Search

Climate variability affects agricultural production systems and rural communities, generating risks to food security and increasing rural poverty. Therefore, improving the capacity of rural households to adapt to climate variability has become one of the greatest challenges for international and national institutions. The objective of this study is to analyze the impact of rural households' livelihood strategies with regard to their vulnerability and adaptation to climate variability. We systematically selected 162 rural households from 10 municipalities in the department of Huila (Colombia). Households were grouped according to their livelihood strategies, using 13 variables representative of their productive characteristics. Subsequently, three indices related to climate vulnerability were determined: a. exposure (climate variability between 1990 and 2012), b. sensitivity, and c. adaptive capacity. For the latter two, the community capitals framework was used. Using the three indices above, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's proposed vulnerability index was determined. We found seven livelihood strategies: i. Cattlemen-Cocoa Farmers, ii. Livestock-Cocoa Farmers, iii. Employees-Cocoa Farmers, iv. Cocoa Farmers, v. Diversified Farmers, vi. Landlords-Cocoa Farmers and vii. Coffee Farmers. Degree of vulnerability to climate variability was related to the livelihood strategy of rural households: those best endowed with capitals and with the most diverse livelihood strategies were the least vulnerable (Cattlemen-Cocoa Farmers and Livestock-Cocoa Farmers). While it is necessary to maintain a balance between capitals in the process of adapting to climate variability in rural households, at the community level it is essential to strengthen political capital, which will make it possible to construct and reinforce strategies for adapting to climate variability.

The usage of antimicrobials in livestock production is a driver for antimicrobial resistance worldwide. Reducing the use of antibiotics in the animal sector is a priority and requires a change in practices. Vietnam has diverse husbandry and antimicrobial use practices. The objective of this study was to determine the socio-economic and technical factors associated with antibiotic usage patterns on chicken farms in the north and south of Vietnam. Semi-structured interviews (n = 34) and on-farm questionnaires (n = 125) were conducted to collect socio-economic, technical, biosecurity, health management, and antibiotic usage data. Using Multivariate Corresponding Analysis, we identified three production systems (A, B, C) and three patterns of antibiotic usage (1, 2, 3). Group A raised indoor exotic chickens in an intensive setting and was associated with group 1, which used antibiotics according to company recommendations for both treatment and prevention. Group C raised free-range chickens for their own consumption and was associated with group 2, which used antibiotics according to drugstore advice for treatment. Finally, group B was a market-oriented, semi-confined system associated with group 3, which practiced experience-based antibiotic use and overuse. Farms in the south of Vietnam were associated with group 3 and those in the north with group 2. The prediction of antibiotic usage patterns based on farming practices could lead to the identification of a group of farms to be targeted in order to foster the more prudent use of antibiotics in Vietnam.

International audience; Highlights:• A participatory approach was used to study farm resilience after a shock.• Shocks differed according to farm type, but were all related to water.• Mental models were used with local actors to design future farming systems.• Performance was assessed according to eight complementary indicators.• According to local actors, all farm types would adapt, suggesting a good resilience.Abstract:The Mediterranean region is expected to be a hotspot for climate change, making the resilience of farming systems a major challenge. Some studies have used quantitative models at the farm scale to analyze the resilience of farming systems but with little involvement of stakeholders. We used a participatory approach with local actors on the Saïs plain of Morocco to design possible future states and qualitatively assess the resilience of typical farm types (FTs) experiencing major change. Our approach combined individual interviews of farmers and local actors, mainly public, with participatory collective meetings to identify representative FTs and their performance, project their evolutions and future performance in the face of change, and evaluate their resilience. Performance, defined according to literature, interviews and meetings, included different types of capital, income, yields, markets, support of public policies, and water access. Four FTs were considered: highly irrigated horticulture (FT1), rainfed cereals (FT2), partly irrigated cereal-legumes (FT3), and mostly irrigated fruit-tree/horticulture (FT4). The primary driver for FT2 and FT3 was climate change; for FT1 and FT4, it was limiting access to water resources. Participants designed more diversified systems for all FTs in relation to those changes. Rankings of FT performance did not change between current and future states. Performance did not evolve significantly, but FT4 was seen as the most resilient and FT2 the least. These qualitative results differ somewhat from other studies mobilizing quantitative approaches, but they highlight the potential of local adaptation to limit the impacts of global change on vulnerable agriculture.

Purpose: The goal of this work is to analyse the environmental impacts across the productive continuum of market gardening in southern Benin, to determine whether significant differences exist amongst the types of production, and to highlight their hotpots suitable to improvement. Moreover, the relative nutritional quality of products from different production system types were compared to determine whether there were differences and to assess them in relation to the associated environmental impacts. Methods: LCA and laboratory analyses were performed on a representative sample of systems and products (carrot, cucumber, tomato, lettuce, watermelon). The resulting scores (single scores for LCA and Nutrient Rich Food scores for nutritional quality) were statistically treated to identify the representativeness of their differences across production sites and production types (featuring distinctive production strategies: Conventional — synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, Organic — organic fertilisers and pesticides and “Lean” — limited inputs). Results and discussion: Statistically significant differences across environmental scores were found amongst production sites (for carrot, lettuce and all crops) and types (for carrot and all crops). For tomato, produced on all sites, under all production types, the natural and management-driven variability is large enough that no significant differences were found. Impacts are dominated by direct emissions from (over-)fertilisation and by fuel consumption for water pumping. Despite the absence of significant differences amongst production system types regarding the contents of both β-carotene and polyphenols, the nutritional indices suggest at least marginal differences across types regarding the overall nutritional value of carrot and tomato across types. Based on the limited data available, it cannot be stated that such differences are statistically significant. For carrot, there seems to be a correlation between nutritional quality and environmental impacts, with higher nutritional scores associated with lower environmental impacts. For tomato, it does not seem to exist a correlation. Conclusions: Significant differences in environmental scores exist amongst the types of production, with the larger impact associated with organic production, whilst that no statistically significant differences on nutritional quality can be demonstrated across types. Overall improvement of these systems would be achieved by less energy-intensive irrigation, organic waste processing platforms to reduce volatilisation losses, knowledge on the fertilising value of organic waste, and agricultural extension services or technical guides on good agricultural practices to reduce over-fertilisation and other negative environmental impacts.

Cameroon plans to double its cocoa production in the coming decade in line with international requirements for sustainable and deforestation-free cocoa. Private certification, which has developed considerably in recent years, should help achieve this objective. Based on a literature review and 63 individual interviews with farmers, we identified four archetypes of cocoa production using the criteria of plantation size, degree of shade, and support from public or private extension services. We analyzed the average operating accounts of the four archetypes. Our findings show that the net profit rates obtained by small-scale certified producers are 14% (in the savannah zone) and 24% (in the forest zone). These rates are much higher than for the other two production models. Certification schemes provide technical and financial support, which has a positive influence on the practices of many small-scale producers and compensates for the lack of public services, which are now almost non-existent. A hybrid governance of the cocoa sector in Cameroon could clarify and improve the organization of the interactions between public regulation and private certification systems.

Agriculture in West Africa is constrained by several yield-limiting factors, such as poor soil fertility, erratic rainfall distributions and low input systems. Projected changes in climate, thus, pose a threat since crop production is mainly rain-fed. The impact of climate change and its variation on the productivity of cereals in smallholder settings under future production systems in Navrongo, Ghana and Nioro du Rip, Senegal was assessed in this study. Data on management practices obtained from household surveys and projected agricultural development pathways (through stakeholder engagements), soil data, weather data (historical: 1980–2009 and five General Circulation Models, mid-century time slice 2040–2069 for two Representative Concentration Pathways, 4.5 and 8.5) were used for the impact assessment, employing a crop simulation model. Ensemble maize yield changes under the sustainable agricultural development pathway (SDP) were −13 and −16%, while under the unsustainable development pathway (USDP), yield changes were −19 and −20% in Navrongo and Nioro du Rip, respectively. The impact on sorghum and millet were lower than that on maize. Variations in climate change impact among smallholders were high with relative standard deviations (RSD) of between 14% and 60% across the cereals with variability being higher under the USDP, except for millet. Agricultural production systems with higher intensification but with less emphasis on soil conservation (USDP) will be more negatively impacted by climate change compared to relatively sustainable ones (SDP).

The way farmers perceive the concept of sustainability as applied to their own farms must be better understood in order to help them evolve towards more sustainable production systems. Based on extensive discussions with 36 farmers on the Sa&iuml, s plain (Morocco), this article explores farmers&rsquo, perceptions of sustainability and the strategies they are implementing for their farms to endure. Although these farmers are not formally aware of the concept of sustainability, they have several perceptions expressed through seven sustainability-related themes. The most frequently mentioned is the profitability of their agricultural activities (31% of responses). Three groups of perception were identified through a multiple component analysis (MCA) and an ascending hierarchical cluster (AHC) analysis: A combination of economic profitability and maintenance of the farm&rsquo, s natural resources (Environment), a combination of economic profitability and a capacity to seize opportunities (Profitability), and setting up a modern agricultural model (Modernism). Additionally, farmers implement three types of strategies to endure also identified through MCA and AHC analysis: (1) Income security and farm survival with low-intensity practices involving farmers with low levels of investment (Security), (2) adaptation and valorization of the flexibility of the farm, bringing together farmers who intensify their practices according to economic opportunities (Adaptation), and (3) quest for productivity and income maximization for farmers with high levels of capital (Entrepreneurship). A certain coherence emerges between these two ways of grouping farms: Environment and Security linked to threats related to the degradation of soil fertility or water scarcity, Profitability and Adaptation in relation to land and economic opportunities, and Modernism and Entrepreneurship, which links economic sustainability, a modern production model, and capital accumulation.

International audience; A lot of national and international effort has been made to promote sustainable agricultural production systems in drylands. However, success has been seriously limited due to lack of thorough characterization of the impact of the diversity of farm household types on productivity, resource-use efficiency and economic and nutritional status. This study applied hierarchical ascendant classification to a random sample of 286 cereal-producing farm households in Morocco and identified distinct household typologies. It also carried out an analysis of trade-offs between economic, nutritional and environmental factors induced by the production decisions of the different farm household typologies. Our analysis identified three dominant farm household typologies in the production system, namely: (i) intensive predominantly-vegetable farming households with high input intensities, (ii) semi-intensive cereal mono-crop farming households with moderate input intensities and (iii) extensive mixed cereal-legume farming households with low input intensities. Extensive mixed cereal-legume farming households exhibited the highest resource-use efficiency and high biodiversity. These benefits, however, came at the expense of a much lower farm income and limited food supplies relative to the other two systems. These results show that, as is the case for many dryland regions, all three farm types showed precarious conditions for one or more of the sustainability-related indicators.

We examine whether current assumptions concerning the declining resilience of family farming and the growing influence of capitalist forms of agricultural production are being confirmed in the cocoa sector of Cameroon and the coffee sector of Kenya. This study is based on surveys of 181 family and capitalist farmers. Our results indicate that the capitalist approach is being consolidated on former colonial coffee estates in Kenya and on the cocoa pioneer front in Cameroon. This study also shows that in areas with a long history of family farming, family forms are showing good resilience due to a diversification of activities and sources of income, especially nonagricultural ones, and the patrimonialization of the land. Finally, this study proposes a framework for analysing the interactions between family and capitalist agriculture and their respective multisectorial strategies. For family farming, these strategies are based on work force mobility, whereas for capitalist agriculture, they are based on financial capital mobility.

International audience; Because of their constant demand for milk, dairy goat subindustries in western France are highly dynamic. Goat systems are rarely feed selfsufficient, so they are greatly affected by any increase in feed prices. In western France, 90% of goats do not graze. This study examined how industry farmers and stakeholders view the role of pastures in goat systems. The surveys revealed that grazing was seen as having benefits (e.g., allowing feed self-sufficiency and meeting societal expectations) as well as disadvantages (especially exposure to parasites). Another challenge is that stakeholders have different ideas about the form that dairy goat farming should take. Some dairies seek to establish certified organic farms based on larger herds. In contrast, those taking over established operations want to put into place small systems that produce farmstead cheese.; Les filières caprines du Grand Ouest sont des filières dynamiques, en demande constante de lait, conventionnel comme biologique. Avec un taux faible d’autonomie alimentaire, les systèmes caprins sont sensibles à une augmentation du coût alimentaire et de la volatilité des prix des matières premières. Le pâturage est un levier potentiel pour améliorer l’autonomie alimentaire à l’échelle des exploitations. Comme 90% des chèvres ne pâturent pas, l’objectif de cette étude est de recueillir la perception des éleveurs et des acteurs de la filière vis-à-vis de la place du pâturage au sein des systèmes caprins. En octobre 2016 et 2017, une enquête semi-quantitative a été réalisée par des étudiants d’Agrocampus Ouest, auprès de l’ensemble des acteurs des filières des régions Poitou-Charentes, Pays de la Loire et Bretagne. Tous les enquêtés s’accordent sur les effets positifs du pâturage sur l’autonomie alimentaire et sur son adéquation avec les attentes sociétales. Mais ils sont aussi en accord sur ses effets négatifs sur la santé des chèvres, dus au parasitisme, qui se révèle comme étant le point technique critique principal, pour les éleveurs comme pour leur encadrement technique. Un autre frein identifié est le décalage entre acteurs concernant l’installation. Certaines laiteries ont une volonté d’installer des cheptels assez importants sous label agrobiologique alors que les reprenants aspirent majoritairement à des systèmes de plus petite taille en système fromager fermier.

Brazil became a prominent player for policy dialogue on food security and social protection in the 2000s and started to share its policy instruments with developing countries. However, the consequences as well as the mechanisms of such political effort have been little analysed. This paper draws on the case of Mozambique to examine the adoption process of Brazil’s instruments of public food procurement from family farmers and home-grown school feeding. It shows that despite political and institutional constraints at the national level to adopting the initiatives in Mozambique, local actors managed to adapt them to their contexts. It aims to contribute to recent policy transfer literature, which is particularly interested in the role of ‘translation’ mechanisms in the circulation of policy ideas and practices across nations.

International audience; Models of world agriculture and food systems are used widely to predict future scenarios of land and resource uses. Starting with a brief history of world agriculture modelling since the 1960s, this paper demonstrates the hybrid character of these models as well as their limitations in representing real world diversity and options, and presents an alternative modelling experience. As we argue, models are tools of evidence, hence “truth machines”, but also tools of government, with a multi-faceted political dimension. For instance, the virtual realities that conventional models build, incorporate value judgements about the future that remain invisible and difficult to challenge. For ease of computation and comparison, they standardise functional forms and parameters, eliding observable diversity and blacklisting policy options such as those based on agroecology and biological synergies. They are designed for prediction and prescription rather than for supporting public debate, which is also a (comfortable) political stance. In contrast, the Agrimonde experience – a foresight initiative based on the Agribiom model – shows that a model of world agriculture can be constructed as a “learning machine” that leaves room for a variety of scientific and stakeholders’ knowledge as well as public debate. This model and its partners unveiled some virtual realities, processes and actors that were invisible in mainstream models, and asserted their own vision of sustainable agri-food systems by 2050. Agribiom and Agrimonde improved knowledge, policy-making and democracy. Overall, they highlighted the need for epistemic plurality and for engaging seriously in the production of models as learning machines.

As a response to the worldwide challenge raised by soil degradation, Conservation Agriculture (CA) was proposed to help restoring the three main soil functions, i.e. carbon transformation, nutrient cycling and structure maintenance. However, there is still a lack of integrative studies that assess the overall impact of CA on soil health. To fill the gap, Biofunctooll (R), a set of in-field indicators, was developed to monitor changes in soil biological functioning. In this study, Biofunctool (R) was used to assess the impact of a conventional tillage (CT) and three CA annual-based cropping systems on soil health on a Cambodian Oxisol. Eight indicators related to the three soil functions were monitored and integrated into a Soil Quality index (SQI), i.e. the Biofunctool (R) Index. Overall, we found that soil health was twice higher under the CA treatments than under CT treatment. Although it was similar in the three CA treatments, the contribution of each soil function to the soil health diverged. An analysis of soil carbon dynamics also showed that CA support short-term soil organic carbon stabilization compared to CT. This study demonstrates that Biofunctool (R) is a robust, relevant, time-and cost-effective in-field assessment tool that can be used in multiple ways including cropping system management, capacity building of local stakeholders, and policy dialogue.

This chapter presents the framework used in this report. Food systems generate not only food but also environmental and socio-economical outcomes.

A large part of the world cocoa production is provided by multifunctional agroforestry systems (AFS). Despite their ability to provide a large range of ecosystem services (ES), eg. biodiversity, carbon sequestration, crop production, these systems were however long considered inefficient in terms of cocoa yield and, thus, neglected by agronomists. Our studies are carried out in Cameroon on farmers' cocoa plantations. They are based on 100-year chronosequences and/or a large array of situations, ranging from simple systems to very complex ones. We show that cocoa AFS can reach yields of over 1000 kg ha-1 of marketable cocoa which is in many cases comparable or even better than yields of conventional systems. We found that very long-term sustainability of cocoa AFS could be achieved if the basal area (BA) share of the cacao stand does not exceed 40% of the total BA of the cocoa AFS. Moreover, farmer's management of the different species associated with cocoa trees provides not only continuous cocoa production on the very long-term but also permits interesting combinations of valued products and/or ES. For instance, the combination of expert knowledge and Pareto front algorithms enabled us to shed light on some of the tradeoffs occurring in these systems and to identify clusters of increasing ES provision. Significant differences in associated tree communities and management strategies were identified across these clusters. Furthermore, by combining field observations and historical survey data, we reconstructed the impacts of changes over time on management practices, agroforestry structures and cocoa yields. The long-term trajectories we identified explain the current agroforests structures, with low or high cocoa tree densities, mean basal area per cocoa tree (from 29.4 cm2 to 92.7 cm2), and finally cocoa yields which varied from 542 to 1275kg ha-1. We show that farmer's management of cocoa AFS allows a system balance that can be temporarily broken or redesigned, suggesting the resilient and flexible nature of these complex cocoa agroforests. Despite such results and the increasing recognition of their multifunctionality, cocoa AFS were recently questioned about their putative unsuitability to climate change adaptation. This question appears legitimate and we support that, when necessary, adaptation to climate change in cocoa AFS shall be overcomed by choosing adequate associated species and planting densities. Yet, in order to prevent the possible misuse of this ongoing discussion within the cocoa supply chain, we urge the scientific community to support and keep demonstrating that complex cocoa AFS are valuable, ecofriendly and climate-smart systems. Finally, we argue that these systems should be used to promote the building and establishment of cocoa cropping models that fully include associated flora diversity in order to provide the farmers, the cocoa supply chain and the consumers with sustainable revenue, goods and services.

Food systems are responsible for up to one-third of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These emissions include carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) and are therefore a major driver of climate change. The environmental pressures on food systems are likely to intensify, as humanity is arguably already operating beyond planetary boundaries. The projection for changes between 2010 and 2050 shows that these pressures will result in an increase of between 80 and 92 percent in GHG emissions in the absence of technological change and other mitigation measures. Apart from being a significant source of GHG emissions, food systems are significantly impacted by climate change. Uneven climate change effects, in combination with differences in adaptation capacity, could exacerbate existing inequalities between High-Income (HI), Low-Income (LI) and Lower Middle-Income (LMI) countries.

Biodiversity is the driving force of ecosystem services and has been the foundation of agriculture for many, many years. The drastic evolution of agriculture over the past century in industrialised and some developing countries, based on improved varieties and synthetic inputs, greatly increased production but has led to the artificialisation of agroecosystems and great losses of specific and genetic diversity. In turn, these losses have hampered food systems in different ways: degraded ecosystem services affecting crop yields and resilience, reduced crop biodiversity, and highly specialised industrialised food processing, which has decreased the diversity of the food supply and its nutritional value.

This study concerns variability in agrosystem inputs that affect greenhouse gas emissions at the farm scale, when management practices differ from average practices. Many studies of agrosystems assume average management practices. However, existence of a wide variety of farm-management practices may result in extreme variations in estimated environmental impacts. This large variation raises the need to use statistical tools to model extreme situations and their consequences on agrosystems. For instance, methane emissions generated by enteric fermentation in dairy cattle are particularly studied because they are important at a global scale. We investigated how extreme variations in feeding practices in dairy production affect predicted methane emissions, using a methane-emission model based on existing equations that is easy to apply at the farm scale. In this study, extreme variations in the time that cattle spent grazing were propagated through three different dairy-production systems. For an intensive dairy farm, predicted methane emissions decreased up to 15% (ca. 5% on average) and increased up to 11% (ca. 1% on average) under extremely long or short times spent grazing, respectively, compared to those from average variations in the time spent grazing. The range of variation in time spent grazing also reflects changes in feed rations. Farm-management practices require deep investigation to both evaluate and decrease risks of environmental impacts in dairy production.

In general, increasing the connections between stakeholders (farmers, producers, abattoir, wholesalers, and retailers) is a priority for the future and development of the beef industry. This is the overall objective of meat grading systems that have been developed so far by the necessity of placing different values on carcasses for pricing purposes, depending on the market and requirements of traders. This imply to describe characteristics of carcasses and meat using standards terms. The trends in meat marketing in the world, such as globalization, suggest using an international language that can meet contemporary needs. This is the mission of different actors such as the Economic Commission of the United Nations for Europe (UNECE), which is promoting norms and standard languages on carcasses, cuts, trim levels and cutting lines to facilitate international cooperation and greater economic integration and cooperation. The aim of this study is to analyze available definitions of traits related to carcass and meat quality across different grading schemes and in the scientific bibliography. The consensual definitions are likely to improve grading by suggesting descriptive terms describing features of the carcass that are maybe clearer and common compared to the current ones used either in research or for trading of carcasses. In addition, such results will be useful to analyze heterogeneous datasets across different databases. In addition, statistical tools were used to analyze data from two private meat companies and data from the experimental slaughter-house of INRA. A general interpretation is proposed for comparable traits across datasets. More than 1700 Charolaise and 800 Limousine carcasses have been considered among the most representative European breeds and two breeding systems: the French extensive one and the Italian intensive one, The results by statistical analysis suggest that tissue weights after dissection of a specific rib can been used to predict the overall carcass tissue composition (i.e. quantities of muscles, fat deposits, skeleton). On the other hand, qualities traits (marbling, meat and fat color, fat thickness) measured by visual assessment at the cut surface and defined thanks to ontologies are included within different grading schemes and are used by the MSA grading scheme to predict eating quality of beef. Differences has been observed in carcass composition between breeds according to previous results from the literature. On the other hand, meat quality traits proposed in this study can been suggested such as new parameters in complement to the EUROP grading scheme.

of the poster; International audience; Large river deltas across the globe are under increasing economic and environmental pressure due to overpopulation, climate change, and rising sea levels. River catchment sediments and associated discharge feed delta systems providing nutrients that not only enable higher yields in rice production but also the potential for flooding. Indeed, rice production on the Mekong River Delta (MRD) plays a main role in achieving food security for Vietnam, and provides significant export income for the Vietnamese economy (1.16% of GDP in 2018). To sustain high levels of rice production, the Vietnamese government has invested in a system of canals, flood dykes and sluice gates to control flooding of rice paddies and thereby extend the number of growing seasons from two to three rice harvests per year. However, these flood control measures have an unintended consequence in that, rather than allowing paddies to fallow, the exclusion of water and sediments from rice compartments means that soil nutrients become depleted and thus require artificial fertilizers to maintain yields. Furthermore, maintaining high levels of rice production is increasingly difficult as a result of climate change altering flood cycles, upstream hydro dam emplacement reducing sediment supply, and salinity intrusion shrinking available crop areas. In the face of these pressures MRD policy makers are facing pressing decisions in the delta and need to navigate the complexities of deltaic systems and identify optimal and sustainable land use management practices. In this work we present the outcome of the application of an integrated Systems Dynamic Model (SDM) which emulates the distribution of biophysical components for water, suspended sediment, and nutrients over the delta, delivering a calibrated amount to each flood compartment. Biophysical components were calibrated using water quality routing model INCA (Integrated Catchment model), and the engineering hydraulics model MIKE 11 (with the ECO lab module). Spatial elements of the delta, such as soil type and land systems, are coupled to the SDM through a geographic information system (GIS). Model outputs of recent events provide a baseline to develop and test the SDM. Here we show the results of the use of the (SDM) to integrate floods, nutrient supply, environmental/climate change and crop yields to facilitate stakeholders in the production of plausible normative spatially explicit scenarios of the agricultural intensification of the delta, centring on how intensification will occur and who will benefit. We use the SDM to explore scenarios covering the intensification range from local cooperatives that already exist to internationally funded agro-business. The question of livelihoods and community benefits is addressed in the normative outcomes as well as in the potential alignment and deviation form stated policy aims of the Government of Vietnam on the Mekong Delta.

Crop booms are phenomena of global environmental change that keep on occurring around the globe and frequently exploit or degrade the local socio-ecological resources (resulting in e.g. loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, indebtedness). While causal mechanisms were identified and summarized in several frameworks, the causal effects of the identified factors remained largely unknown. In this study, we set up a new application of a spatial land system model to examine the causes for the clustered spatial pattern of the maize boom between 2000 and 2016 in Sayaboury Province, Laos. The factors tested included market access (travel time to trader companies), land productivity and total net revenue (proxy for profitability), spatial differences in farm gate price of maize, slope, and soil types. While crop booms are commonly associated with high commodity prices and improved market accessibility, our simulation results suggested that the combination of the geographic and economic factors we tested partially contribute to explain the location and spatial extent of the maize boom, but a full explanation has not been found. Interestingly though, temporal dynamics, such as increases in land productivity and profitability had the largest effect on model performance regarding the size of the maize boom area (experiment 2). Productivity and profitability increased thanks to political economic support for the introduction of a series of techniques (i.e. hybrid maize cultivars, herbicides, mechanical tillage and sowing) that made maize mono-cropping disproportionally competitive over other land management. We outline implications of our findings for governance bodies that are faced with crop booms.

A healthy environment is essential for the proper functioning of both natural and cultivated ecosystems and, as such, plays a major role in food systems. Many different sources, including the agricultural sector itself, emit and accumulate pollutants in different environmental compartments (soil, water and air). When there are excessive pollutant levels, ecological functioning is hampered by eroded biodiversity, disrupted nutrient cycling, toxicity and depleted soil fertility, and can lead to reduced yields and contaminated food products. Many pollutants end up in water through leaching and run-off and have negative impacts on aquatic ecosystems, reducing fish and seafood stocks. Pollutants can also contaminate the food chain and cause food toxicity risks, and this is particularly true when pollutants undergo gradual biological concentration along the food chain.

International audience; The agricultural development on newly reclaimed lands has led to many national debates about food security and budget deficits, and the living conditions of the new settlers at the local level. This debate is still crucial for present day Egypt, a country facing major challenges, including food security, agriculture modernization, employment generation, and land fragmentation due to dramatic population growth. In this context, policy makers are always seeking the best land allocation system for these new lands. This paper analyzes the land tenure and land use dynamics of farmers' settlements during a program of land reclamation (from 1960 to 2010) in the Western Desert of the Nile Delta. The objective is to describe the land development paths of farm settlement and to identify promising dynamics by cross-referencing the farmers' stories and their livelihood achievements. To accomplish that, we conducted household surveys and interviews to learn the life stories' of 175 family farms. Our study finds that, beyond the rules and institutions that fixed the land tenure regimes and its distribution in these new lands, settlers have found different ways to hold on and secure their land farm, even if the unequal land distribution still structure the population. The results highlight also the dynamism of small-scale settlers, regarding livelihood diversification, to face the challenges of these desert environments. In addition, the dual-purpose system embedded in mixed crop-livestock systems can contribute to settlers' livelihood security. These realities confound the unchanged rhetoric of government and this calls for more social consideration of these new rural spaces based on a combination of heterogeneous networks off relationships and knowledge. The apparent gap between the macro- and micro-perspectives analyses also requires multi-scale assessments. Finally, the life-story method proves to be a complementary and useful approach to integrate the livelihood representation and dynamic.

Food security, jobs, ecological transition of agricultural production models and consumption patterns... Agroecology could be one of the solutions to meet the future challenges of humanity. Part of the United Nation's 17 Sustainable Development Goals, it requires a lasting commitment from all of us. To meet the food and economic needs of growing rural and urban communities, fulfil increasingly demanding consumer requirements, conserve natural resources and adapt to climate change, we have to find new ways of agricultural production. Over the last decade, CIRAD and AFD have conducted experiments in agroecological transitions with farmers, researchers, development agents and policymakers in many countries of the Global South. In this book, they reflect on the future of agroecology as a way for agriculture in the developing world to adapt to global changes and they examine the conditions necessary for a successful agroecological transition.

Researches on sectoral systems of innovation have typically been focused on industrial sector and the framework, so far, has not been mobilized to analyze climate change adaptation in agriculture. This article, therefore, explores the roles of systems of innovation in driving options to adapt to climate change, which claims sectoral innovation performance depends on the performance of institutions and actors' interaction. The research is based on two case studies, i.e., coffee and dairy sectors that are different in terms of actors involved, and institutional setup. The results finds, in the coffee, actors system is highly centralized and the innovation system is dominantly on technology development. In contrary, many actors make-up the dairy sector and the innovation system is dominantly on institutional building. The capacity to innovate, therefore, depends on institutional element in addition to its technology development and the dairy sector in Kenya could be an example for the coffee.

Ecuador is a mountainous, volcanic country typical of the tropical part of the Andes range. The situation in the mountains—the Sierra—is special. Following an agrarian reform process with questionable results, many small farmers were shifted to slopes and highland areas, where many small cropped fields form a checkerboard pattern with low productivity, the «minifundio». This highland agrosystem enhances the acceleration of soil erosion in a mountain environment where this type of risk is natu...

Pineapples are grown in more than 80 countries in tropical and subtropical regions. The global volume reached 25.44 million t in 2014 (FAO, 2014), ranking pineapple among the most important fruits. About 81 % of that amount was produced in Asia and Latin America, where the leading countries of Costa Rica, Brazil, Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia are located. In spite of their similar large production volumes, there are significant differences among these countries in technological levels of crop and postharvest management and in the fruit markets targeted. Even within large countries like Brazil there are great variations in these aspects due to contrasts in regional environmental conditions and social factors representing strong challenges to be addressed by growers and traders. Costa Rica and Indonesia, among the big producers, are examples of pineapple industries with high technological input and outcome mostly focused on international markets. Australia, a smaller producer, has a similar input level, but fruits are directed to the inland market. On the other side, there are many countries, such as Brazil, where pineapples are mostly produced by small-holders using low inputs and their production is directed to national markets. And there are other countries in an intermediate position, such as Mexico and South Africa, with important volumes placed both into national and international markets. This work will give information on main challenges for pineapple production and commercialization in Australia, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and some African countries with French background and make an analysis on research contributions to mitigate some of these challenges.

Aquatic agricultural systems (AAS) are diverse production and livelihood systems where families cultivate a range of crops, raise livestock, farm or catch fish, gather fruits and other tree crops, and harness natural resources such as timber, reeds and wildlife. This chapter focuses on the drivers influencing the evolution of the complex, multi-functional systems using the case of aquatic agricultural food systems in Southern Africa. It illustrates that multi-dimensional research, development and policy options are required to realize transformations in agri-food systems. Foresight exercises encourage stakeholders and experts to explore future changes by qualitatively and quantitatively analyzing plausible future developments and challenges. Research organizations are engaged in a dynamic dialogue with communities to assess their needs and develop technologies and management practices that are profitable and sustainable. The strongest and least dependent drivers were around policies and institutional arrangements related to trade, land access and tenure, and water access.

International audience

This chapter traces the genealogy of the concepts of value chain, supply chain, and their French equivalent filiere, and of the analyses based on this concept. It aims at an improved understanding of their scope and limitations in view of the challenges confronting sustainable development. Initially conceived to help formulate and evaluate industrial policies in the North, and subsequently development policies in the South, the concept of filiere encompasses a set of agents within an economic system with structural relationships that link the supply and demand of intermediate and final goods, and that have the power to influence and structure the economy concerned. The filiere was thus defined as a set of actors providing specific technical and economic functions in the process of producing and processing a good, from raw material to final product. This concept can be used to analyze the dynamics of integrating agriculture in agrifood and agro-industrial systems, measure the creation and distribution of wealth in these systems, and to undertake activities to support the development of technical and organizational innovations. In order to take the growing role of firms in the globalization of trade into account, a different approach, in terms of global value chains, conceptualizes relationships between actors by focusing on forms of governance and modalities of coordination through power relations and definition of standards. These two conceptual frameworks emphasize different aspects: structuring of productive systems in one, actor strategies in the other. However, they both participate in and embrace a logic of specialization and economic efficiency, in which issues of environmental and social sustainability often find little space. Life cycle assessment provides tools and methods to compensate for this lacuna, especially at the environmental level. However, an integrated analytical framework that takes the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development into account in a complementary manner remains to be developed.

Recent developments in the global agriculture have been char¬acterized by the emergence of the concept of ecological inten¬sification, as a means to decrease the use of inputs and their impacts on the environment, while increasing and/or stabiliz¬ing crops and livestock yields. In the meantime, research stud¬ies have emphasized the ability of crops integration with live¬stock farming systems to adapt themselves to numerous stresses (economic, climate, etc.) in comparison to specialized systems with only crops or livestock. In the oasis, such integration has been traditionally achieved, as it has allowed for centuries the resilience of the cropping activities, in an environment charac¬terized by numerous constraints, particularly frequent water shortages. However, this resilience has nowadays become chal¬lenged by increased stresses, above all climate change and its consequences and also social changes, with growing demands of the local population for better livelihoods. Therefore, in this study, the focus was on the ability of livestock to contribute to the ecological intensification of the farming systems adopted in the oasis. A sample of twelve (12) farms located in the oasis of the Drâa valley was selected and it was representing four types of livestock systems (i.e. 3 farms per system). A follow-up of farms was adopted to characterize inputs uses, water vol¬umes and their origins (rainfall, surface irrigation and ground¬water) and incomes from crops. The same methods were used for livestock production. In addition, work needs for crops and livestock were also measured, by determining the contribution of off-farm work uses. The results showed the importance of crop/livestock association in all the systems, in order to implement a sustainable farming activity. The intensification of livestock sys¬tems (retrieved in farms with prominent off-farm feed uses, i.e. D'man breed flocks and dairy cattle) showed the best incomes from crops, and that was mostly remarkable for date palms, which benefitted from the surplus irrigation of the underlying alfalfa, as well as manure from the herds. In the contexts where agriculture intensification was not feasible (due to water, land or capital scarcity), livestock remained the main source of incomes, adding value to vast pastoral areas (as in the area of M'hamid EL Ghizlane) and to crop by-products (mainly date wastes). Al¬together, the results imply the need of further research devoted to the performances of the farming systems in the oasis, and the use efficiency of scarce inputs, such as water, land and work.

Sustainable Land Management (SLM) represents a holistic approach to achieving long-term productive ecosystems by integrating biophysical, socio-cultural and economic needs and values. SLM is one of the main mechanisms to achieve Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN).To foster and facilitate the adoption of SLM practices that address DLDD while mitigating climate change and enhancing climate change adaptation, this report assesses the synergistic potential of SLM practices while also critically evaluating the possible trade-offs between the different objectives. The assessment provides a scientifically-sound basis to understand SLM's potential to contribute to multiple objectives, and provides practical guidance for creating an enabling environment for selection and large-scale implementation of effective, locallyadapted SLM practices. Overall objective : The objective of the present report is to "highlight the science-based synergistic potential of SLM practices to address DLDD, climate change mitigation and adaptation" as a contribution to the UNCCD's Science Policy Interface (SPI) work programme 2016-2017. By doing so, the linkages between SLM practices to address DLDD, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and resulting synergies and trade-offs, are considered.

Livestock production is of major economic importance and defines rural landscapes in many parts of Europe. It has elicited controversy over the past decades, specifically with regards to its environmental impacts and animal welfare in industrial systems. It is therefore important to review scientific knowledge on the roles, impacts, and economic, or social-associated with European livestock production systems (i.e., cattle, small ruminants, pigs, and poultry). First, we addressed each effect category individually; then, we identified bundles of services associated with livestock systems across different European livestock areas. In each area, interactions between impacts and services can be used to identify the trade-offs and options for different systems, which will enhance their ability to cope with future challenges.