Syppre: better reconciliation of global and local issues through innovative and diversified cropping systems

Agriculture must succeed in reconciling productivity, economic profitability and environmental protection. This requires a shift towards new production systems, based on both ecological intensification and technicological innovations, adapted to local conditions and manageable by farmers. To address this issue, the French technical institutes on arable crops, Arvalis Institut du Végétal, Terres Inovia and ITB launched in 2014 the collaborative project “Syppre : Building together innovative cropping systems for tomorrow”, which involves National and regional stakeholders. The project includes: (i) an observatory of current cropping systems, (ii) experimentation on innovative cropping systems (three of which being part of the H2020 DiverIMPACTS project) and (iii) groups of farmers engaged in the redesign of their farming systems. These complementary activities are currently implemented in five main crop production areas representative of a diversity of French arable crops. Based on system experiments results and on interactions with farmers’ networks, Syppre’s main goals are to disseminate technical references and to produce tools in order to support farmers in the evolution of their own cropping systems. The presentation aims: (i) to briefly describe the five cropping systems and how diversification schemes have been designed to fulfil their objectives, (ii) to share their performance indicators during the first three years of experiments in terms of productivity, economic results and environmental sustainability (iii) and to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these strategies relying on cropping systems diversification to meet local and global challenges