Role of field experiments to support crop diversification

Summary

Crop diversification is a major pillar of agroecology but is hindered by technological, organisational and institutional barriers all along value chains and sociotechnical systems;
Smart design of diversified systems can help achieve Farm2Fork objectives, reduce input uses, mitigate climate change without jeopardizing food security
Assessing indirect and long-term effects is crucial to drive the nonlinear, dynamic and adaptive process of crop diversification
Shifting to agroecology in a context of climate change calls for a change of paradigm in the way we produce actionable knowledge
Farmer innovation « tracking », on-farm participatory field trials, on-station experiments and Long-Term Experiments should be articulated