Year: 2022
Type: review
Abstract: A profound transformation of agricultural production methods has become unavoidable due to the increase in the world's population, and environmental and climatic challenges. Agroecology is now recognized as a challenging model for agricultural systems, promoting their diversification and adaptation to environmental and socio-economic contexts, with consequences for the entire agri-food system and the development of rural and urban areas. Through a prospective exercise performed at a large interdisciplinary institute, INRAE, a research agenda for agroecology was built that filled a gap through its ambition and interdisciplinarity. It concerned six topics. For genetics, there is a need to study genetic aspects of complex systems (e.g., mixtures of genotypes) and to develop breeding methods for them. For landscapes, challenges lie in effects of heterogeneity at multiple scales, in multifunctionality and in the design of agroecological landscapes. Agricultural equipment and digital technologies show high potential for monitoring dynamics of agroecosystems. For modeling, challenges include approaches to complexity, consideration of spatial and temporal dimensions and representation of the cascade from cropping practices to ecosystem services. The agroecological transition of farms calls for modeling and observational approaches as well as for creating new design methods. Integration of agroecology into food systems raises the issues of product specificity, consumer behavior and organization of markets, standards and public policies. In addition, transversal priorities were identified: (i) generating sets of biological data, through research and participatory mechanisms, that are appropriate for designing agroecological systems and (ii) collecting and using coherent sets of data to enable assessment of vulnerability, resilience and risk in order to evaluate the performance of agroecological systems and to contribute to scaling up. The main lessons learned from this collective exercise can be useful for the entire scientific community engaged in research into agroecology.
Institutions: Institut Agro Rennes-Angers, Institut National de Recherche pour l'Agriculture, l'Alimentation et l'Environnement, Sol Agro et hydrosystème Spatialisation, Plantes et systèmes de culture horticoles, Département sciences pour l'action, les transitions, les territoires, Centre d'économie et de sociologie appliquées à l'agriculture et aux espaces ruraux, Institut Agro Dijon, Physiologie, Environnement et Génétique pour l'Animal et les Systèmes d'Elevage, Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse, AGroécologie, Innovations, teRritoires, Agroécologie, Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Biostatistique et processus spatiaux, AgroParisTech, Génétique Animale et Biologie Intégrative, Ingénierie des Agropolymères et Technologies Emergentes, Collège de Direction
Language: English
Subfield: Development
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDGs: Zero hunger, Life on land
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,258
OpenAlex ID: W4285371540