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International audience; The processes underlying environmental, economic, and social unsustainability derive in part from the food system. Building sustainable food systems has become a predominating endeavor aiming to redirect our food systems and policies towards better-adjusted goals and improved societal welfare. Food systems are complex social-ecological systems involving multiple interactions between human and natural components. Policy needs to encourage public perception of humanity and nature as interdependent and interacting. The systemic nature of these interdependencies and interactions calls for systems approaches and integrated assessment tools. Identifying and modeling the intrinsic properties of the food system that will ensure its essential outcomes are maintained or enhanced over time and across generations, will help organizations and governmental institutions to track progress towards sustainability, and set policies that encourage positive transformations. This paper proposes a conceptual model that articulates crucial vulnerability and resilience factors to global environmental and socio-economic changes, postulating specific food and nutrition security issues as priority outcomes of food systems. By acknowledging the systemic nature of sustainability, this approach allows consideration of causal factor dynamics. In a stepwise approach, a logical application is schematized for three Mediterranean countries, namely Spain, France, and Italy.

International audience; Food and nutrition security is a persisting global issue and, in addition, food systems are now facing a new set of intersecting economic, social and environmental challenges. Recurrent socio-economic and biophysical changes put the sustainability of food systems at risk. There is an urgent need to develop knowledge-based tools to assess and monitor food sustainability and to identify pathways for food security and resource conservation. The systemic nature of these interactions calls for multidimensional approaches and integrated assessments for decision-making to guide change. This paper reviews social–ecological system frameworks with the view to conceptualize the sustainability issues that affect the food systems. It is argued that the understanding of the food systems as social–ecological systems, and inputs from the theories of vulnerability and resilience in particular, can provide the concepts necessary to understand and model the complex system dynamics involved in the multiple interactions between human and natural components.

30. EURAGRI Annual Conference: The Bio-economy - Challenges and Implementation - the Research Organizations’ Perspective, 2016/09/25-27, Tartu (Estonie); International audience; This book focuses on opportunities and challenges in implementing a bioeconomy strategy from a research and education perspective. It draws on contributions presented during the 30th EURAGRI annual conference held in Tartu (Estonia) in September 2016, as well as on other workshops organised as part of EURAGRI. EURAGRI is an informal gathering of EU research and higher education organisations and ministries interested in agri-food research. It works as a platform of exchange and discussion on topics of common interest pertaining to the organisation, orientation and outlook of agri-food research in Europe in connection with global changes.

International audience; Crop models and decision support system can be useful tools for researchers, teachers, scientists, extension educators, policy makers and planners to help or support the application and evaluation of sustainable and long term alternative management practices. Sunflower is an important oilseed crop that has the potential to bridge the gap between the consumption and domestic production of edible oil in developing countries such as Pakistan. Limited research has been conducted on the application of the OILCROP-SUN model for the simulation of growth and development of sunflower under different environmental conditions, especially in developing countries. Field experiments were conducted in three environments to study the impact of nitrogen (N) fertilizer on grain yield and quality. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the performance of the OILCROP-SUN model and to determine the effect of N on sunflower for three contrasting environments. The results showed that OILCROP-SUN model simulated well for growth, development and yield of sunflower hybrids in these three contrasting environments and under different management practices that included several genotypes and different nitrogen fertilizer application rates. The d values (index of agreement) for leaf area index (LAI) ranged from 88 to 97 under arid, 78 to 85 under semi- arid and 71 to 81 under sub- humid conditions. Similarly, d values for total dry matter (TDM) ranged between 90 and 94 under arid, 81 and 88 under semi-arid and 90 and 96 under sub-humid conditions, respectively while the percentage difference for grain yield ranged from 8.5 to 21% for different ecological conditions. The model also simulated LAI, TDM, grain yield and oil quality well under different environmental conditions of Pakistan and further studies should focus on application of the OILCROP-SUN model for variable agro-climatic regions where sunflower is an important crop.

International audience; The use of plant protection products enables farmers to maximize economic performance and yields, but in return, the environment and human health can be greatly affected because of their toxicity. There are currently strong calls for farmers to reduce the use of these toxic products for the preservation of the environment and the human health, and it has become urgent to invest in more sustainable models that help reduce these risks. One possible solution is the transition toward agroecological production systems. These new systems must be beneficial economically, socially, and environmentally in terms of human health. There are many tools available, based on a range of indicators, for assessing the sustainability of agricultural systems on conventional farm holdings. These methods are little suitable to agroecological farms and do not measure the performance of agroecological transition farms. In this article, we therefore develop a model for the strategic definition, guidance, and assistance for a transition to agroecological practices, capable of assessing performance of this transition and simulating the consequences of possible changes. This model was built by coupling (i) a decision-support tool and a technico-economic simulator with (ii) a conceptual model built from the dynamics of agroecological practices. This tool is currently being tested in the framework of a Compte d’Affectation Spéciale pour le Développement Agricole et Rural (CASDAR) project (CASDAR: project launched in 2013 by the French Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, on the theme “collective mobilisation for agroecology,” http://​agriculture.​gouv.​fr/​Appel-a-projets-CASDAR) using data from farms, most of which are engaged in agroenvironmental process and reducing plant protection treatments since 2008.

International audience; While linking smallholder farmer to dairy value chain industry has identified as a potential pathway to get out of poverty trap by raising incomes and by increasing the availability of nutrient-dense foods in Ethiopia, much less is known about the poverty implication of smallholder participation in dairy value chain. We assess nutrition impacts of smallholder farmers' participation in the formal milk value chain with cross sectional survey data from Ethiopia. To assess smallholder farmer households' food and nutrition security outcomes, we employed multiple food access measurements such as per capita dietary energy intake, food consumption score, and household income. We use propensity score matching model to analyze impact pathways. The results show that as compared to households without participation, households with participation have higher dietary energy intake, dietary diversity, and household income. However, there is a negative association between participation in the milk value chain and level of milk consumption. We find that smallholder farmer participation in milk value chain has a positive significant effect on food sufficiency, dietary diversity and income. This study, therefore, confirms the potential role of smallholder farmers' participation in agri-food value chain to get out of poverty trap through improving rural household income, food security and nutrition.

Climate change, food security, water scarcity and environmental sustainability have all become major global challenges. As a consequence, improving resource use efficiency is an important aspect of increasing crop productivity. Crop models are increasingly being used as tools for supporting strategic and tactical decision making under varying agro-climatic and socioeconomic conditions. These tools can also support climate change assessment and the evaluation of adaptation strategies to limit the adverse impacts of climate change. In this paper, the authors report on a case study conducted to assess the potential impact of climate change on grain yield in sunflower under arid, semi-arid and subhumid conditions in the Punjab region of Pakistan. Experimental data obtained between 2008 and 2009 were used for model evaluation. The study focused on the impacts of incremental temperature change on sunflower production. The modelling suggests that grain yield could reduce by up to 15% by the 2020s with an average increase in temperature of +1°C, and by up to 25% if temperatures increased by up to 2°C for the 2050s. Adaptation strategies showed that, if the crop were sown between 14 days (for 2020) and 21 days (for 2050) earlier than the current date (last week in February), yield losses could potentially be reduced.

Chapter 12; International audience; Chemical contamination of fresh produce through pesticide spraying is considered a minor risk for consumer health. As a result, significant responsibility in food safety may be shifted to the private sector by public agencies. The involvement of the private sector is even greater when fresh produce is sold to safety-conscious consumers, given the high exposure of retailers' commercial reputation. This chapter focuses on public and private management of food safety risks, and the determinants thereof in the fresh produce industry of two contrasting Mediterranean countries: Morocco and Turkey. Based on expert surveys and face-to-face interviews with a large number of tomato growers, it provides insight into how and why different players are managing and controlling safety risks. A clear distinction is made between firm-scale factors at growing and shipping levels and country-wide factors, especially recent developments in markets and regulatory institutions. Both significantly influence the level of safety management in greenhouses, the adoption of good agricultural practices and integrated pest management. All factors should be taken into consideration simultaneously to understand the respective contributions of public and private operators in the safety risk management of the fresh produce chain.