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This article reports on the long-term involvement of research agronomists in a design process of agricultural systems in a water catchment area. While agriculture is facing increasing challenges to meet current societal expectations, several studies in agronomy have focused on the design processes that allow farmers to change their agricultural systems. Most of these processes have been dedicated to designing target agricultural systems but, more recently, several studies have acknowledged that agro-ecological practices replace farmers as the actual designers of their own production systems. In this context, how can agronomists support such design processes? How does a better understanding of these processes challenge the inputs that research agronomists can propose, to support them? We contribute to answering these questions by reviewing a case study of a design process supported and analyzed by research agronomists over several years. This case illustrates that the design of agricultural systems is a process that exceeds invention: the implementation of the initial design solutions produces information that should be used to review those same solutions, in order to reach the design goal. The case study shows that the design process depends on a tension between the exploration of an ambitious desirable future and its actual implementation. To foster dialogue between “desirable” and “actual”, we show how the researchers involved in this case provided a range of inputs that supported typical design activities (grounding, fostering design reasoning, reinterpreting this reasoning, and design strategy throughout the process), thus opening new avenues of research in agronomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water quality preservation programmes as currently proposed by public institutions are questionable with regards to efficient territorial development, yet necessary in catchment areas, and for the improvement of water quality. We provide a method based on a multi-criteria and multi-stakeholder analysis to assess cropping systems designed with farmers in a vulnerable drinking water catchment. Individual interviews with various stakeholders involved in the catchment improvement programme allowed us to gather a diversity of points of view on their preferences concerning various criteria describing cropping system sustainability and economic, social and environmental aspects. Five groups of stakeholders with different preferences were identified to define five scenarios of sustainability preferences. To support a result-oriented approach, achievable goals to improve water quality and contribute to sustainable development were chosen together with stakeholders. Then cropping systems designed with local farmers were assessed using the five scenarios of stakeholders’ preferences to open discussions on the implementation of alternative cropping systems within the drinking water catchment. The method was able to identify some cropping systems that, although very diverse, might assure the required drinking water quality, and were judged as theoretically highly sustainable by all the stakeholder groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing the issue of agricultural pollution in water protection areas (WPA) requires assessing the impact of agricultural activities at regional scales. However, current water quality modeling studies often neglect the agronomic concept of a cropping system and interactions with soils. This paper presents a participatory assessment framework involving local experts in building a shared diagnosis of nitrate losses from cropping systems in a WPA. It includes a co-designed typology of landscape units and participatory assessment of nitrate losses with the modeling software Syst'N. Results show that characteristics of cropping systems depended on soils and that nitrate losses were highest in shallow soils. Intercrop periods were identified as critical periods for nitrate leaching, which demonstrates the importance of considering pluri-annual crop rotations rather than individual crops. The framework is generic for a modeling approach based on the involvement of local experts, who define their functional system in an agronomically sound way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to design cropping systems reconciling crop production, biodiversity and reduced herbicide use, we organised participatory workshops with farmers in the Champagne region (North-Eastern France). The main issues of the study were to develop and implement a methodology for participatory workshop-based cropping-system design, combining expert knowledge and models, in the particular case of agroecological weed management. Methods used in this study combined cropping-system prototyping by farmers, expert opinion and models. In a first meeting, farmers determined their objectives and constraints, and chose a reference system from one of their farms (oilseed rape/winter wheat/winter wheat/spring barley heavily infested by autumnal grass weeds). In a second meeting, two sets of prototypes were designed by two separate groups, using the Mission Ecophyt'eau® tool as support. The reference and the prototypes were evaluated in terms of (1) technical feasibility from farmers' and scientists' expertise, (2) weed harmfulness for crop production and weed contribution to biodiversity with FLORSYS which simulates crop and weed growth and reproduction in cropping systems at a daily time step over several years, and (3) economic, social and environmental sustainability with the DEXiPM model. Steps 2 and 3 were carried out after the meeting. At a third meeting, these results were presented to the farmers who continued improving the prototypes, using the DECIFLORSYS model which includes decision trees to guide farmers during cropping-system design and a fast calculator estimating weed harmfulness and biodiversity of cropping-system prototypes. Both prototypes presented increased crop diversification, introducing legumes and other broad-leaved crops, crop mixtures and cover crops. Both prototypes reduced weed harmfulness for crop production (yield loss, harvest contamination, field infestation) and herbicide use intensity (approx. -60%) compared to the reference system. The best solution was a suboption of prototype B replacing most of the herbicides by mechanical weeding, dividing yield loss by nearly two compared to the reference and improving biodiversity by 5–10%. The workshop participants appreciated the knowledge on agroecosystem functioning and the complementarity of models. DECIFLORSYS allowed a direct evaluation during workshops. FLORSYS produced a detailed diagnosis of the technical and meteorological causes of the cropping systems' performance. DEXiPM assessed working times and economic viability of the prototypes. Following the workshops, some participants invested in new tools for mechanical weeding and introduced more spring crops into their rotations. [Display omitted] • A participatory approach was carried out with a farmers' group of North-Eastern France facing autumnal weed issues. • Three workshops, to define the objectives, to design the cropping systems and to present the multiperformance assessments. • Two cropping system prototypes were designed to reduce weed harmfulness and herbicide use intensity. • Models used in this study promoted knowledge sharing among farmers when designing innovative cropping systems. • Following the workshops, 2 out of 9 participants implemented new techniques for weed management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing the issues that agriculture is currently facing requires disruptive innovations, which may be stimulated through a process of innovative design, enhancing exploration in specific situations. In the aim to equip this process, several researchers implemented 'design workshops'. Yet, the literature poorly describes the way to organize, implement and capitalize design workshops, in the view to achieve their objectives. We conducted a comprehensive cross-analysis of 12 case studies of design workshops, informed both by data on the preparation, course and outputs of the workshops, and by collective interactions among the workshop managers. Steered by theoretical elements from design science, we identified similarities and divergences across cases, and derived methodological lessons concerning preparation, implementation, and follow-up for future design workshops. Our analysis provides new insights on the key steps for the management of design workshops: key elements to define and share an ambitious but realistic design target were highlighted; the choice of actors participating in the design workshops appeared as a crucial step in the preparation of all the workshops; the initial knowledge basis shared before the exploration had a determinant role on the design process; we identified the need to adapt, to a diversity of agricultural situations, the sequencing, the facilitation of design workshops, and the width of exploration; means to manage, during the design process, the systemic nature of most agricultural innovations were specified; and new criteria, consistent with the diversity of the objectives, were proposed to assess the success of a design workshop. Finally, our research has shown that design workshops promote collective creativity in agriculture, and feed open innovation processes. [Display omitted] • Design workshop is a relevant approach to support disruptive innovations design. • A cross-case analysis, fed by design theory, drew lessons to manage design workshops. • Recommendations to prepare and implement a design workshop are suggested. • Diverse methods that avoid fixation effects and support creativity are identified. • The choice of the actors participating to a workshop is a key factor of success. • Ways to consider the systemic nature of agricultural innovations are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Modern intensive agriculture has to face the challenge of feeding the world''s growing population while reducing its environmental impacts. Assessing in an ex ante way the sustainability of innovative cropping systems will increase the efficiency of the innovation process. To this aim, DEXiPM (DEXi Pest Management) has been developed for ex ante assessment of the sustainability of arable cropping systems, particularly integrated crop management systems with a limited use of pesticides. It has 75 basic indicators describing the cropping system and the context of the assessment, and 86 aggregated indicators, assessing the usual three dimensions of sustainability in terms of social, environmental and economic issues. DEXiPM was implemented to assess and compare current and innovative winter crop- and maize-based cropping systems for a French region. The evaluation results showed that innovative cropping systems with a limited use of pesticides can have a better overall sustainability, despite the fact that some of the indicators can be negatively impacted. DEXiPM is a relevant tool to evaluate the sustainability of actual cropping systems, to diagnose their strong and weak points and, on this basis, to encourage discussions during the design of innovative cropping systems that will afterwards be tested in fields. The design of DEXiPM is also based on a state of the art on agricultural sustainability which led to point out gaps in knowledge that need to be filled (e.g. the impact of crop management on biodiversity). From the discussions of the design phase and the implementation test, improvements have been highlighted. The version presented here includes them as well as the results of the first feedbacks from users and from an evaluation phase. The coherency of cropping system assessments has been judged by experts and found consistent, constituting the first step of the model evaluation. Sensitivity analysis and comparison with quantitative methods are currently on-going to evaluate the accuracy of the model to rank cropping systems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]