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Context and challenges

Climate change will impact the agricultural systems of north-western Europe, which are important for European and global production. It is necessary to anticipate the response to this climate change in terms of adaptation as well as contribution to mitigation. This means proposing adaptation and mitigation strategies that cover both adaptations of practices and changes in cropping systems and even their organisation in the territory.

However, this is a challenge in several respects:

• It is necessary to have a good grasp, in the context studied, of the constraints linked to climate change (temperature, precipitation, extreme events such as heat waves, frost, etc.), and to prioritise the potential impacts (positive or negative, and in different dimensions: production, flows towards the environment, etc.) in order to better define the desirable changes.
• Proposing changes in practices and cropping systems requires identifying and taking into account the synergies/antagonisms between i) actions aimed at adapting and mitigating, ii) the various issues, including those other than climate change (e.g. economic sustainability, reduction in the use of pesticides and nitrogenous inputs, ecosystem services provided, including the fight against water pollution in catchment areas and soil erosion, food quality, relocation of production), iii) the various components of agricultural systems, for example field crops and livestock.
• This is long-term work, but it is also necessary to identify as soon as possible the fundamental knowledge that needs to be acquired, as the prioritisation of research needs depends on the levers that will be mobilised. Some research involves a long investment period (genetic levers, for example).
• Unlike the case of viticulture, for example, in field crops there is a combination of vertical juxtaposition of multiple sectors and a tendency to diversify crops, which undoubtedly makes it more difficult to mobilise stakeholders in the process.

Goals

The objective of the AIR-CC project is to form a consortium and incubate a project anchored in the regional context on climate change management for agriculture.

The originality of the consortium lies in its ability to combine a range of skills that will make it possible to cover a large part of the needs required to deal with climate change in an integrated manner (agronomy, system design, environmental impacts, ecophysiology, genetics, technology/digital technology, modelling, in situ and ecotron experiments, varietal innovation, grassland management, human and animal nutrition, etc.) and to have, for a large part of the consortium, a common interest in a defined region (France-Belgium interface) representative of widespread systems in north-western Europe. This increases the potential to anchor research in a concrete context of application and thus to stimulate synergies between disciplines, interaction with agricultural stakeholders (co-construction, appropriation, implementation of actions), and the combination of levers at the farm and territorial levels.

In order to prepare a future and long-term project on climate change management for agriculture, anchoring it in the context and agricultural systems of the border region between France and Belgium, the AIR-CC project will carry out:

• i) a reliable inventory of local manifestations of climate change and its potential consequences on regional cropping systems;
• ii) the pre-identification of combined adaptation and mitigation strategies (also taking into account other agricultural issues);
• iii) the identification, based on the above elements, of areas research should focus on, according to the levers to be mobilised.

INRAE units involved

• BioEcoAgro