Stéphane Bellon

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.

Conversion to Organic Farming: A Multidimensional Research Object at the Crossroads of Agricultural and Social Sciences - A Review

Literature on the conversion from intensive to organic farming is scarce. However, both the conversion of farmers to organic farming and of consumers to organic food are the driving forces for the development of the organic sector. In this review, we combine agricultural and social scientists’ viewpoints for a critical appraisal of literature on conversion to organic food and farming. First, a brief historical retrospective enables us to refer the scientific production to the institutional and economic context over the past decades. Secondly, we review the methods used to analyse conversion in agricultural and social sciences, and show that emphasis is most often laid upon the effects of conversion and the motivations to convert, on the basis of comparative approaches with so-called conventional agriculture. Therefore, the literature minimises the importance of transitional aspects and trajectories, and rarely approaches conversion as a longer process than its legal duration and from a wider point of view. Thirdly, we examine the paradigms of input efficiency and system redesign, which frame discussions about transitions in agriculture, beyond organics, and therefore helps shed light on sustainability issues. We suggest that analysing conversion and more generally transitions in agriculture as multidimensional issues, involving both production and social practices, entails interdisciplinary approaches and the redefinition of some central research topics.

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.

Organic Farming, Prototype for Sustainable Agricultures

> Qualified authors involved in organic research (projects), from various disciplines and countries > Wide range of topics addressed, relevant for the development of organic and sustainable agricultures > Updated results and references, thematic index Various stakeholders have shown a growing interest in organic food and farming (OF&F), which has become a widespread issue at all levels of society. However, much debate still arises about the value of OF&F as a model for sustainable agriculture. Rather than questioning whether organic farming performs better or not than conventional farming, the main question addressed in this book is how and under what conditions OF&F may contribute to sustainable agricultures. Multiple forms are emerging today, among which OF&F represents a prototype, evolving in strong interaction with them and tackling the multiple challenges facing sustainable agriculture. This book presents 25 papers divided into three main sections. The first section investigates OF&F production processes and the capacity of OF&F to benefit from ecological regulations and system functioning to achieve a greater degree of self-sufficiency. The second one proposes an overview of organic performances that provide commodities and public goods in response to societal demands. The third focuses on how to mainstream different forms of organic agriculture, including development pathways for organic farming and up-scaling within agri-food systems and territories. In addition to a strong theoretical component, this book provides an overview of the current challenges facing OF&F. It questions the successes and limitations of organics, with particular emphasis on bottlenecks and lock-in effects at various levels, highlighting recent innovations and presenting a critical appraisal of the state of the art of existing knowledge. It contributes to our understanding of the perspectives and future challenges for research in organic farming in France and in Europe. Each area of OF&F is examined, with papers from leading experts who have been involved in organic research projects and partnerships for many years and who provide complementary insights into the key issues facing organic agriculture and research worldwide.

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.

Reshaping boundaries between farming systems and the environment

In modern societies, farmers not only have to be efficient in food production, but also ensure that ecological services such as pollination, pest control or biodiversity conservation are effective. Therefore, the role of the environment needs to be reconsidered in redesigning or assessing farming systems. This chapter questions and redefines the usual boundaries between a farming system and its environment. It includes three sections. First, we examine the dynamics of literature related to environmental perspectives in farming systems analysis, encompassing several levels of organization. Then, we analyse the contribution of some proposals derived from ecological forms of agriculture (e.g. organic, integrated), in terms of system properties and boundaries, as well as the delineation of expected functions. Finally, by examining agroecology, we address how farming systems can integrate ecological issues, and identify research perspectives which may inform the further development of farming systems thinking and practices.

Organic Food and Farming as a Prototype for Sustainable Agricultures

Many agricultural models claim to serve as a foundation towards sustainability. This introductory chapter examines how research results in organic food and farming (OF&F) may contribute to meaningful innovations and transitions for sustainable agricultures. To support this, we refer to three different interpretations of the concept of prototype. Each of them is developed in the three sections of the book. First, prototype theory is used as a mode of graded categorisation in cognitive sciences where categories are relative and boundaries may be fuzzy, making it possible to confront OF&F to other agricultures. The first section addresses production, protection and agro-ecological processes with the aim of increasing self-sufficiency. It addresses the validity domain of research findings for other agricultures. The second interpretation of OF&F as a prototype refers to its ability to outperform existing agricultures. This could also serve as a basis for outcome-based OF&F, which is currently mean-based. Three main challenges are developed in the second section: environmental issues, animal welfare and the quality of organic products. The third interpretation refers to OF&F development pathways. OF&F internal dynamics can be seen as enabling transformations. The third section combines two implications: renewal of an organic framework open to other stakeholders and identification of transition pathways for OF&F systems, including the territorial level. The prototype concept is useful for tackling the multiple challenges of the dynamic relationships of OF&F with other forms of agriculture. If OF&F is more than a niche, shifting from a prototype to a generalisable model still remains an issue.

Agroecology and Grassland Intensification in the Caribbean

Grasslands are a major ecosystem covering about a quarter of earth surface. Grasslands have essential functions including providing high quality food from animal products. Moreover grasslands generally do not compete with crop land and land for other human activities. Grasslands also support the livelihoods of many small holders, a variety of social and cultural services and an important role facing of economic or seasonal food shortages. At the same time, the intensification of livestock production is essential to meet the growing demand for animal products, whereas the expansion of agricultural areas is not unlimited and that it’s necessary to promote positive interactions with grazing, the environment and biodiversity. Therefore grasslands represent a major alternative, and should be intensified other than what had conventionally been done so far. The concepts of agroecology provide scientific, methodological and technological basis to design the intensification of pastures. As a science, agroecology can integrate environmental, social and economic dimensions in the management of grassland systems. Considered practical, agroecology promotes traditional and indigenous knowledge and encourages appropriation by most of farmers.

AGROECOLOGY: POLYSEMY, PLURALISM AND CONTROVERSIES

In recent years, a growing number of actors and institutions, in different countries, have begun using the notion of Agroecology, which has led to an expansion of its polysemy and its controversies. Taking this into account, this paper analyzes, based on the Brazilian and French experiences, the peculiarities of Agroecology in four different fields: science, social movements, government policies, and education. It also discusses three other issues: the analytical, programmatic and normative discourses; the different definitions, in the fields of science and education, of the object of study of Agroecology; and the different formulations regarding its fundamental principles. It is argued that, in this new context, recognition of this pluralism and the controversies acquires a central role in the construction of knowledge in the various fields linked to Agroecology.

Generalization without universalization: Towards an agroecology theory

ABSTRACT We consider the question of whether agroecology can be said to have a theory, given its interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. Based on the discussions from a workshop at the 2015 conference on The Agroecological Imagination: A Franco-American Exchange, we argue in the affirmative. But rather than understanding theory as universalistic generalized explanation, we argue that agroecological theory focuses on the consequences of context. Such a focus leads agroecologists to offer contextually sensitive principles of general relevance but not universal outcomes, and thus generalizing without universalizing. We conclude by arguing that a contextual approach leads agroecologists to think in terms of the philosophical triad of ontology, epistemology, and axiology, taking seriously a wide range of perspectives as well as questions of justice.