Qualification of New Agricultural Practices to Certify Their Scope of Relevance
The regional Chamber of Agriculture of Occitanie has set up a group of experts tasked with qualifying new agricultural practices. The provision of the portfolio of practices thus constituted will help inform development technicians and farmers about the performance, technical coherence, and risk associated with adopting these innovative practices.
Context
The DRAAF Occitanie entrusted in 2015 the Regional Chamber of Agriculture of Occitanie with a mission on agroecology aimed at developing a multi-partner project around a reference framework of innovative agricultural practices in agroecology.
In 2018, this project funded by the DRAAF focused on creating a knowledge base concerning the reduction of herbicides in large crops and on setting up a process and a committee for qualifying innovative practices. From 2019 to 2020, the project funded by AEAG expanded to the development of a shared knowledge base on innovative agroecological practices in Large Crops, Polyculture, Livestock, at the scale of the Occitanie region. This project includes several aspects: identification of innovative practices, qualification, support for farmers' reflection, support tool for technical advisors.
Issues and Objectives
The inventory of innovations and good practices on farms is not enough to ensure their generalization or appropriation by farmers and agricultural development technicians. It is not just resistance to change, as adopting a new practice represents a risk for the operator, which must be carefully weighed and minimized beforehand. Technicians and farmers must be assured of the reliability and performance of these new practices and understand their limits before promoting or adopting them. It therefore appears necessary to clarify these practices with peer review through a qualification process providing reliable and proven references that generate trust and define the risks involved.
This peer qualification system aims, as far as possible, to:
- secure advice;
- guarantee the appropriation of the proposed levers;
- share the risk among project stakeholders.
Solutions and Results
The Regional Chamber of Agriculture of Occitanie has formed a technical committee bringing together experts from the following institutions:
The technical committee identifies the success factors of the studied practices: technical, contextual, financial, support modalities. This work makes it possible to specify the "risks" inherent in their implementation, through the analysis of failure situations and the use of environmental, economic, and social indicators. It then allows prioritizing the levers to be promoted to minimize these risks. Their transferability and the support necessary for their implementation are also taken into account.
Ultimately, the examined feedback reveals their technical coherence with respect to the initial objectives of the farmers who support them and the economic, environmental, and social performance of their farms.
→ Researching innovative practices directly from farmers or chambers of agriculture would have been tedious and ineffective. Therefore, the project relied on existing networks that themselves play a role as testing and valorisation platforms for innovation:
- existing collectives: Réseau DEPHY, OSAé, Groupe 30000, GIEE, GOPEI… to benefit from the concentration effect ensured by these systems. Moreover, the purpose of such groups is precisely to produce, test, and disseminate innovation.
- research and development projects concerning the studied production systems: BAG’AGES, REDUCE, 3C2A,…
→ The qualification committee initially identified 37 practices. It examined 22 submitted to the qualification process. 11 testimonial sheets, sufficiently documented, were published quickly. Some practices, for which information was insufficient, were subject to in-depth exchanges. The corresponding 11 testimonial sheets were published once enriched, at the end of 2021.
→ The definition and testing of deliverables supporting dissemination required numerous exchanges and thorough reflection to ensure the impact of this work. A survey was conducted to assess the effectiveness of the planned deliverables, leading to particular care given to the form of the disseminated sheets (iconography, layout, mapping, multi-support dissemination). This analysis also led to a particular effort on videos (14 videos available at the end of 2021).
Economic Aspects
- Identification of good practices,
- Qualification by the expert committee,
- Development of deliverables and dissemination of results,
- Advice to farmers.
It was 60% funded by the Adour Garonne Water Agency, within the framework of the Ecophyto 2 Plus plan. However, it was not eligible for the intervention program of the Rhône Mediterranean and Corsica Water Agency. This funding follows the funding from DRAAF Occitanie which allowed the program to be launched.
A new funding file concerning the 2022 program must be prepared for presentation to the Adour Garonne Water Agency. It could be expanded to issues of efficient water use in irrigation, and conservation agriculture (soil fertility, soil life, cover crops, erosion, …).
Limits and Success Conditions
→ In the field of arboriculture, an equivalent project was set up with a specific technical committee. It produced 11 qualified feedback sheets. However, it is currently halted due to lack of funding.
