Aujourd’hui, l’agriculture familiale fait preuve de dynamisme. Pour prouver qu’elle est un modèle à défendre, il faut convaincre les États de mener des politiques volontaristes et souveraines de rénovation de l’agriculture. Une politique efficace devra identifier les forces et les faiblesses de l’agriculture familiale, lutter contre l’accaparement des terres, encourager les jeunes paysans et les paysannes. Prendre en compte les différentes dimensions de l’agriculture familiale est nécessaire pour mener à une transformation efficace.
This article examines the meaning, practices and potentials of ‘transformative agroecology learning’ as a collective strategy for food system transformation. Our study is based on our qualitative and action research with the European Coordination of Via Campesina to develop the European Agroecology Knowledge Exchange Network (EAKEN). This network is linked to the global network of La Via Campesina and builds on the strong experiences and traditions of popular education in Latin American peasant movements.
This paper describes a novel approach to create a collaborative space for grassland innovations contributing to profitability of European grassland farms while preserving environmental benefits. Innovative modes of collaboration between practice and science are enabled by an international thematic network across eight European member states.
Sorghum crop is grown under tropical and temperate latitudes for several purposes including production of health promoting food from the kernel and forage and biofuels from aboveground biomass. One of the concerns of policy-makers and sorghum growers is to cost-effectively predict biomass yields early during the cropping season to improve biomass and biofuel management. The objective of this study was to investigate if Sentinel-2 satellite images could be used to predict within-season biomass sorghum yields in the Mediterranean region.
Given the search for new solutions to better prepare cities for the future, in recent years, urban agriculture (UA) has gained in relevance. Within the context of UA, innovative organizational and technical approaches are generated and tested. They can be understood as novelties that begin a potential innovation process. This empirical study is based on 17 qualitative interviews in the U.S. (NYC; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Chicago, IL, USA).
Crop surface models (CSMs) representing plant height above ground level are a useful tool for monitoring in-field crop growth variability and enabling precision agriculture applications. A semiautomated system for generating CSMs was implemented. It combines an Android application running on a set of smart cameras for image acquisition and transmission and a set of Python scripts automating the structure-from-motion (SfM) software package Agisoft Photoscan and ArcGIS. Only ground-control-point (GCP) marking was performed manually.
In the AgriSpin project (2015-2017) fifteen organisations involved in innovation support tried to understand better how each of them made a difference in helping farmers to innovate. In principle, each partner organisation hosted a Cross Visits of 3 – 4 days, to present a number of interesting innovation cases in which it was involved. The visiting team, composed of colleagues from other partner organisations, interviewed key actors in each case, and gave feedback about pearls, puzzlings and proposals in these innovation processes.
The timeline tool is generally put to use when stakeholders embark upon the self-assessment phase of their innovation partnership. Stakeholders are asked to recall moments they feel were significant for the partnership, from its beginning to the present and to reflect upon how the partnership has evolved since it began.
Social Network Analysis is a practical and useful tool that looks at the linkages present in an innovation network and monitors their development over time. It maps the relationships between the stakeholders in the network and highlights the changes between them.
This tool enables participants to become cognisant of the functional capacities discovered through the capacity scoring questionnaire, and test the limits of these capacities through simulations or role-playing (e.g. problem-solving, collaboration, information sharing, and engagement). The simulation game leads to an intuitive understanding of innovation capacities and of the importance of the enabling environment, helping participants to learn about the significance of these capacities.