Designing mixed cropping systems and transition paths towards sustainable ecology based agriculture.

The Dutch agricultural sector is one of the most innovative worldwide, but faces major challenges including severe losses in biodiversity, waste of resources and dependence on pesticides. Furthermore, the economic position of farmers is often vulnerable while the general public demands both affordable food and a healthy biodiverse environment. There is thus an urgent need for a transition to ecology-based agricultural systems that builds on the economic strength of collaboration between parties in the agricultural sector and on trust from civil society organisations. Smart use of biological diversity in space (species/genotype mixtures) and time (succession/rotation) provides a great opportunity for meeting this challenge. Crop systems with more than one species on a field are substantially more efficient in terms of land- and resource-use, while exhibiting significantly lower disease, weed and pest incidence (reducing pesticide use) than systems with only one crop species. We will use an innovative trajectory towards designing ecology-based agriculture which requires simultaneous changes in ‘hardware’ (technology, biology), ‘software’ (knowledge, mindsets, values) and ‘orgware’ (organisational conditions like rules and infrastructure). Our research project will generate a breakthrough in the transition by integrating these dimensions and addressing questions about all three components of innovation though a deliberate co-creation strategy. Specifically we aim for an inter- and transdisciplinary approach to: 1) Innovate mixed cropping systems that optimize resource-use efficiency and pest/weed suppression for combined benefits in yields and contribute to biodiversity farm level (‘hardware dimension’). 2) Address the role of economic and psychological factors in the adoption behavior of farmers and consumers (‘software dimension’) as well as issues of distribution and logistics under diverse value propositions of crop mixtures. 3) Elucidate and stimulate the emergence and development of transition paths in multi-actor networks in relation to changes in the broader policy environment (‘integrating the hard-, soft- and orgware dimensions).