Risk Management in Agriculture: Production and Technical Risk Management

Background

Agricultural systems, especially those of least developed countries face new challenges: to produce more to feed a growing population, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, to adapt to climate change and its variability but also to mitigate its contribution to emissions of greenhouse gases (the three pillars of Climate Smart Agriculture). These issues lead to a necessary adaptation for all agricultural systems whose diversity is proven. Among the pathways that can lead to such a transition, a better mobilization of ecological processes is the focus of research and development activities. This is primarily to increase production and improve its stability despite other changes, allowing farmers to improve their nutrition and generate income. It is also necessary to increase the other performances of agricultural systems, in particular by reducing their negative environmental externalities and increase resource use efficiency. This transition should contribute to reduce or to substitute chemical inputs and transformation of environments by techniques / practices that instead valorize the biodiversity and positive ecological processes within cultivated systems. In this approach, the specificity of local contexts in their biophysical, climatic and socioeconomic or cultural dimensions is a major element to be considered (AGRICORA, 2016).

This axis aims to better characterize, valorize and use this diversity (usable resources, biodiversity, production contexts, and local practices). System performance should thus be evaluated through their ability to better use natural resources such as solar energy, major nutrients (nitrogen -N-, -P- phosphorus) and water resources. Thus, they must promote facilitation processes between plant species for access to nutrients (e.g. inorganic P), the use of species that do not compete but instead have access to different nutrients tanks (nitrogen fixing, not fixers for example, surface water, deep water) and / or associating crops and livestock allowing nutrient transfer (crop residues, manure). Similarly, this approach requires consideration of articulated spatial scales of the plot, the cultivated system or the entire agro-ecosystem to better explore a wide range of available resources at these different scales. The continuum of land / farm / landscape is therefore of major interest (AGRICORA, 2016).