Laurent Bedoussac

Mutual Legume Intercropping for Forage Production in Temperate Regions

Carefully designed intercropping systems can have many advantages in comparison to monocropping such as increased forage yield, enhanced weed control, reduced soil erosion and, in the case of legumes, improved soil fertility due to their symbiosis with nitrogen-fixating bacteria. In addition the use of forage legumes is increasing for the rations of ruminants because legumes supply animal husbandry with protein-rich diets. Due to lower forage yield from perennial legumes in the first planting year and a critical standing ability of annual forage legumes, farmers tend to establish these crops with a companion crop. The first trials in Serbia studied the role an annual legume in the establishment of a perennial legume. Field pea cultivars with reduced plant height, semi-leafless leaf types and improved lodging tolerance were included together with a pure red clover stand and its mixture with oats as controls. When sown as the companion crop an annual forage legume can provide an economic yield during the perennial forage crop establishment. In average, field pea as a companion crop increases forage annual dry matter yield by 2.56 t ha − 1 and reduces weeds in red clover stand by 29%. Another group of trials involved mixtures of autumn-sown cool season, spring-sown cool season and warm season annual legumes for forage production. Here one plant had good and another poor standing ability and with concurring development stages and similar growth habit. There were economically justified intercrops with Land Equivalent Ratio (LER) values of forage dry matter yield higher than 1, such as winter faba bean with winter common vetch (1.42), spring faba bean with spring grass pea (1.44) and pigeon pea with lablab bean (1.12). The achieved results in the mutual legume intercropping research in Serbia encourage the similar research in the neighbouring West Balkan Countries and other European temperate regions.

Eco-functional Intensification by Cereal-Grain Legume Intercropping in Organic Farming Systems for Increased Yields, Reduced Weeds and Improved Grain Protein Concentration

Intercropping, i.e., simultaneously growing two (or more) species in the same field for a significant period of time but without necessarily concomitant sowing or harvest, is a practice aimed at eco-functional intensification.

Supporting decision for environment-friendly practices in the agri-food sector

High-level decision-making, such as policy making, needs to take into account the often-conflicting interests of different stakeholders with the goal of finding solutions to provide trade-offs and build consensus towards the adoption of so-called win-win solutions. In this article, the authors suggest that using a modeling and simulation approach would greatly enrich the deliberation process. The authors propose a systematic method to assess possible options, based on the complementarity of argumentation modeling and system dynamics (SD) simulation, in conjunction with field experimentation. As a practical application, the authors assess various options available to agri-food chain stakeholders when considering the adoption of cereal-legume intercrops as an alternative to sole crops. Taking advantage of the argument analysis, SD simulations are used to: 1) compare different cultural strategies available to farmers in current operating, market and regulatory conditions; 2) propose plausible what-if scenarios anticipating technological progress, and exploring the impact of adopting potential incentives and dissuasive regulatory measures.

Combined Argumentation and Simulation to Support Decision

Although modeling argument structures is helpful to make involved parties understand the pros and cons of an issue and the context of each other’s positions, stakeholders have no means to anticipate the impacts of adopting the debated solutions, let alone to compare them. This is where using simulation approaches would greatly enrich the deliberation process. This paper introduces an approach combining argumentation and simulation. We consider a case study in which both are used to assess and compare cultural options available to farmers.

Designing and evaluating arable cropping systems with cash and cover crop legumes in sole crop and intercrop to improve nitrogen use efficiency

Increasing concern about climate change and environmental impacts requires transformation of cropping systems by for example introducing more legumes (grain legumes or cover crop forage legumes) to increase benefits from N2-fixation and break crop effects. Legumes could be grown alone or in intercropping known to use resources more efficiently when species do not compete for exactly the same or alone. For instance, correct rotational position of legumes needs to be carefully analysed to design relevant solutions maximizing their benefit. The main objective of our work was to design and evaluate prototypes of arable systems including legumes using jointly field experiments and crop modelling.