Targeting best agricultural practices to enhance ecosystem services in European mountains

Agri-environmental policies in Europe are failing to sufficiently address ongoing environmental degradation, biodiversity decline, climate impacts, and societal demands for sustainability. To reverse this, policymakers, practitioners, and farmers need better guidance on which specific agricultural practice/s should be promoted and how to adapt current practices to reach the desired objectives. Here we use social valuation tools to elucidate the relationship between agricultural practices and the provision of key ecosystem services in mountains, including maintenance of scenery from agricultural landscapes, conservation of biodiversity, regulation of climate change through carbon sequestration, production of local quality products, maintenance of soil fertility, and prevention of forest wildfires. We use as case studies two contrasting but representative mountain agroecosystems in the Mediterranean and Nordic regions of Europe. We analyze the best agricultural practices in both agroecosystems to reach the targeted environmental outcomes under three plausible policy scenarios. We find significant differences in the average contribution of agricultural practices to ecosystem services provision, which suggest the need for regionalizing the research efforts and, consequently, the design of agri-environmental policies. However, we also identify practices for ecosystem service delivery across policy scenarios and agroecosystems. Among these, grazing and silviculture practices such as extending the grazing period, grazing in semi-natural habitats, grazing in remote and abandoned areas, adapting stocking rate to the carrying capacity, and moving flocks seasonally, stand out for their relevance in all policy scenarios. These results highlight the potential of adequate grazing and silviculture practices to deliver bundles of ecosystem services. Our study provides guidance to design agri-environmental policies in Europe that focus on rewarding farmers for their sustainable management of natural resources, climate change mitigation and adaption and biodiversity conservation

Visión de los ganaderos sobre las estrategias de manejo de las explotaciones de ovino para adaptarse al cambio climático en el Mediterráneo

Existen cinco estrategias principales de adaptación al CC de las explotaciones de ovino en el Mediterráneo, cuya importancia relativa varía entre países y sistemas de producción. Aunque algunos factores técnicos (como la presencia de riego) pueden determinar la estrategia idónea, otros aspectos relacionados con la percepción del riesgo por parte de los ganaderos también influyen en su visión sobre las mejores estrategias para adaptarse al CC.Financiación PRIMA-AEI (Proyecto ADAPT-HERD, PCI2019-103533) y Gobierno de Aragón (Grupo de investigación A14_20R

Contribution of grazing areas to small ruminant production systems in the Mediterranean countries

Publishe

Exploring climate change adaptation strategies form the perspective of Mediterranean sheep farmers

PRIMA project Adapt-Her

Farmer views of best climate change adaptation strategies for sheep farming in the Mediterranean

Publishe

Can local policy options reverse the decline process of small and marginalized rural areas influenced by global change?

Rural depopulation generates deep territorial imbalances, threats regional food security, and causes the irreversible loss of culture and local institutions that manage natural resources and ecosystem services worldwide. While local leadership and economic diversification have been pointed as factors that could trigger rural development, what happens to remote rural areas whose continuous process of depopulation has undermined their social capital and leadership and their endogenous capacity for economic diversification? What realistic policy options could trigger an effective and endogenous rural development process in these weakened areas? Here we used a dynamic simulation model and a sensitivity analysis to explore the long-term effects of local policy options suggested by institutional, academic and local stakeholders that could act on leverage points to revert the depopulation of a marginalized rural area in Mexico, the oasis of Comondú in Baja California Sur. The identified leverage points are related to improving the production yields of irrigated agriculture and livestock farming, the main economic activities of this social-ecological system. Our results showed the positive, but limited, effects of acting on these leverage points. However, they seem plausible good places to act to start an endogenous revitalization process in this rural area. We found complementariness between the stakeholders’ management proposals, and high proximity of these proposals to the leverage points, especially the most place-based-specific proposals. This study shows the relevance of place-based research for rural development and how modeling is a valuable decision support tool to evaluate in advance the effectiveness of policy options proposed by stakeholders.Publishe

Participatory approaches and Social Network Analysis to analyse the emergence of collective action for rural development: a case study in the Spanish Pyrenees

This paper explores the social capital of an emergent beef quality brand in two valleys (Ansó and Hecho) in the Spanish Pyrenees through a combination of participatory approaches (focus groups) and Social Network Analysis. We organised three focus groups with stakeholders from the administration, tourism and commerce, and farming sectors to evaluate the interest for the initiative. In the Social Network Analysis, we surveyed 32 local stakeholders to construct an advisory network, including the surveyed actors and non-surveyed actors that they mentioned, and a trust network, including only the surveyed actors and their trust level in each other. The trust network was analysed using the Louvain’s algorithm to identify potential internal communities and the exponential random graph model (ERGM) to infer the shaping effects of actors’ attributes on the network’s structure. Our results revealed a general interest of the stakeholders in the beef quality brand and a sparse network characterised by a propensity to mutual and open interactions with four clusters based on employment sectors/educational levels and connected by two prominent actors. Therefore, the social capital of the initiative showed both risks because a loss of these few prominent actors could inhibit the network, and opportunities, because their presence, along with the mutual and open interactions, would ensure efficient information exchange. The investigation revealed also two possible limiting factors: the absence of a coordinator and the actors’ unwillingness to assume this role. The results confirmed the efficacy of the methodology used to investigate the social capital of emergent initiatives, but further research should be carried out including stakeholders’ concerns on its economic implications

Farmer views of best climate change adaptation strategies for sheep farming in the Mediterranean

International audienceClimate Change (CC) impacts on agriculture will exacerbate in the next decades by a decrease of rainfall and increase of temperatures and extreme events. Pasture-based sheep farming systems in the Mediterranean basin are particularlyvulnerable as they depend on local feed resources, which are directly damaged by CC. Research has been on livestock adaptation strategies, usually follows top-down approaches not accounting for the experiential knowledge of farmers, limiting its applicability at farm level. This work aimed to analyse farmers views about CC impact and the effect of periodic events of food shortage (FS) and heat stress (HS) on animal and farm performance, to determine the usualpractices deployed to overcome these periodic events and the best herd and farm management strategies to adapt to CC. Data were collected through face-to-face surveys to 228 farmers in Egypt (n=47), France (34), Spain (45) andTunisia (101), covering representative sheep farming systems in 5 different Köppen climatic regions. CC scenarios were developed for each region based on the IPCC projections. All farmers recognize that CC is real, however, mostthink that it is a natural and human-induced process or even just a natural process (Egypt). Perceived risk is lower in the most extreme arid and semi-arid regions and in irrigated farms. Anyhow FS and HS are generally perceived asincreasingly important problems. Farms traditionally overcome periodic FS events mainly providing animals with food stuff produced on farm and kept for shortage periods, increasing purchased feed and/or modifying grazing schedules.90, 75 and 50% of French, Tunisian, Spanish farmers respectively reported recent farm changes to adapt to CC. Modification of grazing, lambing and sowing periods (France and Spain), breed substitutions (Tunisia), improvementsin farm buildings (all) were reported. Farmers identified three potential strategies named feed maximization, feed supplementation and herd downsizing, which feasibility varies across systems, countries and climatic regions

Farmer views of best climate change adaptation strategies for sheep farming in the Mediterranean

International audienceClimate Change (CC) impacts on agriculture will exacerbate in the next decades by a decrease of rainfall and increase of temperatures and extreme events. Pasture-based sheep farming systems in the Mediterranean basin are particularlyvulnerable as they depend on local feed resources, which are directly damaged by CC. Research has been on livestock adaptation strategies, usually follows top-down approaches not accounting for the experiential knowledge of farmers, limiting its applicability at farm level. This work aimed to analyse farmers views about CC impact and the effect of periodic events of food shortage (FS) and heat stress (HS) on animal and farm performance, to determine the usualpractices deployed to overcome these periodic events and the best herd and farm management strategies to adapt to CC. Data were collected through face-to-face surveys to 228 farmers in Egypt (n=47), France (34), Spain (45) andTunisia (101), covering representative sheep farming systems in 5 different Köppen climatic regions. CC scenarios were developed for each region based on the IPCC projections. All farmers recognize that CC is real, however, mostthink that it is a natural and human-induced process or even just a natural process (Egypt). Perceived risk is lower in the most extreme arid and semi-arid regions and in irrigated farms. Anyhow FS and HS are generally perceived asincreasingly important problems. Farms traditionally overcome periodic FS events mainly providing animals with food stuff produced on farm and kept for shortage periods, increasing purchased feed and/or modifying grazing schedules.90, 75 and 50% of French, Tunisian, Spanish farmers respectively reported recent farm changes to adapt to CC. Modification of grazing, lambing and sowing periods (France and Spain), breed substitutions (Tunisia), improvementsin farm buildings (all) were reported. Farmers identified three potential strategies named feed maximization, feed supplementation and herd downsizing, which feasibility varies across systems, countries and climatic regions

Exploring climate change adaptation strategies form the perspective of Mediterranean sheep farmers

Session 61 - Théâtre 10International audienceSheep production systems in the Mediterranean region are particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change (CC) due to their relatively high use of local food resources. Most studies analysing farm adaptation strategies tend to follow top-down approaches without considering the feasibility of their implementation on farms. In this work, which is part of the PRIMA project Adapt-Herd, we investigated farmer perceived CC impact on-farm and their view about the best adaptation strategies to future CC scenarios in representative farming systems in Egypt, France, Spain, and Tunisia. Scenarios of CC were developed for each region based on IPCC projections. Two hundred-five farmers were surveyed face-to-face and asked to point out the actions they would take to adapt to the CC scenarios. Possible actions covered feed, grazing, reproduction and flock management, breeding, and machinery and facilities. Strategies were identified using K-modes cluster analysis. Discriminant analysis was used to determine their preferred strategies across countries, farming systems, farm features, and farmer profiles and perceptions. Five general strategies were identified: (1) farm machinery and facilities (high preference in Egypt, France. and Spain); (2) feed intensification (Egypt and Spain); (3) flock management and feed extensification (France); (4) feed optimization (Tunisia); and (5) general farm adaptation. Besides differences among countries, farmers with irrigation systems perceive the impact of feed shortage, and heat stress on farms to be lower than other farmers and tend to prefer strategies focus on machinery and facilities and feed intensification. Our results show that both farm profile and CC impact perception factors influence farmer’s views on adaptation strategies