Hierarchical Patch Dynamics Perspective in Farming System Design

Merot Merot,Belhouchette Belhouchette

doi:10.3390/agronomy9100604

Abstract

Farming systems are complex and include a variety of interacting biophysical and technical components. This complexity must be taken into account when designing farming systems to improve sustainability, but more methods are needed to be able to do so. This article seeks to apply the Hierarchical Patch Dynamics theory (HPD) to farming systems to understand farming system complexity and be better able to support farming system re-design. A six-step framework is proposed to adapt the HPD theory to farming system analysis by taking into account (i) spatial and temporal interactions and (ii) field and management diversity. This framework was applied to a vineyard case study. The result was a hierarchical formalization of the farming system. The HPD framework improved understanding and enabled the formalization of (i) the hierarchical structure of the farming system, (ii) the interactions between structure and processes and (iii) scaling up and down from field to farm scale. HPD theory proved to be successful in analyzing farming system complexity at the farm scale. The framework can help with specific aspects of farming system design, such as how to change the scale of study or determining which scale should be used when choosing indicators for crop management and integrating multi-scale constraints and processes.

Highlights

In the current context of socioeconomic, climate and environmental changes, farmers have to adapt their farming systems to reduce environmental impacts while ensuring agronomic performances and farm profitability
This study proposes a six-step procedure adapted from Wu and David [10] to characterize farming system organization using the Hierarchical Patch Dynamics theory (HPD) theory (Figure 1)
Step 1: Problem and System Definition. The objective of this step is to define the target of the study, which is to support the conversion to organic farming, and to delimit the studied farm

Summary

Introduction

In the current context of socioeconomic, climate and environmental changes, farmers have to adapt their farming systems to reduce environmental impacts while ensuring agronomic performances and farm profitability. The challenge for agricultural research is to provide knowledge, tools and methods to redesign sustainable farming systems in various production contexts [1] and analyze induced changes. The first key step in any such redesign is to understand the farming system organization, which is a challenging undertaking because the farming system is so complex [2]: crop management sequences are numerous; farmers generally manage several heterogeneous fields; and multiple interactions and different feedback over space and time between the various farming system components must be taken into account. With regard to each management practice, for practical reasons and resource constraints (e.g., access to labor and equipment [3]), farmers do not manage an isolated field but rather a group of fields with the same attributes and crops for greater efficiency [4]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion