Jean-Louis Diman

Livestock Farming Systems and Agroecology in the Tropics

The climate change crisis is inducing severe energy and food shortages in tropical regions. A potential solution is to build agroecological systems as an alternative to intensive and industrial agriculture. For that research should focus on the functions of animal and livestock farming systems. Positive and negative function effects should be assessed. This is particularly important in developing countries where most of tomorrow’s food and feed will have to be produced. What are the main issues for animal production in the tropics? The major challenges are how to redesign productivity and food security, economic efficiency and environmental preservation, and how to integrate economy and environment. A multidisciplinary approach is necessary to address such complex problems, where interactions among interdependent components of the system result in multicausality.

Systemic Vulnerability vs Resilience in Small Island Territories: Keys for a Viable Adaptation of the Agricultural Sector

Identify specific aspects of mixed farming systems. At the same time, certain practices seem to transcend the whole territory and relate little to the activities that dominate a zone. To be able to organize a follow-up of these promising complex systems at farmer and experimental level situation a first evolutionary assessment grid was sketched to enable the selection of the situations. This should allow a more detailed study of the functionality of farms where estimates can be made on the the performances and robustness of systems in terms of sustainable development.