Light design process in details
Aim of light design process
The aim of light design process is to identify exploitative innovations to improve crop-livestock integration. More precisely, light design process aims to identify options that exist in few farms locally or in other regions/countries and that could be adapted to a local context. It allows building a portfolio of promising options that can be tested and quantitatively assessed in experimental farms, in voluntary commercial farms, using models and so on.
(This video is mute)
Method for light design process
Light design approach is based on three workshops involving stakeholders. Workshop #1 aims at defining the context where innovations will take place. Within a given context, workshop #2 aims at defining a bank of exploitative innovations. Finally, workshop #3 aims at assessing these options to select the most promising ones for further tests. Stakeholders involved in the three workshops are not one unique group, but a flexible one. Institutional stakeholders are mostly involved in workshop #1 to share their knowledge and vision whereas technical experts and farmers are mostly involved in workshops #2 and #3 to share their knowledge and ideas. For each workshop, three types of persons are involved:
a workshop leader. He records workshop minutes and writes down main outcomes. During the workshop, he may assist the facilitator and indicates problems in equality of speaking time or working progress.
a facilitator. He fosters the discussion. His aim is to stimulate the emergence of ideas, while ensuring an equal speaking time between participants.
various stakeholders. They bring different knowledge and points of view, depending on their organization (institutional organization: public sector, private sector, specialized in natural resources management, specialized in agricultural development, etc.; scientific organization; commercial organization: farmers).
Which level of organization for identification of promising options?
Promising options can be identified at three different levels of organizations:
Technical system. Within a farm, two types of technical systems can be distinguished, the cropping system (including grasslands) and the livestock-production system. The former is a
"set of management procedures applied to a given, uniformly treated area, which may be a field, part of a field or a group of fields"
(Sebillotte cited by Sadok et al., 2008). By analogy with the previous definition, the latter is a set of management practices uniformly applied to a uniform group of animals.Farming system. It is the
"combination of productive activities at the farm level using resources available on the farm or supplied by the environment"
(Le Gal et al., 2010).Territorial system. In the CANTOGETHER project, this system corresponds to the local agricultural socio-technical system. It comprises the agri-food chain, natural resources management, and farm resources management activities.
At cropping system level, options are modifications of one or several crop management practices (such as sowing date, soil tillage management, choice of crops, etc.). At livestock-production system level, options are modifications of feeding practices as well as modifications of grazing practices.
At farming system level, options are changes in the organization of work and the allocation of farm resources (such as the allocation of land, material, labour, etc.). Changes in farming systems may result from changes in sub-systems (cropping system, livestock-production system): see the example below.
At territorial system level, options are modifications of collective organization (such as collective management of manure).
Example : How do changes in cropping system result in changes in farming system?
If one modifies a cropping system by adding a new crop species, it may change the allocation of resources in the farming system:
Land. Which field for the new cropping system?
Work. How to organize work regarding the new cropping system features and the new set of cropping systems in the farm?
Natural resources. Which resources are allocated to the new cropping system (e.g. water for irrigation)?