Farming system design to feed the changing world. A review

Abstract

Agricultural production is unstable as a result of complex, dynamic and interrelated factors such as climate, markets and public policy that are beyond farmers' control. Farmers must therefore develop new farming systems incorporating innovations in objectives, organization and practices adapted to changing production contexts. As a consequence, agronomists have expanded the "farming system design" field of research. A variety of quantitative and qualitative design approaches have been developed to support the analysis of current farming systems and the design and evaluation of alternatives. A comprehensive literature assessment is lacking for this emerging field of agricultural science. Here we review 41 farming system design approaches using computer models. Our main findings are the following: (1) the reviewed literature do not make reference to the theoretical approaches from the field of design science. (2) Two categories of farming system approaches can be distinguished: optimisation approaches, and participatory and simulation-based approaches. These two categories are connected to two of the main design science theories. (3) For optimisation approaches, farming system design is mainly seen as a problem-solving process. Emphasis is placed on the computational exploration of the solution space by a problem-solving algorithm. (4) For participatory and simulation-based approaches, conceptualization of the design problem is central to the farming system design process. The subsequent exploration of the solution space relies on the creativity of humans. (5) Optimisation approaches, and participatory and simulationbased approaches are oriented towards the development of exploitative rather than exploratory innovations. Exploitative innovations involve the exploitation of available knowledge while exploration innovations build on knowledge created in the course of the design process.

Processes of adaptation in farm decision-making models. A review

“…For economists, the objective is to efficiently use scarce resources by optimizing the configuration and allocation of farm resources given farmers' objectives and constraints in a certain production context. For agronomists, it is to organize farm practices to ensure farm production from a biophysical context (Martin et al 2013). Agronomists identify relevant activities for a given production objective, their interdependency, what preconditions are needed to execute them, and how they should be organized in time and space.…”

Permaculture for agroecology: design, movement, practice, and worldview. A review

“…Until recently, there was no parallel discussion in the scientific literature on farm design, which has largely consisted of computer modeling and simulation that are not well suited to complex diversified operations (Sterk et al 2006) and do not deal substantively with spatial relationships (Martin et al 2012). The importance of the abundance and distribution of land uses to farm sustainability, and interest in the development of tools to support spatially explicit farm design processes, has only recently entered the scientific literature (Benoit et al 2012;Lovell et al 2010;Sterk et al 2006) and remains largely exploratory.…”

Farming system design for innovative crop-livestock integration in Europe

“…Taking these new political, technological and cognitive contexts into account, two broad approaches to design pathways for developing innovative agricultural systems have evolved. The first approach is research-led, based mainly on the use of simulation models to explore innovative practices (Martin et al, 2012). The main limitation of such design approaches is that the problems and questions are most often predetermined and do not really consider social context or non-scientific knowledge (Voinov and Bousquet, 2010).…”