Co-designing innovative cropping systems to improve soil functioning in organic farming
2013
Lefèvre, Vincent | Capitaine, Mathieu | Peigne, Joséphine | Roger-Estrade, Jean
Organic agriculture is called upon to raise production to meet growing demand all the while ensuring the respect of the environment. In this context, improving the soil biological activity is crucial. Farmers are taking great interest in agroecological practices, such as conservation tillage associated with soil cover crops. The inclusion of these practices into current organic crop management systems calls for profound changes in the whole system.In this paper, we present aeight steps method to help farmers designing innovative prototypes of cropping systems. The method involves three design workshops, starting with a given decontextualized situation, before progressively integrating farmers‟ constraints. The method was run with two groups of six and seven farmers respectively in two different regions of France.Of the 28 completed prototypes designed, we present here only the seven most detailed. They differ greatly from current cropping systems in their increased use of cover crops (four times more frequent) and greatly decreased reliance on deep soil tillage (mouldboard plowing was eight times less frequent). Farmers initiated the adoption of these innovations by anticipating technical and pedoclimatic constraints. The method, involving researchers and farmers, produced conditions thatencouraged the famers to act creatively. Further studies in the form of ex post trials are necessary to accurately assess the consequences of such innovative cropping systems on soil functioning and crop performance.
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