study was to build a herd dynamic, stochastic object oriented model capable of representing the herd dynamics and performance, and to predict the number of events workers will have to deal with. Each sow is individually represented in the model and the model works as a discrete event simulator with a predefined time step of 1 h. At each time step of simulation, the model searches for an event to be processed. An event may imply change of sow physiological state (e.g. oestrus, far rowing and insemination) and/or request an action from a worker (e.g. oestrous detection and far rowing supervision). This action may result in the planning of a new event (e.g. far rowing after mating) and/or modification of sow state (e.g. from oestrus to pregnant).The occurrences of some technical activities such as weaning are defined in time and frequency according to the management strategy of the farmer. The model is stochastic as sow biology is represented by several normal univariate distributions according to parity or by a threshold (fertility,abortion and mortality rates). When sows return into oestrus after mating they can be moved to another batch or culled depending on batch management strategy and culling policy. Outputs of this model focus on productivity of sows and distribution of tasks over the week. Definitions of the duration of simulation and number of replications to obtain the steady state and the variability of results are presented. The model is able to simulate several batch far rowing systems (BFS) and results of 1-, 3- and 4-week BFS are presented. Several simulations with modified management (no oestrous detection during the weekend and change of the weaning day) or with modified sow biology (increased variability of the weaning-to-oestrus interval and lower fertility rate) are performed. Results indicate that these modifications have specific consequences on performance and task distribution according to the BFS. The model provides useful information concerning the effects of herd management strategies on productivity and distribution of events over time and their sensitivity to biological criteria.