Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T19:08:23.281Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Farming system design for innovative crop-livestock integration in Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2014

M. Moraine ,
M. Duru ,
P. Nicholas ,
P. Leterme  and
O. Therond
M. Moraine*
Affiliation:
INRA, UMR 1248 AGIR, F-31320 Castanet-Tolosan, France
M. Duru
Affiliation:
INRA, UMR 1248 AGIR, F-31320 Castanet-Tolosan, France
P. Nicholas
Affiliation:
Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Science, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, SY23 3EE, UK
P. Leterme
Affiliation:
INRA, Agrocampus, UMR 1069 SAS, F-35042 Rennes, France
O. Therond
Affiliation:
INRA, UMR 1248 AGIR, F-31320 Castanet-Tolosan, France
*
†E-mail: [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

The development of integrated crop–livestock systems (ICLS) is a major challenge for the ecological modernisation of agriculture but appears difficult to implement at a large scale. A participatory method for ICLS design has been developed and implemented in 15 case studies across Europe, representing a range of production systems, challenges, constraints and resources for innovation. Local stakeholders, primarily farmers, but also cooperatives, environmental-association representatives and natural-resource managers, were involved in the identification of challenges and existing initiatives of crop-livestock integration; in the design of new options at field, farm and territory levels; and then in qualitative multicriteria assessment of these options. A conceptual framework based on a conceptual model (crops, grasslands, animals) was developed to act as a boundary object in the design step and invite innovative thinking in ‘metabolic’ and ‘ecosystemic’ approaches. A diversity of crops and grasslands interacting with animals appeared central for designing sustainable farming systems at the territory level, providing and benefitting from ecosystem services. Within this diversity, we define three types of integrated systems according to their degrees of spatial and temporal coordination: complementarity, local synergy, territorial synergy. Moreover, the options for cooperation and collective organisation between farmers and other stakeholders in territories to organise and manage this diversity of land use revealed opportunities for smart social innovation. The qualitative multicriteria assessment identified farmer workload as the main issue of concern while demonstrating expected benefits of ICLS simultaneously for economic, agronomic, environmental and social criteria. This study concludes that participatory design of ICLS based on a generic multi-level and multi-domain framework and a methodology to deal with a local context can identify new systems to be tested. Further assessment and redesign work will be performed in later stages of the European FP7 CANTOGETHER project.

Keywords

crop-livestock integrationparticipatory designdiversityself-sufficiency
Type
Research Article
Information
animal , Volume 8 , Special Issue 8: Agroecology: integrating animals in agroecosystems , August 2014 , pp. 1204 - 1217
Copyright
© The Animal Consortium 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barnaud, C and Van Paassen, A 2013. Equity, power games, and legitimacy: dilemmas of participatory natural resource management. Ecology and Society 18, 12pp.Google Scholar
Barreteau, O, Bots, PWG and Daniell, KA 2010. A framework for clarifying “participation” in participatory research to prevent its rejection for the wrong reasons. Ecology and Society 15, 32pp.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, LW and Moore, AD 2012. Integrated crop-livestock systems in Australian agriculture: trends, drivers and implications. Agricultural Systems 111, 1–12.Google Scholar
Biggs, R, Schlüter, M, Biggs, D, Bohensky, EL, BurnSilver, S, Cundill, G, Dakos, V, Daw, TM, Evans, LS, Kotschy, K, Leitch, AM, Meek, C, Quinlan, A, Raudsepp-Hearne, C, Robards, MD, Schoon, ML, Schultz, L and West, PC 2012. Towards principles for enhancing the resilience of ecosystem services. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 37, 421–448.Google Scholar
Bonaudo, T, Bendahan, AB, Sabatier, R, Ryschawy, J, Bellon, S, Leger, F, Magda, D and Tichit, M 2013. Agroecological principles for the redesign of integrated crop–livestock systems. European Journal of Agronomy, doi:10.1016/j.eja.2013.09.010, published online by Elsevier 21 October 2013, 9pp.Google Scholar
Darnhofer, I, Bellon, S, Dedieu, B and Milestad, R 2010. Adaptiveness to enhance the sustainability of farming systems. A review. Agronomy for Sustainable Development 30, 545–555.Google Scholar
De Groot, RS, Alkemade, R, Braat, L, Hein, L and Willemen, L 2010. Challenges in integrating the concept of ecosystem services and values in landscape planning, management and decision making. Ecological Complexity 7, 260–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diaz, M, Darnhofer, I, Darrot, C and Beuret, JE 2013. Green tides in Brittany: what can we learn about niche-regime interactions? Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 8, 62–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dumont, B, Lamothe, L, Jouven, M, Thomas, M and Tichit, M 2013. Prospects from agroecology and industrial ecology for animal production in the 21st century. Animal 7, 1028–1043.Google Scholar
Elzen, B and Spoelstra, S 2010. Towards sustainable livestock production systems. Outline of a Learning and Experimentation Strategy (LES) In Proceedings of the 9th European IFSA Symposium, 4 to 7 July 2010, Vienna, Austria, pp. 823–834.Google Scholar
Fahrig, L, Baudry, J, Brotons, L, Burel, FG, Crist, TO, Fuller, RJ, Sirami, C, Siriwardena, GM and Martin, JL 2011. Functional landscape heterogeneity and animal biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. Ecology Letters 14, 101–112.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Folke, C, Carpenter, S, Walker, B, Scheffer, M, Chapin, T and Rockström, J 2010. Resilience thinking: integrating resilience, adaptability and transformability. Ecology and Society 15, 9pp.Google Scholar
Franzluebbers, AJ and Stuedemann, JA 2009. Soil-profile organic carbon and total nitrogen during 12 years of pasture management in the Southern Piedmont USA. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 129, 28–36.Google Scholar
Franzluebbers, AJ, Sawchik, J and Taboada, MA 2013. Agronomic and environmental impacts of pasture-crop rotations in temperate North and South America. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, doi:10.1016/j.agee.2013.09.017, published online by Elsevier 22 October 2013.Google Scholar
Geels, FW and Schot, J 2007. Typology of sociotechnical transition pathways. Research Policy 36, 399–417.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, K and Vergragt, P 2002. Towards sustainable households: a methodology for developing sustainable technological and social innovations. Futures 34, 381–400.Google Scholar
Hemmati, M 2002. Multi-stakeholder processes for governance and sustainability. Earthscan Publications Ltd, London, United Kingdom.Google Scholar
Hendrickson, JR, Hanson, JD, Tanaka, DL and Sassenrath, GF 2008. Principles of integrated agricultural systems: introduction to processes and definition. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 23, 265–271.Google Scholar
Hill, SB and MacRae, RJ 1995. Conceptual framework for the transition from conventional to sustainable agriculture. Journal of Sustainable Agriculture 7, 81–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horlings, LG and Marsden, TK 2011. Towards the real green revolution? Exploring the conceptual dimensions of a new ecological modernisation of agriculture that could “feed the world”. Global Environmental Change 21, 441–452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jakku, E and Thorburn, PJ 2010. A conceptual framework for guiding the participatory development of agricultural decision support systems. Agricultural Systems 103, 675–682.Google Scholar
Jansen, JJP, Van Den Bosch, FAJ and Volberda, HW 2006. Exploratory innovation, exploitative innovation, and performance: effects of organizational antecedents and environmental moderators. Management Science 52, 1661–1674.Google Scholar
Kalaugher, E, Bornman, JF, Clark, A and Beukes, P 2013. An integrated biophysical and socio-economic framework for analysis of climate change adaptation strategies: the case of a New Zealand dairy farming system. Environmental Modelling & Software 39, 176–187.Google Scholar
Lardon, S, Moonen, AC, Marraccini, E, Debolini, M, Galli, M and Loudiyi, S 2012. The territory agronomy approach in research, education and training. In Farming systems research into the 21st century: the new dynamic (ed. I Darnhofer, D Gibbon and B Dedieu), pp. 257–280. Springer, Dordrecht.Google Scholar
Lemaire, G, Franzluebbers, A, Carvalho, PC and Dedieu, B 2013. Integrated crop-livestock systems: strategies to achieve synergy between agricultural production and environmental quality. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, doi:10.1016/j.agee.2013.08.009, published online by Elsevier 14 September 2013, 5pp.Google Scholar
Lovell, ST, DeSantis, S, Nathan, C, Olson, MB, Ernesto Méndez, V, Kominami, HC and Erickson, DL 2010. Integrating agroecology and landscape multifunctionality in Vermont: an evolving framework to evaluate the design of agroecosystems. Agricultural Systems 103, 327–341.Google Scholar
Martin, G, Martin-Clouaire, R and Duru, M 2012. Farming system design to feed the changing world. A review. Agronomy for Sustainable Development 33, 131–149.Google Scholar
Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA). 2005. Ecosystems and human well-being: general synthesis. Island Press, Washington.Google Scholar
Meynard, JM, Dedieu, B and Bos, B 2012. Re-design and co-design of farming systems: an overview of methods and practices. In Farming Systems Research into the 21st century: The new dynamic (ed. I Darnhofer, D Gibbon and B Dedieu), pp. 407–431. Springer, Dordrecht.Google Scholar
Moraine, M, Therond, O and Duru, M 2013. Design methodology in CANTOGETHER project. Deliverable for European Union Commission, 29pp. http://fp7cantogether.eu Google Scholar
Ostrom, E 2009. A general framework for analyzing sustainability of socio-ecological systems. Science 325, 419–422.Google Scholar
Peyraud, JL, Taboada, M and Delaby, L 2014. Integrated crop and livestock systems in Western Europe and South America: a review. European Journal of Agronomy, doi:10.1016/j.eja.2014.02.005, published online by Elsevier 27 March 2014, 12pp.Google Scholar
Power, AG 2010. Ecosystem services and agriculture: tradeoffs and synergies. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 365, 2959–2971.Google Scholar
Ratnadass, A, Fernandes, P, Avelino, J and Habib, R 2012. Plant species diversity for sustainable management of crop pests and diseases in agroecosystems: a review. Agronomy for Sustainable Development 32, 273–303.Google Scholar
Rockström, J, Steffen, W, Noone, K, Persson, A, Chapin, FS, Lambin, EF, Lenton, TM, Scheffer, M, Folke, C, Schellnhuber, HJ, Nykvist, B, de Wit, CA, Hughes, T, van der Leeuw, S, Rodhe, H, Sörlin, S, Snyder, PK, Costanza, R, Svedin, U, Falkenmark, M, Karlberg, L, Corell, RW, Fabry, VJ, Hansen, J, Walker, B, Liverman, D, Richardson, K, Crutzen, P and Foley, JA 2009. A safe operating space for humanity. Nature 461, 472–475.Google Scholar
Russelle, MP, Entz, MH and Franzluebbers, AJ 2007. Reconsidering integrated crop–livestock systems in North America. Agronomy Journal 99, 325–334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryschawy, J, Choisis, N, Choisis, JP, Joannon, A and Gibon, A 2012. Mixed crop-livestock systems: an economic and environmental-friendly way of farming? Animal 6, 1722–1730.Google Scholar
Sumberg, J 2003. Towards a dis-aggregated view of crop-livestock integration in Western Africa. Land Use Policy 20, 253–264.Google Scholar
Spencer, D 2009. Card sorting: designing usable categories. Rosenfeld Media Eds., New York, USA.Google Scholar
Stirling, A 2011. Pluralising progress: from integrative transitions to transformative diversity. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 1, 82–88.Google Scholar
Stoate, C, Boatman, ND, Borralho, R, Rio Carvalho, C, de Snoo, G and Eden, P 2001. Ecological impacts of arable intensification in Europe. Journal of Environmental Management 63, 337–365.Google Scholar
Voinov, A and Bousquet, F 2010. Modelling with stakeholders. Environmental Modelling and Software 25, 1268–1281.Google Scholar
Wilkins, RJ 2008. Eco-efficient approaches to land management: a case for increased integration of crop and animal production systems. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 363, 517–525.Google Scholar
Zhang, W, Ricketts, TH, Kremen, C, Carney, K and Swinton, SM 2007. Ecosystem services and dis-services to agriculture. Ecological Economics 64, 253–260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Moraine Supplementary Material

Table S1 and Table S2

Download Moraine Supplementary Material(File)
File 24.2 KB