Back to the future: rethinking socioecological systems underlying high nature value farmlands

Additional, web-only material may be found in the online version of this article at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10. 1002/fee.2116/suppinfoFarmlands are currently among the dominant uses of the land. When managed under low-input farming systems, farmlands are associated with diverse cultural and natural heritages around the world. Known in Europe as high nature value (HNV) farmlands, these agricultural landscapes and their associated farming systems evolved as tightly coupled socioecological systems, and are essential to biodiversity conservation and the delivery of ecosystem services to society. However, HNV farmlands are vulnerable to socioeconomic changes that lead to either agricultural intensification or land abandonment. We present a range of plausible future scenarios for HNV farmlands, and discuss the related management options and expected socioecological outcomes for each scenario. We then provide recommendations for policy, practice, and research on how to best ensure the socioecological viability of HNV farming systems in the futureinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics' resources: focus on curated databases

The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (www.isb-sib.ch) provides world-class bioinformatics databases, software tools, services and training to the international life science community in academia and industry. These solutions allow life scientists to turn the exponentially growing amount of data into knowledge. Here, we provide an overview of SIB's resources and competence areas, with a strong focus on curated databases and SIB's most popular and widely used resources. In particular, SIB's Bioinformatics resource portal ExPASy features over 150 resources, including UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot, ENZYME, PROSITE, neXtProt, STRING, UniCarbKB, SugarBindDB, SwissRegulon, EPD, arrayMap, Bgee, SWISS-MODEL Repository, OMA, OrthoDB and other databases, which are briefly described in this article

Transforming agri-food systems for Agroecology development: exploring conditions of success in European case studies

International audienceIn Europe, developing Agroecology requires a redesign of production systems towards agroecology, to provide a scope of environmental, economic and social benefits at local and global level. We studied the combination of resources that farmers or groups of stakeholders mobilize for developing agroecological farming systems integrated in sustainable food systems, focusing in particular on the resources brought by collective dynamics. We identified fifteen case studies across Europe, selected in various environmental and social contexts and covering the main productions, and studied their functioning and performances. Three case studies are detailed in Denmark, Portugal and Belgium. They all face sustainability challenges such as soil fertility management, biodiversity conservation, and necessity to increase the added-value of their products to remain economically viable. From the case studies, we conclude that agroecological farming systems are diverse and can provide altogether sufficient production levels, acceptable farm viability, and positive impacts on biodiversity ranging from low to very high while guaranteeing accessible, more or less expensive but healthier products for the consumer. Collective action and mobilization of supporting stakeholders (scientists, consumers and local authorities) appear to be determinant for the development of these systems. The most promising case studies rely on adequate combinations of material, cognitive, technical and socioeconomic resources. Enhancing these resources at local and regional level through adequate development policies and stakeholders' mobilization can strongly support the development of agroecology

Les systémes agraires du plateau Langrois Châtillonnais. Systèmes de productions et développement (agronomie-economie- géographie- histoire)

*INRA URD BP 86510 21065 Dijon cedex (FRA) Diffusion du document : INRA URD BP 86510 21065 Dijon cedex (FRA)National audienc

Réinvestir le saltus dans la pensée agronomique moderne : vers un nouveau front eco-politique ?

Biodiversity is increasingly recognised by politicians and citizens as a major issue. In the European context, its future depends on a large share on agriculture, leading whether to destruction or conservation. In this context, European and national policies are now reconsidering objects that have been largely hampered during the last decades: meadows, wetlands, hedges etc. While they have been put away from agricultural extension and agronomic research, such elements are now core-issues in new environmental approaches such as ecological landuse (or compensatory environmental areas) and ecological corridors or networks. In the French context, the Grenelle de l’environnement is being promoting a so-called “green and blue corridor” (“trame verte et bleue”) as a key-reference for spatial planning at different levels. Such corridor should incorporate the above-mentioned agricultural features, forming altogether the semi-natural vegetation (SNV).One could interpret this shift as a come-back of the saltus (from the ancient trilogy ager [= cultivated land], silva [= forested land] and saltus [=between the two formers, open and uncultivated land formed of herbaceous vegetation or low height scrubs]), as the ecological objects aimed at in environmental policies are indeed components of saltus. Nevertheless, while SNV and saltus virtually apprehend the same objects, they conceptually are quite different. Saltus should be understood in its overall relationship with ager and silva and through its historical and agricultural perspective. SNV is, conceptually, easily seen apart from the agricultural matrix it is put into, as an alien feature inherited from the past but with no present and future agronomic function. Thus, its management rationale is unclear, which is a paradox while its place in the policy debate is gaining importance. This understanding of SNV leads to a policy front opposing the agricultural and the environmental worlds, the stake being the land sharing resulting from the confrontation.Meanwhile, agronomists are proposing models based on the ager, in which the saltus is marginalised if not denied, and the only species taken into account are selected crops or animals and useful auxiliaries. Thus, on the one hand we have a saltus hosting biodiversity, but fundamentally belonging to the past; on the other hand, an ager that pretends to manage biodiversity, but without considering the whole set of wild species and habitats.Revisiting the concept of saltus, seen as an useful grid to understand the developments of agriculture and biodiversity at the European level, is proposed in this paper. The point is to apprehend the future of the biodiversity linked to agriculture in light of its past, in order to better understand the long term factors at play

Étude prospective des filières viande de ruminants du Massif central à l’horizon 2050

La baisse de la consommation individuelle de viande, le réchauffement climatique, le vieillissement de la population d’éleveurs, et la forte dépendance des élevages aux aides publiques, sont autant de facteurs de risques pour l’avenir des filières viandes de ruminants du Massif central. Cette étude prospective décrit cinq scénarios plus ou moins favorables de leurs futurs possibles à l’horizon 2050. Elle a été réalisée pour que les acteurs les anticipent et mettent en oeuvre des stratégies d’évolution adaptées. Les cinq scénarios résultent de logiques d’évolutions très contrastées. Ils ont été construits par un collectif impliquant vingt experts dont les compétences couvraient les enjeux identifiés par les acteurs économiques et territoriaux du Massif (les porteurs d’enjeux). Les variables qui modifient l’évolution de ces enjeux ont été organisées en déterminants, dont chaque modalité a été décrite précisément puis combinée pour étayer les cinq futurs. Chacun illustre ainsi des logiques cohérentes de fonctionnement et des utilisations du territoire bien contrastées. Leurs conséquences ont été quantifiées par une démarche originale alliant expertise, analyse bibliographique et modélisation en s’appuyant sur des indicateurs de production, d’emploi et de bilan environnemental. La gestion adaptée et raisonnée des prairies et la garantie de la qualité des produits viande sont des points sensibles et incontournables dans tous les scénarios. L’analyse transversale des résultats contrastés montre également que des opportunités peuvent se révéler intéressantes pour l’avenir. Elles seront à saisir par les partenaires des filières et à faire émerger avec le concours des différents collectifs d’acteurs du territoire « Massif central ».This foresight study describes five 2050 contrasting scenarios of possible futures for ruminant meat sectors of the Massif central area in order to help its economic players to adapt and to anticipate. The study deals with the present recurring questions of meat production systems sustainability, according to the risks of a drop in individual meat consumption, global warming, age structure of farmers, and the high level in subsidies. The five scenarios were constructed thanks to a collective expert research approach, with regards to the issues identified by the Massif’s stakeholders. With its own coherence and rationale, each scenario highlights possible consequences on production, jobs and labor, environmental assessment and land uses. These were estimated by an original approach combining expertise, literature review and modeling. An adapted grassland management and the establishment of a meat quality guaranty are the key sensitive issues in all five scenarios. The cross-analysis of these contrasting results also shows what stake-holders could do in order to seize upcoming opportunities

What Are The Policies Needed To Upscale Organic Food Chains? Findings From The Tyfa Scenario Exercise

Upscaling organic farming (OF) and agroecology (AE) in Europe will have major implications across the whole food-chain. As both the intensity and the geography of food production would undergo significant changes, it will affect the current rationale of the entire food chain, namely collectors, processors, traders, retailers and at the end, consumers. The challenge is to identify how the business models should evolve at each link of the chain to accompany the large scale transition towards OF/AE, thus delivering the specific food attributes associated with OF/AE.Based on the Ten Years For Agroecology scenario (TYFA), the paper first identifies the structural changes implied in food chains organization by a full transition to OF/AE across Europe. It then explores the policy changes needed at the EU level in order to accompany such a transition. The range of policies concerned is wide. The proposed analysis may inspire an EU policy agenda towards sustainable agriculture and food

Multiple independent transmission cycles of a tick-borne pathogen within a local host community

Many pathogens are maintained by multiple host species and involve multiple strains with potentially different phenotypic characteristics. Disentangling transmission patterns in such systems is often challenging, yet investigating how different host species contribute to transmission is crucial to properly assess and manage disease risk. We aim to reveal transmission cycles of bacteria within the Borrelia burgdorferi species complex, which include Lyme disease agents. We characterized Borrelia genotypes found in 488 infected Ixodes ricinus nymphs collected in the Sénart Forest located near Paris (France). These genotypes were compared to those observed in three sympatric species of small mammals and network analyses reveal four independent transmission cycles. Statistical modelling shows that two cycles involving chipmunks, an introduced species, and non-sampled host species such as birds, are responsible for the majority of tick infections. In contrast, the cycle involving native bank voles only accounts for a small proportion of infected ticks. Genotypes associated with the two primary transmission cycles were isolated from Lyme disease patients, confirming the epidemiological threat posed by these strains. Our work demonstrates that combining high-throughput sequence typing with networks tools and statistical modeling is a promising approach for characterizing transmission cycles of multi-host pathogens in complex ecological settings

Revealing strategic conversations around future visions of agriculture to improve the debate

To address sustainability of agro-food systems, different innovation models are proposed, which carry underlying pathways for change. Making explicit the divergences between these visions for the future could give more visibility to alternative visions, which otherwise could be dismissed by visions of the dominant regime. The generation and discussion of future visions for agro-food systems can open up or close down options for radical change. Therefore, we aim at analysing the cross-relations between the representations of pathways for change carried by actors and their strategies for change. We follow future-oriented debates, consisting both of a corpus of future representations, and of a community of actors associated to their discussion. We focus on one case study: the future-oriented debate on agriculture and water quality, in the Seine river watershed in France (between 2000 and 2016). We organise the materials from documentary sources and interviews through a narrative of the links between the future-oriented debate and strategies. Our results highlight three types of strategies: (i) opening the map of options for change; (ii) promoting radical change for agro-food systems; (iii) using the future-oriented debate to build an intervention strategy. We identify a gap in this debate: very few explicit transition pathways exist, while it may improve their credibility. We show that some alternative visions integrate performance criteria of the dominant narrative to strengthen their credibility. We conclude by suggesting that another strategy could be to embed future visions in a consistent alternative narrative, revealing the social dimension of water management by agriculture