Co-design and assessment of agronomical scenarios for reintroduction of legumes into a French territory
Creators: name: Soulié Marion
name: Bonifazi Mathilde
name: Guichard Laurence
name: Quinio Maude
name: Ballot Remy
name: Jeuffroy Marie-Hélène
name: Pelzer Elise
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2019
Subjects: grain and forage legumes, scenarios, performances, stakeholders

description: Legumes have many interests in cropping systems because of their ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen, thus reducing nitrogen input use at the crop rotation scale. They are also an interesting source of protein for feed and food. Therefore, legumes can help meeting current environmental and food challenges. However, their cultivated areas have seriously decreased over the past decades (Voisin et al, 2014). A sociotechnical lock-in (organization of value and supply chains, major investments for storage and breeding companies, etc.) hinders the reintroduction of these minor crops. Increasing their production requires the implementation of specific coordinated actions between agricultural and industrial actors, and the territory is assumed to be a good scale for that, as it allows strong exchanges (Magrini et al., 2016). A participatory approach was proposed to the stakeholders of the Plateau Langrois territory (89,800 ha in Burgundy, France) to help them thinking about the modalities for overcoming the socio-technical lock-in toward legumes reintroduction. This approach was displayed in three steps: (i) design, with local stakeholders, of agronomic scenarios for the reintroduction of legumes, (ii) <em>ex ante</em> assessment of these scenarios with their chosen criteria, and (iii) discussions on the conditions for their implementation in the territory. The stakeholders involved in this study came from various agricultural structures (farmers, technical advisors from local cooperatives and the Chamber of Agriculture), environmental structures (water union and the National Park of the Champagne-Bourgogne Forests) and research structures. First, current and prospective crop management sequences were described and assessed, based on statistical data and on the results of individual surveys. This made it possible to share with the stakeholders a representation of the current territory, corresponding to a distribution of crops and their crop management sequences. This scenario was used as a baseline for assessing prospective scenarios. The stakeholders then expressed their expectations for this territory, in the medium and long term, according to their individual motivations or those supported by their structure. The expectations expressed during these exchanges led to the emergence of eight ideas of scenarios. Objectives and constraints corresponding to these ideas where translated in four sets that were used as inputs for the Coclick'eau optimization tool (Chantre et al, 2016; http://coclickeau.webistem.com/bac/). Based on these sets of objectives and constraints, Coclick'eau proposed four corresponding scenarios: (i) developing a local high quality organic flour (by increasing the organic areas), (ii) increasing the production of protein-rich forages and crops, (iii) reducing the impact of crop management on underground water quality, and (iv) a fourth scenario combining the objectives and constraints of the previous ones. Each scenario proposed by the optimization tool is a distribution of crops and crop management options and its resulting agronomic (yields, proteins produced for cattle), socio-economic (margin, input costs, work load), and environmental (use of pesticides, risk of nitrogen leaching, fuel consumption, etc.) performances at the territory scale. Finally, these results were presented and discussed with the stakeholders. The discussions focused on (i) the ways of differentiating productions in this territory that is not very competitive on world markets, and the conditions for achieving this, and (ii) the possibilities for exchanges between production systems (cereal-livestock) for fertility and feed autonomy in the territory. To conclude, the method implemented in the plateau Langrois territory made it possible to initiate discussions on the issue of the reintroduction of legumes into this territory. Indeed, the workshops organized allowed to share perceptions of the current territory and technical data between stakeholders from different spheres (research, professional agricultural organizations, local authorities and farmers). In addition, the scenarios proved to be a good basis to discuss about the future of agriculture in the plateau Langrois territory, and on new levers for reintroducing legumes. Some participants proposed to mobilize the method and the results of this approach in order to pursue the reflections undertaken and raise public authorities' awareness on the problems in the plateau Langrois and more generally in the low potential agricultural zones. This participatory tool-based approach could be used in other territories, particularly to work on the development of low-impact agriculture and supply chain, a theme at the core of current public policies. LEGITIMES National research project : https://www.inra.fr/legitimes Chantre E et al. 2016. Land Use Policy 59, 260–271. Magrini MB et al. 2016. Ecological Economics 126, 152–162. Voisin AS et al. 2014. Agron. Sustain. Dev. 34, 361–380.