Plant based-diversity practices in conventional and organic farming: a farmers' survey in france

International audienceEnhancing plant-based diversity within agroecosystems might help designing more resilient and low-input agricultural systems. The objectives of this study were (i) to describe the plant-based diversity practices (ii) to identify the farmers' motivations to apply them and (iii) to compare their application 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. 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. Organic farmers apply more often simultaneous intercropping and agroforestry and 40% of them applied more than 4 diversification practices (compared to less than 20% of the conventional farmers). Organic farmers seem thus to be a step further on the path transition towards agroecological systems