Tools for restoring biodiversity on farms: application of a results-based approach - ADORE

Over the past twenty years, initiatives have been launched all over Europe to preserve and enhance biodiversity at the farm level. However, farmers very often find themselves in the position of observers or executors of advice rather than players in the management of biodiversity on their farms, as if they were subject to constraints in their practices without being involved in the objectives and ambitions of these action plans.

Objectives

Preserving biodiversity on farms: thinking in terms of results

The aim is therefore to move from an approach based on the application of action plans (defined by non-farmers) to an approach based on the management of biodiversity on farms, characterised by:

1. The freedom given to groups of farmers in a given area to choose the actions they wish to develop in favour of biodiversity,
2.  Action based on a "results rationale" with regard to the desired biodiversity, encouraging farmers who already have "good" results and supporting others in their search for solutions.

Providing farmers with tools enabling them to measure the effects of their practices on biodiversity is a fundamental issue in facilitating the transition of the agricultural world to agro-ecology. The adaptive management approach, which has already proved its worth in helping farmers to improve water quality at the level of a water catchment area, will be tested in ADORE to preserve biodiversity on farms. This adaptive management approach is participatory, as it is the farmers themselves who define which biodiversity elements they wish to test their practices on, with a view to achieving results.

Approaches 

The ADORE project involves testing the possible adaptation of an approach that has already been applied in the field of water quality to the issue of biodiversity management on a farm scale. 
It involves the implementation of an activity designed by the farmer with a "results logic" in order to manage biodiversity with the levels to be achieved defined by the "beneficiaries". The agricultural and pastoral practices implemented are developed by the practitioners who carry out the work, with the support of "knowledgeable people" and a facilitator who supports the project's stakeholders and its governance. 
The project will first be carried out on an INRAE experimental set-up, i.e. on two research farms, the Saint-Laurent de la Prée farm and the Ferlus farm, in order to identify the conditions for adapting the method to the issue of biodiversity, analyse any stumbling blocks that may be encountered and suggest measures to overcome them. All of this before the prospect of subsequent implementation on private farms.

INRAE units involved

• DSLP Experimental Unit - Experimental domain of Saint-Laurent-de-la-Prée
• SADAPT Joint Research Unit - Science Action Development - Activities Products Territories
• EABX Research Unit – Aquatic Ecosystems and Global Change
• UE FERLus - Experimental Unit - Fodder, Ruminants, Environment - Lusignan
• Agronomie Joint Research Unit - Agronomy

External partnership

• An ornithologist