Designing farming systems for a sustainable agriculture
Résumé
The need for sustainable agriculture is now widely recognized to meet the new socio-economic and ecological challenges facing agriculture. Therefore, farmers must develop new farming systems and initiate a radical trans-formation of their farming practices to live up to the principles of sustainability. In this endeavor, farmers, just like agricultural system researchers and other stakeholders, are actors in the innovation process. This chapter highlights the role of the innovation process, a participatory approach, and of social learning in designing sus-tainable farming systems. It presents concepts, approaches, and applications that show how the design of sus-tainable farming systems can be organized. It also describes the conditions that favor the success of approaches for changing agricultural practices and developing sustainable farming systems. Particular attention has been paid to collective action by farmers, support to farmer-designers, and the use of evaluation tools for measuring the improvements made and the new critical points to be addressed.