2021/02/25 by Fabien Valorge, Valorge, Fabien, Véronique Lucas +7
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Agricultural Productivity and Crop Improvement
paper · doi:10.15454/n8vf-mm38
The LUZ’CO project aimed at fostering the emergence, consolidation and multiplication of collective territorial approaches facilitating the development of agroecological systems based on alfalfa. To achieve this, the project partners defined the following objectives: (1) Characterizing the modes of collective organization facilitating the implementation of such systems; (2) Analyzing their economic, environmental and social impact and (3) Creating the conditions allowing to encourage the development of these approaches: support tools and methods, training, networking, etc. Four modes of collective action were thus identified and documented, which allows the strengthening of the contribution of forage legumes for the agroecological transition: Lever n°1: Optimizing harvesting operations through the pool of high-performance equipment and/or hired worker, or through the joint organization; Lever n°2: Drying the fodder with collective dryers; Lever n°3: Engaging local win-win exchanges between producers and users of forage legumes; Lever n°4: Collectively designing, training and experimenting to overcome the obstacles, and to facilitate the development of agroecological systems. From 2015 to 2019, the LUZ’CO team studied and worked with groups of farmers using one or several of these levers, gathered and ranked the existing technical references, produced support tools and methods, as well as designed educational scenarios for the actors of the agricultural development and education sector. All the results are available on the website www.luzco.fr.