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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Evaluation ex ante des conséquences de l'adoption de la production intégrée en grandes cultures à l'échelle de la Bourgogne

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The agriculture in France is under intense pressure. Farmers are asked to change their crop management, to evolve toward agroecology, to follow the principles of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and to reduce pesticide use. However such an evolution toward an alternative agricultural model will be possible only if innovative cropping systems are able to maintain competitive and profitable farms.The aim of our work is to contribute to the debates about this issue, by evaluating ex ante the potential consequences of adopting the principles of IPM over one whole agricultural region, taking into account the diversity of production situations within this region. We considered the Burgundy region for several reasons. This region has many experimental resources and available expertise on IPM. This agricultural area also has few but contrasted production situations. Both economic and environmental issues were considered.First, we studied the diversity of production situations and of cropping systems in the area, based on agricultural data sets, and we showed to what extent cropping systems are determined by the context. Then we developed a method to design fictive cropping systems, based on the optimisation of profitability while fulfilling the principles of IPM, and considering the constraints of the production situation. We used the GAMS software to implement this method based on linear programming. The method was tested on two contrasted production situations, namely the lowlands with high agricultural potential and no livestock, and the shallow soils of the plateau. We evaluated the generated cropping systems for a range of criteria covering different issues of sustainability, and we compared the performances to those of current cropping systems in these areas.Results corroborated that IPM-based cropping systems would be different in contrasted production situations. Profitability would be improved in the lowlands with high agricultural potential, whereas it would be negatively affected in the shallow soils of the uplands. All the environmental indicators that we used would be improved in both situations. Our work identified hindrances for the development of IPM, related for example to the increase in the workload at the farm level, and the increase in the system complexity.Both methods that we developed and the results we obtained should contribute to the current debates about the possible transition of arable cropping toward sustainability.