Farmers review of Best Management Practices: drivers and barriers as seen by adopters and non-adopters

Assessing farmers’ intention to adopt best management practices across eight European countrie

Assessing farmers’ intention to adopt soil conservation practices across Europe

During the past decennia, soil conservation practices (SCPs) have been developed in order to maintain or restore soil health which is essential to the resilience of the farm. However, the adoption rate in practice is rather low. Amongst other reasons, these practices might lack onfarm compatibility, or farmers may lack confidence in the proposed measures. To increase the adoption rate of SCPs, capturing farmers’ opinions, given their specific farming context, can aid future strategies to get the SCPs implemented. Therefore, the aim of this study is to identify and compare different barriers and drivers towards the adoption of SCPs across 25 major farm type agri-environmental zone combinations in 8 European countries. To unravel farmer’s motivation and ability to implement a certain SCP, we applied a sequential mixed method approach based on the theory of planned behavior, a socio-psychological framework to predict human behavior. Qualitative semi-structured interviews with farmers reveal a first indication of possible barriers and drivers. These serve as the basis for a broad quantitative survey in each of the 25 major farm type zones, all characterized by their own soil, climate, regulatory and socio-economic context. Due to this context, the selected SCPs in the questionnaire differ among the major farm type zones, although with cover crops and reduced and/or non-inversion tillage, two wide-spread practices, were included across nearly all farm type zones. An EU-wide comparison between different regions allows us to better relate differences in barriers, motivators and farmers’ intention to differences in bio-physical, economic, institutional, social and regulatory conditions. To obtain a correct interpretation and clarification of the most striking results, we organize regional focus groups with experts and farmers. The results will offer valuable insights to advice EU policy, extension and scientific research. They will be able to take into account the specific context o

Chemical genetics strategies for identification of molecular targets

Chemical genetics is an emerging field that can be used to study the interactions of chemical compounds, including natural products, with proteins. Usually, the identification of molecular targets is the starting point for studying a drug’s mechanism of action and this has been a crucial step in understanding many biological processes. While a great variety of target identification methods have been developed over the last several years, there are still many bioactive compounds whose target proteins have not yet been revealed because no routine protocols can be adopted. This review contains information concerning the most relevant principles of chemical genetics with special emphasis on the different genomic and proteomic approaches used in forward chemical genetics to identify the molecular targets of the bioactive compounds, the advantages and disadvantages of each and a detailed list of successful examples of molecular targets identified with these approaches

Catch-C MS242. Menaces sur les sols en France

The Catch-C project assesses the farm compatibility of Best Management Practices (BMPs) that aim to promote productivity, climate change mitigation and soil quality. These are the three overall goals of sustainable soil management. This milestone inventories the current soil related issues in France, as a second step in the project

Catch-c. Sélection de zones agroenvironnementales en France

This document sums up the methods and analysis used in the French case study to delineate and chose EU relevant farms types and agri-environmental zones that represent the variety of soil related issues in France. We started from a presentation of the main soil types in France and of their localization. We focus then on the main farm types, and spatialised them on these soil types. From this information, we have extracted prototypical combinations of farms-types and soil types that we have related to the agri-environmental zones delineated by WUR. Each prototypical combination has then been depicted in terms of rotations and current farming practices, from which we chose four prototypes in which to survey farmers’ opinion about soil related BMPs

GUIDE DE PHOTO-INTERPRETATION DES CLASSES DE VEGETATION DANS DES ZONES D'HABITAT DU TÉTRAS-LYRE (ALPES FRANCAISES)

Ce guide vient en accompagnement des données analysées pour la cartographie des habitats naturels du Tétras-lyre dans les Alpes françaises. Il est divisé en 3 parties : la première résume le contexte et les objectifs du projet ; la deuxième décrit la méthodologie de photo-interprétation et fait état des différents habitats naturels ainsi répertoriés par cette étude ; la troisième partie décrit la validation effectuée sur le terrain

Protéger les sols et lutter contre le changement climatique : comment mesurer les disparités de stratégies locales?

International audienceProtection of soil quality and adoption of practices that could mitigate climate change strongly depends on both farm types and soils threats at local level, but there has been so far no general analysis in France of what combinations are used and where. This paper uses information aggregated from the FADN database and combines it with threats on soils to build a typology of LAU1 French territories regarding their soil protection strategies. We highlight four main paths: Some territories rely on the sets of “good practices” designed from action programs from the Nitrate Directive, and those only. Others have developed interesting combinations of conservation tillage, cover crops and agri-environmental schemes. Some have chosen to combine reduced use of fertilisers and pesticides and the last ones happen to show no obvious protection strategyLes pratiques des agriculteurs visant à protéger les sols de leurs parcelles sont variées et inégalement mises en ½uvre sur les territoires français. La diversité de ces situations n'avait pas fait l'objet d'une analyse poussée sur l'ensemble du territoire. Cet article utilise des informations agrégées du Recensement agricole et les combine avec les menaces sur les sols rapportées à une maille cantonale (LAU1), pour construire une typologie de territoires qui nous permet, à son tour, d'identifier des stratégies différenciées de protection des sols. Cette typologie met en évidence quatre voies différentes pour ces territoires : certains d'entre eux s'appuient uniquement sur les bonnes pratiques imposées par la Directive Nitrate; dans d'autres, les agriculteurs ont développé des combinaisons originales d'agriculture de conservation et de mesures agro-environnementales ; sur certains cantons sont combinées des mesures de réduction d'engrais et de pesticides, tandis que la dernière voie correspond à la mise en place d'aucune stratégie de protection des sol

Politiques interrégionales d'accueil dans le Massif Central. Analyse d'impact

In France, 9 interregional ERDF-funded programs covering the mountain massifs and river basins were rolled out for 2007-2013. These programs, which have been implemented in areas with widely ranging geographic sizes and numbers of partner regions, have been granted a total of approximately 200 million in European credits. The Massif Central interregional program is one of these 9 programs. Among the initiatives supported by the Massif Interregional policies, the accommodation policy played a special role. Funded projects include both those that are essentially interregional and implemented on an interdepartemental or interregional scale, and more localized operations that offer interregional added value (either as part of a concerted strategy or by serving as an experiment that can be transferred to the rest of the territory involved in cooperation). Our goal is to determine the specific effect of the Massif central accommodation policies on the evolution of the migrations towards the territories that benefited from the policies. We included in the analysis several refinements : the actions have been implemented in heterogeneous areas in terms of migrations, the period of implementation differ from one are to another, and the policies may have spillover effects on the territories adjacent to those that directly benefit from them. To measure the impact of policies on migration towards and from the Massif Central, we first analyzed these movements, performed a measure at the departmental level, before measuring the impact at local level. The relevance, and efficiency (discussed particularly in terms of spillover effects) of the policies were finally deepened qualitatively. On the territories where an accommodation policy is implemented for several years, an effect in terms of migration has been highlighted: this is particularly the case for actions in place in the department of Haute Vienne and the actions of the Limousin Regional Council at the level of municipalities. The relative youth of many other actions makes it difficult to estimate accurately their impact in terms of migration. However, the methods and metrics developed in this study enable estimate this impact, once data are gathered on a sufficiently large time period. The types and instruments of interregional governance implemented by the policy had a decisive impact with regard to building cooperation, one that is strongest in those territories where cooperation is most recent. From the partners’ perspective, they provided a framework that not only brings all of the partners together and facilitates communication and coordination, and thus the building of shared policies and projects, but also helps to create interregional momentum and to raise awareness of shared interests and develop the spirit of cooperation.Parmi les initiatives soutenues par la politique interrégionale de Massif, la politique d’accueil joue un rôle particulier. Organisées « au fil de l’eau » ou sur appel d’offre, les actions soutenues par la politique d’accueil ont toutes un caractère interrégional. Leurs bénéficiaires finaux sont très variés (de l’entrepreneur individuel à la collectivité territoriale) et les échelles d’action des différents projets s’interpénètrent. Notre objectif est de déterminer l’effet propre des politiques d’accueil du Massif Central sur l’évolution des migrations à destination des territoires bénéficiaires, en tenant compte du fait que ces actions ont eu lieu sur un massif hétérogène en termes de migrations, ont débuté à des périodes différentes, et peuvent avoir des effets de débordements sur les territoires attenant ceux bénéficiant directement de la politique. Pour mesurer l’impact des politiques d’accueil sur les mouvements migratoires du Massif, nous avons tout d’abord analysé ces mouvements, puis effectué une mesure à l’échelle départementale, avant de mesurer leur impact au niveau communal. La pertinence et l'efficacité (abordée notamment en termes d'effets de débordement) de la politique ont enfin été approfondies de façon qualitative. Sur les territoires où une politique d’accueil est pratiquée depuis plusieurs années, un effet en termes de migrations a pu être mis en évidence : c’est le cas notamment pour les actions à l’échelle du département de la Haute Vienne et pour les actions du Conseil Régional du Limousin à l’échelle des communes. Si la relative jeunesse de nombreuses actions rend difficile une estimation précise de leur impact en termes de migrations, les méthodes utilisées et les métriques élaborées lors de cette étude permettront cependant d’estimer cet impact lorsque l’on aura quelques années de recul. L'évaluation des effets des politiques d'accueil ne se limite pas à une estimation des effets propres en matière d'accueil de populations mais intègre également des effets plus larges en matière de structuration de l’organisation des acteurs locaux et d'accroissement du capital social, qui constituent autant d'externalités positives de ces politiques d'accueil