Adaptiveness to enhance the sustainability of farming systems. A review

Abstract

-During the last decade the context in which farmers must manage their farm has changed rapidly, and often with little warning. Dramatic price swings for agricultural commodities, more stringent quality requirements, new environmental regulations, the debates surrounding genetically modified crops, extreme climatic events, the demand for energy crops, the revision of the Common Agricultural Policy and the consequences of the financial crisis all create uncertainty regarding future threats and potentials. During such turbulent times, a one-sided focus on efficient production is no longer enough. Farmers also need to be able to cope with unexpected events and to adapt to new developments. Based on a literature review, we identify three strategies that strengthen the adaptive capacity of a farm: learning through experimenting and monitoring its outcomes, ensuring a flexible farm organisation to increase the options for new activities by the farm family, and diversifying to spread risks and create buffers. Implementing these strategies enlarges the farmer's room to manoeuvre and allows identifying transition options. These options do not depend only on the farm itself, but also on the farmer's ability to mobilise external resources and to engage in collective action. Change is then no longer seen as a disturbance, but as a trigger for the reorganisation of resources, and for the renewal of the farm organisation and activities. Implementing these strategies comes at a cost, so that farmers need to tackle the inevitable trade-offs between efficiency and adaptability. However, unless farmers master this challenge they cannot ensure the sustainability of their farms.adaptive farm management / adaptive capacity / evolutionary approach / complex adaptive systems

Designing agroecological transitions; A review

“…Approaches of Hendrickson et al (2008) and Darnhofer et al (2010) describe well the two polar forms of farming systems that implement efficiency/substitution-based and biodiversity-based agriculture according to the number and level of integration of production subsystems as well as their performance levels and capacities to adapt to changes in contexts or objectives.…”

“…It allows them to benefit from multiple synergies made possible by interactions between components (Sanderson et al 2013). Their high level of diversity can reduce impacts of variability in prices or climate (Darnhofer et al 2010). These production systems are managed dynamically by performing annual or seasonal adjustments to make best use of the opportunities that present themselves.…”

Supporting transition toward conservation agriculture: a framework to analyze the learning processes of farmers

“…We, thus, suggest talking about "Implementing a new practice" rather than "Defining a problem" and "Testing a potential solution". Moreover, as some authors already noted (Lyon, F. 1996;Darnhofer, I. et al 2010) learning can occur through chance events as well. Such chance events were often alluded to in our case studies, leading us to distinguish between the planned, opportunistic and fortuitous experiments detailed in the results.…”

“…2010;De Tourdonnet, S. et al 2013). Furthermore, learning does not necessarily result from the intentional resolution of problems, it may also happen as a consequence of a surprise, an unexpected outcome (Lyon, F. 1996;Darnhofer, I. et al 2010). As a result, it is possible that such a representation of learning, organized in ordered steps starting from a problem to be solved, may not be the most accurate one for farmers experienced in conservation agriculture.…”

A Transnational Agri-Food System for Whom? The Struggle for Hegemony at Rio+20

“…Secondly, it has become clear that agriculture and food systems are best understood as complex transnational socialecological systems (Darnhofer, Bellon, Dedieu, & Milestad, 2010) wherein multiple stakeholders influence outcomes.…”