PLANT BASED-DIVERSITY PRACTICES IN CONVENTIONAL AND ORGANIC FARMING: A FARMERS’ SURVEY IN FRANCE

Summary

Enhancing plant-based diversity within agroecosystems may be an efficient way to achieve the objective of designing more resilient and low-input agricultural systems. The objectives of this study were (i) to describe the plant-based diversity practices implemented in organic or conventional agriculture in France and (ii) to identify the motivations of the farmers to apply such practices. It was also to compare the integration of such practices in organic or conventional farming systems. The survey was carried out in five French regions with 196 farmers that apply at least one plant-based diversification practice. Five diversification practices were studied: diversified crop rotations, use of catch crops, simultaneous intercropping, agroforestry and semi-natural landscape elements. Simultaneous intercropping and agroforestry are less applied compared to catch crops and semi-natural landscape elements because they imply a deeper change in the cropping system. Nevertheless, organic farmers apply more often such practices (simultaneous intercropping and agroforestry) and 40% of them applied more than 4 of these practices at the same time (compared to less than 20% of the conventional farmers). Organic farmers seem thus to be a step further than conventional farmers with regard to the transition towards agroecological systems.