Marie-Angélina Magne

How to implement biodiversity-based agriculture to enhance ecosystem services: a review

Intensive agriculture has led to several drawbacks such as biodiversity loss, climate change, erosion, and pollution of air and water. A potential solution is to implement management practices that increase the level of provision of ecosystem services such as soil fertility and biological regulation. There is a lot of literature on the principles of agroecology. However, there is a gap of knowledge between agroecological principles and practical applications. Therefore, we review here agroecological and management sciences to identify two facts that explain the lack of practical applications: (1) the occurrence of high uncertainties about relations between agricultural practices, ecological processes, and ecosystem services, and (2) the site-specific character of agroecological practices required to deliver expected ecosystem services. We also show that an adaptive-management approach, focusing on planning and monitoring, can serve as a framework for developing and implementing learning tools tailored for biodiversity-based agriculture. Among the current learning tools developed by researchers, we identify two main types of emergent support tools likely to help design diversified farming systems and landscapes: (1) knowledge bases containing scientific supports and experiential knowledge and (2) model-based games. These tools have to be coupled with well-tailored field or management indicators that allow monitoring effects of practices on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Finally, we propose a research agenda that requires bringing together contributions from agricultural, ecological, management, and knowledge management sciences, and asserts that researchers have to take the position of “integration and implementation sciences.”

How Information Becomes a Resource for Action in an Uncertain and Complex World Sense-Making and Contingency in the Knowing Process

Following their study of how farmers look for and make sense of information to develop their farming projects, the authors argue that more attention should be paid to sense-making and contingency in the knowing process to increase the stakeholders capacity to act in an uncertain and complex world. Their analysis shows that sense-making is contingent on the way farmers characterize the here and now as problematic and depends on the purposes and functions they assign to information resources. It also suggests that farmers assign purposes according to the development of their productive activity and of their own identities and capacities.

Understanding beef-cattle farming management strategies by identifying motivations behind farmers' priorities.

This study aimed to identify and better understand management strategies that help livestock farmers adapt to changes in their production contexts, a fundamental challenge. A total of nine beef-cattle farmers were interviewed three times over 1 year to discuss 13 dimensions of livestock farming (e.g. reproduction, feeding, sales, etc.). Characterisation of management strategies rested on three main factors: (i) ranking of the dimensions according to the degree to which farmers desired to control them, (ii) reasons for the ranking and (iii) management guidelines. Although farmers agreed upon the rank of certain dimensions, such as herd management, they differed on that of others, such as sales and administration/regulations. Four motivation categories were identified: risk, pleasure, efficiency and ability to control the dimension. Three management guidelines were identified, which indicated that farmers managed for future survival of their farms at different scales (animal/herd v. whole-farm), involving different resources (biological v. financial) and based on different animal categories (reproductive cows v. animals sold). These results improve understanding of individual livestock farmers and their current management strategies by integrating the motivations behind their strategies. For this reason, they constitute methodological elements that agricultural advisors can use to provide relevant information to farmers while accommodating differences in farm management.