LIFT: Low-Input Farming and Territories – Integrating knowledge for improving ecosystem-based farming (H2020 Project)

Delivering an agricultural policy which meets ecosystem and climatic pressures and addresses weaknesses in our current food system presents complex challenges for food producers. Adoption of ecological practices will reduce the dependence on imports into the farm and is one way to meet some of these policy ambitions. Understanding why farmers do or don’t adopt these practices is key to enabling this transition. This study outlines a series of investigations into the key barriers, values and perceptions towards ecological practice adoption across European farming. We find that personal, technical and institutional forces influence the adoption of more sustainable practices but these forces have varying levels of influence. The tensions between environmental, compared to purely production orientated motivations, may be a key barrier to ecological practice adoption. We also find a strong influence of commodity supply chains which may either encourage or limit adoption of these approaches. Promoting efforts for co‐ordinated approaches between the public and private sectors may mitigate some of the dissonance in messaging towards these practices and alleviate these tensions. We also identify a great deal of heterogeneity within the European farming community and argue for a more targeted approach that would encourage adoption of ecological approaches and promote the scaling up of these practices. La mise en place d'une politique agricole qui réponde aux pressions écosystémiques et climatiques et remédie aux faiblesses de notre système alimentaire actuel présente des défis complexes pour les producteurs de denrées alimentaires. L'adoption de pratiques écologiques réduira la dépendance vis‐à‐vis des importations dans l’exploitation agricole et constitue un moyen de répondre à certaines des ambitions de la politique. Pour permettre cette transition, il est essentiel de comprendre pourquoi les agriculteurs adoptent ou non ces pratiques. Cette étude présente une série d'enquêtes sur les principaux obstacles, valeurs et perceptions liés à l'adoption de pratiques écologiques dans l'agriculture européenne. Nous constatons que les facteurs personnels, techniques et institutionnels influencent l'adoption de pratiques plus durables, mais leurs niveaux d'influence sont variables. Les tensions entre les motivations environnementales et celles purement axées sur la production peuvent constituer un obstacle majeur à l'adoption de pratiques écologiques. Nous constatons également une forte influence des chaînes d'approvisionnement en produits de base qui peuvent soit encourager, soit limiter l'adoption de ces approches. Promouvoir des efforts pour des approches coordonnées entre les secteurs public et privé peut atténuer une partie de la dissonance dans les messages à l'égard de ces pratiques et atténuer ces tensions. Nous identifions également une grande hétérogénéité au sein de la communauté agricole européenne et plaidons pour une approche plus ciblée qui encouragerait l'adoption d'approches écologiques et favoriserait le renforcement de ces pratiques. Die Umsetzung einer Agrarpolitik, die den Anforderungen an Ökosysteme und das Klima gerecht wird und gleichzeitig die Schwächen unseres derzeitigen Lebensmittelsystems behebt, stellt die Erzeuger und Erzeugerinnen von Lebensmitteln vor große Herausforderungen. Die Anwendung ökologischer Wirtschaftsweisen wird die Importabhängigkeit landwirtschaftlicher Betriebe verringern und ist eine Möglichkeit, um einen Teil der politischen Ziele zu erreichen. Von großer Bedeutung für diesen Übergang ist das Verständnis darüber, warum Landwirte und Landwirtinnen die Wirtschaftsweise anwenden oder nicht. In der vorliegenden Studie wird eine Reihe von Untersuchungen zu den wesentlichen Hindernissen, Werten und Wahrnehmungen in Bezug auf die Einführung ökologischer Wirtschaftsweisen in der europäischen Landwirtschaft vorgestellt. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass persönliche, technische und institutionelle Faktoren die Einführung nachhaltigerer Wirtschaftsweisen beeinflussen. Allerdings sind diese Faktoren unterschiedlich stark ausgeprägt. Das Spannungsverhältnis zwischen umwelt‐ und ausschließlich produktionsorientierten Beweggründen kann ein wesentliches Hindernis für die Anwendung ökologischer Wirtschaftsweisen sein. Wir stellen auch einen starken Einfluss der Warenketten fest, da sie förderlich oder einschränkend wirken können. Bemühungen zur Förderung koordinierter Ansätze zwischen dem öffentlichen und dem privaten Sektor könnten einen Teil der Dissonanzen in der Kommunikation mildern und Spannungsverhältnisse abbauen. Wir identifizieren auch eine große Heterogenität innerhalb der europäischen Landwirtschaft und plädieren für einen gezielteren Ansatz, der die Anwendung ökologischer Wirtschaftsweisen und ihre Verbreitung fördern würde.

The territory, defined as a space forged by history, culture, social relations and structures, is placed in a multiple correlation relation with ecological agriculture. The territorial development is determined, as tendency and content, by the nature of agricultural practices, and, in its turn, generates the favorable frames for using and amplifying the methods specific to ecological agriculture. The aim of this study is to identify, at the subjective ecology level, the meeting points, both for the ecological agriculture and for territorial development. In this paper, the approach to ecological subjectivity was based on Q methodology, which is both a qualitative and statistical research method. The study was conducted in Dornelor Basin, Suceava county, an area characterized by ecological concerns and farming practices, and it identified four major types of subjective configurations built on the basis of the impact of adopting environment-friendly farming practices on the territorial development.

If we can decipher the content of opinions and evaluations of those involved in ecological agriculture then we could know the subjective fundamentals/resorts of the modernization and ecological development's process at the level of the rural communities. The study mainly aims at identifying the opinions on the ecological farm's evolutions, and, as general objectives: knowing the projections regarding employment in ecological farm, employment in agriculture's support services, determining the way in which the consequences of using ecological practices on the supply chain and impact on rural communities are perceived. The scientific approach on the ecological subjectivity has turned to a structured communication method, Delphi, in three stages. The study was implemented in a rural area defined by concernments and ecological agricultural activities-Dornelor Basin, Suceava county and it has identified the content, persistence, flexibility and statements' meaning (positive/negative) of opinions regarding the future of the ecological farms.

CONTEXT The social network analysis of farmers who have adopted agroecological practices give the possibility to identify which actors are involved in the agroecological transition and are influencing the resilience at territorial level. OBJECTIVE To understand the dynamics of these interactions, we built and tested an analytical framework inspired by quantified narrations approach adapted to agricultural context. We combined social sequences analysis (identification of common phases within individual trajectories and typology of sequences) and relational chains analysis that is a specific approach within social networks analysis focusing on the mode of access to resources. METHOD We applied our analytical framework to study the modes of access to resources mobilized by farmers to adopt agroecological practices in the Limagne plain of the Puy-de-Dôme county in France . We conducted 31 face-to-face interviews with 22 farmers in organic agriculture and 9 farmers in conservation agriculture. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS The results show that our approach gives the possibility to identify a large range of actors beyond the commonly pre-identified actors and to analyse their specific roles depending on the phase of the transition. The farmers in conservation agriculture mobilize mainly interpersonal relationships prior to the adoption of practices and have little support at the time of the implementation of conservation agriculture practices while the organic farmers rely more on farmers' groups and on formalized arrangements with support organizations and downstream actors. SIGNIFICANCE The framework should be a useful way to identify in all agricultural systems the actors effectively implicated in the agroecological transition, their differentiated roles, and the support needed to improve the transition.

The economic performance of organic dairy farms, especially during the transitional period, is not consensus in economics studies, depending on the method used, the type of indicators, the nature and scale of the performance indicator, the geographical location. We compare the economic and financial performance of both conventional and organic dairy farms based on a mixed effect panel data model estimated on 1,016 farm micro-data collected between 2007and 2018 in two departments of Brittany. As in other studies, we find that the herd size influences positively all economic and financial indicators. Even if the growth in assets is heterogeneous among organic farms, it is higher than in other farms, which decreases their return on assets. Finally, even if they share the same objective of food autonomy and sparing variable expenses, dairy farms based on grassland production system don’t exhibit the same performance dynamics as organic farms

Agglomeration bonus schemes are envisioned to incentivize the connectivity of habitat conservation across landowners. Assuming full cooperation among landowners at the landscape scale, the bulk of the literature theoretically finds that agglomeration bonus schemes are more cost effective in achieving biodiversity conservation than spatially homogenous payments. However, it may be rational for landowners not to cooperate all together but, rather, to cooperate within smaller groups. Here, we analyze the cost effectiveness of agglomeration bonus schemes when such partial cooperation is allowed, that is, when cooperation is endogenously chosen. We introduce a spatially explicit ecological-economic model within a coalition formation game to assess how landowners form stable coalition structures and how this affects biodiversity conservation under a wide range of (i) degrees of spatial cost autocorrelation, (ii) bonuses and flat-rate payments, (iii) species dispersal rates, and (iv) coordination costs. We find that agglomeration bonus schemes are more cost effective than homogenous payments only for low public expenditures. This condition is not identified if full cooperation is assumed. We find, however, that full cooperation never emerges and hence that such an assumption leads to an overestimation of the cost effectiveness of agglomeration bonus schemes. Moreover, we find that the cost effectiveness of agglomeration bonus schemes increases when the spatial cost autocorrelation and species dispersal rate decrease. Finally, coordination costs do not affect the cost effectiveness of the agglomeration bonus scheme but they have implications for its design because of their impact on coalition formation.

An early adoption of ecological management practices by farmers is a potential route to achieve sustainable and greener goals for agriculture. This briefing note outlines an economic assessment of four different ecological practices on Scottish livestock farms. The ecological practices used are; ecological area, reducing farm inputs, organic adoption and agro-forestry. The results suggest that ecological area and reduced farm inputs have potential financial benefits on farms and can be easily adopted by farmers. The organic and agro-forestry systems, however, require capital investment to establish and hence provide a challenging prospect of adoption without a provision of financial support .

Currently, farmers who are not certified according to organic certification schemes are considered to be conventional farmers. Discussions in the farming sector reveal a view that the current organic classification system is too narrow and does not account for the full heterogeneity of the ecological practices that are prevalent in the agricultural sector. The failure to recognise practices within conventional farming, such as low-input farming or conservation agriculture, may therefore undermine efforts to adopt ecological practices. This study investigates heterogeneity in farmer uptake of management practices using factor analysis for dimension reduction and Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) for identification of farmer segments. The findings reveal four farmer profiles with a varying degree of use of chemicals and ecological, alternative, or mixed management approaches. Using seemingly unrelated regression, we find that being certified according to the Swedish organic certification scheme KRAV, or the EU organic label, does not have an impact on a farmer's profile, suggesting that the data do not support the organic/conventional dichotomy. Instead, age, farming income and geographical location are to a greater degree the key factors in determining the larger farmer profile compared with the smaller, more diversified farmer profiles.

Concerns for the future of the French livestock sector are growing, amongst others due to the profession’ low attractiveness which is partly related to its difficult working conditions. Agroecology in its search for social sustainability could offer better working conditions to farmers. The objectives of this study are; i) to understand whether expected changes in working conditions are taken into consideration when cattle farmers decide to adopt or not agroecological practices, ii) to study the impact of these practices on their working conditions and ii) to discuss the use of a multidimensional framework to study farmers’ working conditions. A framework addressing seven dimensions known to impact farmers’ working conditions was used to interview 22 French cattle farmers adopting agroecological practices. Improving working conditions was rarely the main motivation of farmers to adopt agroecological practices. Although never completely anticipated, all farmers experienced an impact of the adoption of agroecological practices on their working conditions (e.g. changes in work organization, health or pleasure derived from work). Across farms, all dimensions were impacted but consequences on working conditions were situation specific. The framework allowed a comprehensive understanding, from farmers’ point of view, on how working conditions are constituted and showed that farmers make trade-offs between different dimensions.

Ecological approaches to farming are gaining increasing interest in the EU's Rural Development (RD) policy. From a societal perspective, these approaches are expected to deliver public goods in terms of environmental and social benefits for both consumers and rural actors. This study aims to investigate the policy discourses that are being used in the Rural Development Programmes (RDPs) of Sweden, France, Bavaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania to depict and justify the support for ecological approaches across three programming periods of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). For this purpose, a model integrating both CAP and RD discourses was developed and applied using deductive content analysis focused on the policy documents of RDPs. The results suggest that during the entire CAP period from 2000 to 2020, ecological approaches were mainly justified in a multifunctionality discourse, especially with the two RD discourses of i) nature conservation in all considered EU member states and regions, with the exception of Sweden, and ii) agri-ruralism, including Sweden. The neomercantilist discourse appears to be the third most dominant discourse in the two most recent CAP periods from 2007 to 2013 and 2014–2020, becoming more prominent between these two periods. Ecological approaches are almost never advocated along liberal lines as the neo-liberalist discourse is almost absent. These results highlight that these six EU member states and regions recognize the potential of these approaches for delivering public goods, despite a lesser emphasis on socio-economic benefits.

This technical report is about the analysis of farmers' social performances conducted in the WP33 of LIFT project. A comparative analysis across 5 European case studies was done on farmers' working conditions in livestock and crops farms.

This document presents the results of Task 3.2 (farm technical-economic performance) in workpackage (WP) 3 (farm performance of ecological agriculture) of the LIFT project. The overall aim of Task 3.2 is to assess and compare technical-economic farm performance across the European Union (EU) depending on the degree of ecological approaches adopted by farms and analyse drivers, affecting their performance.

The main objective of the paper is to identify and understand how the Romanian farmers relate to ecological farming in terms of ecological practices and ecological products. To achieve this objective, qualitative research methods were used: hybrid forum method and in-depth interviews. The obtained results reveal that in the county Cluj-Napoca, the stakeholders opt for building an operational social system (balanced functioning of the education, production, research, distribution systems within multi-dimensional political programmes/projects). At the same time, the stakeholders from Suceava opt for building an operational social system where the ecological practices are the core of agricultural systems.

A growing body of literature shows that full-cooperation among farmers to manage productive ecosystem services would yield gains with respect to uncoordinated approaches. The public good feature of these ecosystem services may, however, hinder the emergence of a cooperative solution at the landscape scale. In this paper, we introduce in a coalition formation game a spatially-explicit bioeconomic model of fruit pollination, where pollinaton depends on the distance to the choosen location of natural habitats. We analyse: (i) which coalitions are stable; (ii) what benefits they provide; (iii) how cooperation depends on the initial landscape structure; and (iv) how policy instruments affect cooperation. The theoretical model presents the rationality of cooperation but, due to the detailed heterogeneity and complex spatial interactions among farms, we use a numerical example to determine the stable coalitions. We find that only small coalitions are stable and that the benefits of cooperation decrease when the spatial autocorrelation of fruit tree covers increase. Policy instruments can increase the interest for cooperation but per-hectare payments and minimum participation rules may reduce the habitat area at the margin (by decreasing the stability of coalitions). Price premium for the coalition members increase the habitat area but its budget-effectiveness decreases as the spatial autocorrelation of fruit tree covers increase.

Legumes, which currently show low production levels in the European Union, can reduce negative environmental externalities of agricultural systems by lowering nitrogen (N) fertilization and increasing protein self-sufficiency. This has led to the introduction of coupled support in France, in contrast to Germany. However, the German implementation of the Nitrates Directive is more favorable for legumes. Our study assesses economic and environmental impacts of these two policies affecting legume production. We employ the bio-economic model FarmDyn, representing French and German dairy farms. The results suggest that relatively lowlevels of coupled support can lead to modest increases in legume production, but that more substantial changes require considerable subsidies. Allowing the French farm to apply manure on legumes, as is already possible in Germany, fosters legume production while considerably reducing the use of synthetic N fertilizer and imported protein-rich feed. However, environmental benefits are limited.

Plot sizes and farm-plot distances affect the economic performance of agricultural production. Their economic effects likely differ between conventional and organic farming systems due to major differences in crop production programs. Our paper quantifies these effects based on big data on resource requirements of field operations, summarized by regression models. Combined with detailed case study information obtained through interviews, we assess plot size and farm-plot distance effects for three case study farms which recently converted to organic farming. Our results show for both farming systems, as expected, that larger plot sizes reduce labor requirements and costs associated with crop production while larger farm-plot distances increase them. At same plot sizes and farm-plot distances organic farms face lower costs in crop production and, at given market prices, higher profits. Cost savings from larger plot sizes are, however, higher in conventional farming systems as are cost increases from growing farm-plot distances. This implies that economic benefits of conversion are higher for farms managing smaller plots farther away from the farm. Land fragmentation might hence favor switching to organic production and motivate regionally differentiated subsidy rates.

Various drivers behind the adoption of environmentally friendly practices have been investigated at the farm level in the literature, e.g., farmers' motivations and attitudes, farms' structure, and management or policies. Yet, the way in which quality labels and producer organisations influence the adoption of environmentally friendly practices by farmers is still under-researched. We contribute to this topic and present the results of qualitative interviews with producer organisations, conducted in 2019 in two contrasting case studies: the pig sector in Brittany (western France), and the olive oil sector in Crete (Greece). Our study shows that economic actors of food supply chains in these two case studies use European quality labels, a couple of national schemes, and a proliferation of private quality labels (in Brittany's pig sector). Our interviews reveal that many quality labels, for which agricultural farming systems must comply with a set of rules, are not specifically aimed at improving environmental impacts. In the Cretan olive oil sector, we observe several European public labels. In the French pig sector, many quality labels do not include requirements for practices aiming at improving the environment, but instead focus on other practices that matter for society, namely improving animal welfare. However, advisory services provided by the producer organisations can play a key role in the adoption of environmentally friendly practices. They include research programmes and agronomic events. In Crete, producer organisations are able to offer technical assistance thanks to European support programmes.

With agricultural areas covering almost half of European land, proper management of agro-ecosystems is key to achieve the European Union’s environmental and climate objectives. This requires spatially explicit methods and indicators. We developed an approach for the classification of agricultural land by combining two main dimensions i) land cover, using detailed geo-spatialized census data covering 63 individual crops; ii) management intensity, measured as the anthropogenic energy required in the primary crop production. As a result we identified 10 main crop systems further classified into 30 ‘crop-management systems’ at a spatial resolution of 5 arcminutes. The resulting maps show the spatial patterns of agricultural management intensity across Europe, both in absolute terms (total energy input per hectare) and relative to the dominant crop system in the spatial unit of analysis. The use of multiple intensity dimensions provides new, more detailed insights on agricultural intensity by which areas that were previously classified as low-medium intensive - some permanent crops systems or irrigated arable land - appear now as highly intensive. An expert-based evaluation was carried out on the intensity maps and corroborated the obtained results. The generated maps can be used to support decision-making in designing more targeted, context-specific agricultural and territorial policies. In particular, findings can be relevant in the context of the Common Agricultural Policy post 2020 and the Biodiversity Strategy towards 2030, both of which will benefit from more detailed spatially explicit information to achieve their stated objectives.

Legumes can limit the impact of agricultural systems on the environment by limiting N fertilization, diversifying crop rotation and substituting imported protein-rich feed. However, their production remains low in the European Union, which led to specific policies. France established Voluntary Coupled Support scheme for legumes. Germany did not introduce a coupled support, but provides more favorable implementation of the Nitrates Directive for legumes by allowing spreading manure on these crops. Our study assesses economic and environmental impacts of the coupled support and measures of the Nitrates Directive affecting legume production in France and Germany. We employ the bio-economic model FarmDyn, parameterized for a typical dairy farm in France and Germany. Legumes are introduced as cash crops and on-farm feed, highlighting interactions between crop and animal productions. Different levels of coupled support per hectare were analyzed and the French versus the German implementation of the Nitrates Directive were compared. Results suggest that voluntary coupled support leads to an increase in legume production but to a lesser extend in the German farm than in the French farm, due to higher opportunity costs of legumes. In both farms, the increase in legume production leads to limited environmental benefits: nitrogen leaching and global warming potential slightly decrease. In the French farm, the German implementation of the Nitrates Directive fosters legume production. Thus, this study shows that allowing manure spreading on legumes can help reaching high legume production in livestock farms. However, this further increase in legume production does not lead to environmental benefits. Thus, allowing manure spreading on legumes to increase their production should be justified by other goals such as improving the protein self-sufficiency of the farm.

For some Localised Agro-Food Systems (LAFS), for ex. Comté in France, Gruyère in Switzerland, the cheese and milk prices are above average whilst others as for example the Cantal from France are similar or even below average. The objective of this paper is to shed light on levers which the agents activate to assure their uniqueness is irrevocable, and uphold the benefits of their LAFS. Raising Rivals' Costs Theory gives interesting point of view about the behaviour of firms which could make use of the collective rules to raise the costs of their competitors in the particular case of LAFS oriented to the production of traditional cheeses. This will be explored through two cases studies. In the first case (territorial collective governance mode of the local supply chain), the conditions are met to conclude that the raising costs strategy corresponds to requirements which are based to a corresponding quality which meets consumers’ expectations and willingness to pay. In the second case (sectoral governance mode), few firms have taken control on the supply chain and have imposed with the time a model based on costs leadership. As conclusion, a case-by-case in-depth approach is necessary to assess whether strategy to raise costs of the rivals damages consumers welfare in the case of PDO supply chains.

Some Localised Agro-Food Systems (LAFS) are traditionally qualified as success stories (Comté PDO in France, Gruyere PDO in Switzerland, Parmigiano Reggiano PDO in Italy), whilst other PDOs (as for example the Cantal PDO from France) pay the same price for the milk as standard milk. The price difference may reach between 10 and 25% over a long period. To explain this difference, we assume that the agents who make up the LAFS developed a collective action to protect their localized cheese production system against unfair competition and to promote their product outside its region of origin. The aim of this communication is to shed light on levers which the agents activate to assure their uniqueness is irrevocable, and uphold the benefits of their LAFS. We propose to discuss the idea that the search for market power based on the strategy of raising rivals’ costs may be used even outside a situation of vertical integration or a situation in which pressure is applied to suppliers to challenge competitors. We assume that some companies within the LAFS have sufficient control on the rules governing the organization of the traditional system to benefit from it. They also succeed in protecting a kind of relationship between business companies. The Raising Rivals’ Costs theory helps to analyze the economic consequences of the legal set-up implementation and of its control by some companies. Indeed, we show that the collective control of the rules which are set up in the PDO legal framework explain the difficulties met by rivals to stand out through an alternative and independent production system based on the costs leadership strategy. The collective set up of institutions and rules help the agents to achieve a collective competitive advantage in which every agent benefits individually. This is the strategy developed in Europe and particularly for two PDO Localised Agro-cheese Systems: Comté PDO for France and Gruyère PDO for Switzerland.

The lack of monetary compensation and the difficulty for residents to exit close to an incinerator lead them to protest the construction of waste facilities. Opponents try to change undesirable locations to maintain their welfare. With a cost-benefit analysis, our incinerator location model attempts to measure both transportation and externality costs in comparable units. Two extreme behaviours are being tested: the maximisation of the distance from the facility to the residents' homes to avoid externality vs. the minimisation of distance from the households to the incinerator to reduce transportation costs. The aim of this article is to present the effects of opponents on the incinerator location and to propose an idea according to which conflict can change the distribution of resources in society.

This questionnaire is for the survey to farmers that is to be carried out in the LIFT project, to at least 1,500 farms across the European Union (EU) in the LIFT case study areas. The LIFT large-scale farmer survey represents a key task that provides value added to the LIFT project and informs EU policy analysis as a whole. The innovation is that it collects primary qualitative and quantitative data at the farm level, but also that data will be comparable across a large geographical area, across different production sectors, as well as across different farming practices/systems. The survey aims at collecting information that is not available in existing data sources, and that will be used in the analyses of the project.

The deliverable D6.1 of the LIFT project explores what types of discourses are used in six European Union (EU) member states’ Rural Development Programs (RDP) and other agricultural policy docu-ments and how they incorporate ecological approaches across three Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) periods. This multiple case study highlights similarities and differences in the dominant discourses as emerging from national policy documents in the following selected EU member states: France, Ger-many (Bavaria), Hungary, Poland, Romania and Sweden. It also demonstrates how discourse analysis can be used to gain understanding about the dominant discourses expressed in these documents in relation to how ecological approaches are defined, the policy rationale for encouraging ecological ap-proaches and the expected consequences of doing so. Conceptually, we focused on two types of discourses identified from the literature: 1) the three CAP discourses: i) neomercantilism; ii) neoliberalism and iii) multifunctionality, and 2) the five socio-politi-cal discourses of Rural Development (RD): iv) agri-ruralist, v) hedonist, vi) utilitarian, vii) nature con-servation and viii) community sustainability. These types of discourses were together integrated in a model, where each policy discourse depicts agriculture as accomplishing a specific function. The theo-retical framework is grounded within a political economy perspective. This means that policy develops because of confrontation between different concerned agents with different interest, pushing for dif-ferent objectives. The state acts as an intermediary between these agents and aims at ensuring con-sensus and maintenance of agreement. Policy documents are therefore often the result of competing discourses and contradicting policy objectives. Across EU member states, the results show that ecological approaches are mainly depicted with the multifunctionality discourse with two dominating sub-discourses of nature conservation and agri-ru-ralism. Nevertheless, we observe an increase in the use of the neomercantilist discourse in the last CAP period. This parallels what the previous literature finds in Commissioners’ speeches: a reappear-ance of the traditional neomercantilist discourse in the CAP agenda 2014-2020. Farming systems (with farming practices) related to agroecology, biodiversity-based and organic farming are among the most commonly mentioned farming systems.

Agricultural cooperatives evolve in a context with complexity and changes of their legal, social and business environment. Strategic management could be a relevant approach to help cooperative members to improve the global performance and the social responsibility of their cooperatives. To formalize and to manage their strategy, we propose as an accompaniment a method entitled PerfCuma. The theoretical framework is based on the concept of systemic approach to change. The method is organized in four steps: i) an in-depth stakeholder's analysis of the cooperative situation (including sustainability) and the cooperative goals; ii) formalizing the strategy by defining strategic lines. We use the cognitive map approach to model the complexity to understand the strong drivers of the strategy; iii) drawing up the balanced scorecard and an action plan to manage the strategy; iv) monitoring the implementation of the strategy. A test of the method on five Cooperatives for the Use of Agricultural Equipment (Cuma) has been successful. The method is now unfolded in France. © 2018 International Farm Management Association and Institute of Agricultural Management.

L’évolution de l’agriculture française entre 1980 et 2016 a été marquée par la poursuite des gains de productivité du travail permis par la forte substitution du capital au travail. Le processus de modernisation inclut de plus en plus les technologies de l'information. Une question se pose : quelles sont les conséquences de la révolution numérique sur les exploitations ? Pour répondre, nous analysons les données tirées de la littérature scientifique et professionnelle et d’enquêtes auprès d’experts. Ces évolutions interrogent le rapport des agriculteurs au travail en termes d’organisation, de conseil et d'autonomie de la décision. Ne serions-nous pas déjà entrés dans le deuxième âge des machines, celui des machines capables de prendre de décisions plus efficaces que les humains ?

This deliverable D2.1 of the LIFT project presents the conceptual framework on farmers’ up‐take of ecological approaches across the supply chain. The framework combines behavioural theories on individual decision‐making with drivers and methodological considerations related to economic decision‐making. Furthermore, deliverable D2.1 presents a systematic map of previous literature related to farmers’ up‐take of ecological approaches. The purpose of D2.1 is to guide data Collection through the LIFT survey to farmers and interview studies in WP (workpackage) 2 of LIFT. The theoretical part of the framework departs from the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) for understanding individual decision‐making, extended by integrating the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Furthermore, the framework distinguishes between endogenous, as well as exogenous factors such as: (i) motivational factors; (ii) farmers’ self‐identity; (iii) farm characteristics; (iv) supply‐chain characteristics; (v) institutional conditions (including policy framework); and (vi) consumers’ preferences and demands. Factors serve to identify the main drivers of farmers’ up‐take of ecological approaches, and to enable comparison of different dimensions of up‐take across territories. The decision to implement the up‐take of ecological approaches is approached across four different dimensions, according to their: (i) timing; (ii) intensity/extensity; (iii) size of change, and (iv) type of practices adopted. These dimensions are important since the factors that affect the decision to adopt have been found to differ across them. The deliverable continues by presenting a systematic map of previous literature related to farmers’ up‐take of ecological approaches. Two methodological approaches for understanding the drivers of farmers’ up‐take of ecological approaches are suggested: psychometric methodology and qualitative interviews, using the means‐end chain and laddering approach. The deliverable ends by concluding on implications for the LIFT farmers’ survey.

Administrative datasets are utilised to study farms that have converted to organic beef production in Ireland, to draw lessons for future CAP scheme design. The analysis confirms anecdotal evidence in relation to a leakage of animals from the organic to the non-organic (conventional) beef sector. As a result of this differential response across the value chain, there is sub-optimal production of organic meat relative to the investment in incentives for conversion from non-organic to organic production. This may result in risks to the long term viability of the incentive scheme and more widely, for supports for organic farming.

The aim of this present Deliverable 1.1 (D1.1) is to lay the foundation for the development of a framework for farm typologies, which takes into account existing typologies and existing nomenclature (e.g. low-input, organic, extensive, high nature value farming, conservation agriculture, agroecological, etc.) when considering in particular the degree to which farms adopt ecological practices. This early phase of the typology work aims at providing a consolidated framework composed of farming systems and farming practices, and a first screening of which practice is associated with which system. This initial stage will be complemented in further deliverables by indicators and thresholds to link concepts to data and models.