2019/01/01 by Philippe Tresch, Tresch, Philippe, Nicolas T. Chartier +3
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Agricultural Systems and Practices #Agricultural Innovations and Practices
paper · doi:10.15454/kkr4ar
Far from confining itself to agronomic issues, pesticides use reduction in mixed crop-animal farms requires to rethink globally the way systems work. The complex approaches which we developed to reach the level of 50 % reduction of pesticides use defined by the Ecophyto plan, lean on the combination of agronomic, zootechnic and economic skills. These combinations of skills were used to co-design new farming systems, which use less pesticides, are sustainable and correspond to farmers’ needs. These new simulation systems are globally less productive, more complex and require a deep reorganization of the work. Their economic performances remain globally the same, although built on new balances. Their global environmental performances (GES, eutrophication) improve. However, every farm is a particular case, when considering farmers’ objectives, soil-climate context, structural organization of the system and social context. Pesticides use reduction levels may thus be quite variable from one farm to another, but the Ecophyto plan objectives appear to be reachable