S15 - Session O3 - Support and massify agroecology practices with an operational toolbox - the French case study

Authors: Vincent Levavasseur *

Agroecology requires a more massive farmer engagement. Even if plenty of agronomy practices are researched in limited context, it is most important to deploy practices at large scale also to consolidate and even improve the technico-economic approaches. This paper will propose an operational toolbox based on an existing french network called Carbone Fertile - Centre National d'Agroecologie of 10,000 farms covering each type of production : cereals, livestock, vine, fruit and vegetables. The toolbox combines dissemination, training and assessment tools. Dissemination is organized through a Youtube Channel developed by Ver de Terre Production with 10,000 views per day and more than 7 millions views since his creation. A wiki platform called tripleperformance.fr complete dissemination thanks to a participative platform allowing knowledge sharing but also farm experiment description. Experiments are followed by farmers or students collecting agronomic, economic and environmental datas. The better results in a variety of regions offer a portfolio of success stories allowing a better farmer engagement. Farmers training is realized through presential and digital learning sessions. Assessment of farm practices is proposed at a field level with a humic balance to modelize carbon flows. Field diagnostics are completed with observation methods and low cost measurement tools. At farm level is proposed a sustainability assessment tool named Indiciades to represent holistic performance, thanks to the comparison with other groups. A economical and agronomic decision support system is under development to get a full operational toolbox. The results of this approach is the ability to massify access to agroecology thanks to self-training and self-assessment tools. The demarch highlights the best local farm practices and success stories, that helps individual farmers engagement but also farmers groups dynamics. As a perspective, this toolbox should be internationally spreaded and its effects should be measured through behaviour and sociological studies.