Wednesday 18 June 2014

Farmer designed organic systems (#journal)

Farmers and agronomists design new biological agricultural practices for organic cropping systems in France

Current innovations in organic farming such as non-inversion tillage with cover crops are promising, but investigations usually do not take farmers views into account. Therefore, research work should include farmer participation to maximize success. The authors developed a method to help farmers in designing innovative cropping systems, involving several design workshops with farmers.  The farmers generated 14 system prototypes, which differed radically from current practices because they used biological rather than mechanical methods. Cover crop use was almost four times more frequent than in current systems, moldboard plowing and mechanical weeding frequencies respectively two and eight times lower. The main benefits are (1) the involvement of volunteer farmers in the design process, (2) the combination of farmer knowledge and scientific knowledge, and (3) the use of various methodological supports.

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