Participatory assessment of innovative cropping systems combining conservation agriculture and organic farming

Abstract

Organic farmers aim at improving cropping systems to preserve soil fertility. To this end, researchers and organic farmers in two French regions have co- designed 14 cropping systems (prototypes) integrating the principles of conservation agriculture. The objective of this article is to show the contribution of prototype multi-criteria evaluation in the codesign process. Several indicators of the MASC 2.0® model are mobilized to evaluate the objectives farmers assigned to their prototypes. The evaluation proves useful at the individual level: it highlights the strengths and weaknesses of each prototype, allowing each farmer to improve his prototype while considering these different aspects during the redesigning process. It also gives farmers confidence before testing the prototype on farm, as they have a clearer idea of the key points to watch during the experimentation. At the collective level, highlighting strengths or weaknesses shared by several prototypes reinforces farmers in choices made to improve their cropping systems, and encourages them to find collective solutions when weaknesses are shared. While it was already clear for researchers that evaluation is a key step in such work, the fact that farmers also have a positive perception of this method is a sign of its success. Multi-criteria evaluation is also a powerful tool to show the tradeoffs between empirical and scientific knowledge in the design of new cropping systems.