The project will help to determine under which conditions the introduction of Mixed Farming and Agroforestry Systems (MiFAS) will provide improved resilience, efficiency and environmental benefits, including increased mitigation and adaptation potential to climate change. Scientifically based, locally adaptable, decision support tools are developed and tested to enable farmers, advisers and other stakeholders to understand the impacts and resilience of more diverse farm systems. This will explicitly incorporate socio-economic aspects, such as labour issues (e.g. availability, skills), which are known barriers to mixed farming.
A serious game called Dynamix is developed to support decisions making and the participatory design of crop-livestock integration among farms. The game consists of successive stages during which farmers develop and assess the scenarios and is aimed at providing farmers with an awareness of their role in the mixed landscape and how changing in their farm structure or re-distribution of feed and manure can impact (positively or negatively) the landscape as a whole.
An integrated farm model assessment will generate results relevant to farmers, advisors and other stakeholders of the possible advantages of MiFAS, expediting the transition to more sustainable systems. Farm scale modelling using typical farms in relevant regions will also allow the generation of socio-economic and detailed environmental results for a range of options, informing a flexible approach to farm level decision support. An interactive interface will be developed that allows these effects to be communicable and used in a participatory development environment, as well as developing existing farm planning tools to practically manage detailed effects of agroforestry integration into cropping or grazing scenarios.
The project will prepare:
See also the scientific article:
Authors: Julie Ryschawy, Myriam Grillot, Anaïs Charmeau, Aude Pelletier, Marc Moraine, Guillaume Martin
☘️ Interactive tools such as Dynamix can be very effective at bringing farmers and other stakeholders together to develop more integrated agricultural systems at a landscape level, as well as helping tackle issues such as labour and machinery availability or enabling feed and manure exchanges.
☘️ Agroforestry is widely discussed as a way to mitigate unavoidable GHG emissions, though it's carbon sequestration delivery depends on the system type, years of growth and destiny of the biomass. However, the use of specialist decision support and design tools enables a better understanding of the potential systems delivery and impacts at a planning stage, to ensure the best application of agroforestry.
☘️ The wide diversity of farm systems included within a MiFAS definition presented a challenge to creating a "blueprint" type of recommendation for a transition to mixed farming. However, through developing strategies that are appropriate for different specialist sectors, e.g. cropping, dairy or pigs, relevant MiFAS strategies have been shown to achieve successful transitions that reduce environmental impacts. However, to achieve the best performance, existing intensive specialist enterprises needed to reduce intensity, and this may cause wider food system change to match supply and demand of e.g. crop and livestock products. Furthermore, whilst there is potential for reduced intensity MiFAS such as organic to maintain profitability, farms may require economic support during the transition process.
Simon Moakes (Aberystwyth University)
Mail: sim44@aber.ac.uk
Phone: +41 (0)62 865 04 15
