Design of Cropping Systems and Ecological Intensification

Abstract

The limitations of conventional farming systems become apparent when confronted with the challenges of sustainability. Conventional agricultural practices tend to degrade soil fertility and result in environmental damage and health risks through their various activities, including tillage, water use and management, and the use of fertilizers and pesticides, thus making these practices no longer acceptable from the economic and social points of view. CIRAD and its partners are therefore working on an agroecological transition founded on new ecological intensification practices that primarily consist of the elimination of tillage to help revive the soil’s biological activity, use of cover crops to boost nutrient recycling and the organic-mineral management of crops, maintenance of a permanent cover to improve water efficiency and to control erosion, and the recourse to biological control (functional biodiversity and cropping practices) of pests to limit the damage caused by them. Implementing these practices implies reviewing cropping system design methods and processes to better integrate the dimensions of actors, space, and time. It is indeed essential to involve or engage producers and other local actors in a more comprehensive manner, take different levels into account (cropping systems, production systems, markets, global changes, land use, etc.) as well as the temporal aspects of this agroecological transition, promote trajectories of progressive adaptation, and envisage modalities of providing support to actors. This process can give rise to technical solutions that can help enhance the sustainability of agricultural production systems.