Search results for "farming system"
showing 10 items of 13 documents
New data about the landscape of the first occupation of Mallorca: Coval Simó (Escorca, Mallorca)
2020
The Coval Simó shelter provides some of the oldest evidence for settlement on the island of Mallorca and the Balearic archipelago. It also has the peculiarity of being a habitat in a mountain area, so that the human groups that settled there had to adapt their agricultural and farming system to this environment. The plant remains (wood charcoal and seeds) recovered in the occupation levels allow us to address these issues, since they are the result of the different activities developed in this cavity: fuel for domestic activities, food for livestock, etc. The results of this study show that between the III and II millennium cal BC, an agricultural system based on livestock and cereal farmi…
Suppressiveness of 18 composts against 7 pathosystems : variability in pathogen response
2006
International audience; Compost is often reported as a substrate that is able to suppress soilborne plant pathogens, but suppression varies according to the type of compost and pathosystem. Reports often deal with a single pathogen while in reality crops are attacked by multiple plant pathogens. The goal of the present study was to evaluate the disease suppression ability of a wide range of composts for a range of plant pathogens. This study was conducted by a consortium of researchers from several European countries. Composts originated from different countries and source materials including green and yard waste, straw, bark, biowaste and municipal sewage. Suppressiveness of compost-amende…
The impact of COVID-19 on alternative and local food systems and the potential for the sustainability transition: Insights from 13 countries
2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a major stress test for the agri-food system. While most research has analysed the impact of the pandemic on mainstream food systems, this article examines how alternative and local food systems (ALFS) in 13 countries responded in the first months of the crisis. Using primary and secondary data and combining the Multi-Level Perspective with social innovation approaches, we highlight the innovations and adaptations that emerged in ALFS, and how these changes have created or supported the sustainability transition in production and consumption systems. In particular, we show how the combination of social and technological innovation, greater citizen involvement,…
Agri-urban patterns in Mediterranean urban regions: the case study of Pisa
2020
International audience; Urban regions require planning tools in order to manage agricultural areas under urban pressure. The aim of our paper is to test an analytical framework that combines both the composition in urban and agricultural land covers and their spatial configuration into four general agri-urban patterns: isolated fields, urban belt fields, periurban agricultural areas and rural areas. We evaluated the spatial distribution and the changes of such patterns in the short-term (2003-2011) starting from Spot images for the case study of Pisa, Italy. The results indicate an increase of the most urban patterns despite continuing to have cash crops, a stability of periurban agricultur…
Analyzing risk management in Mediterranean Countries: The Syrian perspective
2012
During the recent years Mediterranean Partner Countries (MPCs) are facing major political, institutional, economic and societal changes. As a matter of fact, the agricultural sector has been interested by global trends and has become more and more exposed to world dynamics. The resulting exposure of MPCs’primary sectors to risks has called great attention on existing and feasible risk management tools, as well as on the role of public interventions. Our paper deepen on the risk management status quo in Syria and explore the possibility of new policy interventions. The analysis has been carried out through a field activity that allowed to understand the issue based on experts’ opinions. We p…
Dexipm-Grapevine : a multicriteria assessment tool of the sustainability for grapevine farming systems
2015
The development of innovative farming systems to reach new goals of agricultural sustainability needs new methods for efficiency assessment. DEXiPM-Grapevine© is a multicriteria assessment tool for overall sustainability of grapevine farming systems adapted from DEXiPM arable crops (Pelzer et al, 2012). DEXiPM-Grapevine© was implemented during the European PURE Project 2012-2015 (Integrated Pest Management (IPM) solutions in agriculture) in order to assess and compare various innovative grapevine systems. This model includes 65 basic attributes describing the cropping system, which are then combined into 97 aggregated attributes, designed to assess the economic, social and environmental per…
Segetal plant conservation in arable fields: functional role, farmers’ perception and farming systems
2014
International audience; Segetal plants, or “messicoles” as they are known in French, are weedy inhabitants of wheat crops (mainly winter cereals). The national list of segetal species includes 102 taxa; of which 7 are extinct, 52 threatened, 30 to be kept under close observation and 12 abundant. Data on their distribution indicates that they are mostly in decline due to intensive farming systems. As their survival is intrinsically linked to farming systems, we need to improve knowledge on their relationships with land management in order to establish a sound scientific basis for protection tools, to support and guide farmer conservation measures and to disseminate concerns for segetal biodi…
Conservation agriculture : how farmers manage weeds
2020
International audience; Conservation agriculture is characterized by the continuousand simultaneous application of three principles:minimum soil disturbance (no-tillage), residue cover onthe soil surface (dead mulch or cover crop) and diversecrop successions and cover crop mixes. Adopted inFrance by farmers since the 1990s, this farming systemstill faces some challenges to its adoption, particularlyfor weed management. To highlight this problem,425 French farmers practicing conservation agriculturewere surveyed by an online survey. Cultural practicesused to manage weeds during the first years of conservationagriculture were requested. The use of each culturalpractices was first studied inde…
Indicators of agricultural intensity and intensification: a review of the literature
2015
Since the 1960s, research has dealt with agricultural intensification (AI) as a solution to ensure global food security. Recently, sustainable intensification (SI) has increasingly been used to describe those agricultural and farming systems that ensure adequate ecosystem service provision. Studies differ in terms of the application scales and methodologies, thus we aim to summarize the main findings from the literature on how AI and SI are assessed, from the farm to global levels. Our literature review is based on 7865 papers selected from the Web of Science database and analysed using CorText software. A further selection of 105 relevant papers was used for an in-depth full-text analysis …