Symposium Themes, Structure and Content
The Farming Systems Design Symposium is organized to ensure the maximum amount of exchange of ideas among the attendees. Plenary presentations will provide overviews of the concepts in farming system design; concurrent sessions with discussions will focus on areas within farming systems; poster sessions with interactive discussions will provide participants an opportunity to share ideas in an open forum; and panel discussions on specific topics will present potential areas for international collaboration. The symposium will include a tour of farming systems along the coast and inland areas of California. The tour will help the attendees experience a view of the unique farming systems of the area and to hear from producers and managers about the challenges they face and the changes they have made in managing diverse farming systems. The tour will also provide participants with an opportunity to sample the diverse agricultural and horticultural production of the West Coast.
Papers are solicited for a number of topics identified by the Program Committee. These submissions will be reviewed for appropriateness to the meeting themes and to organize the program. Submissions should indicate which of the program themes they would like their paper to be considered for this symposium.
Symposium themes are:
- Theme 1. Regional-scale farm design and improvement involves the principles of operating at the whole-farm scale, such as trade-offs between economic, environmental and social aspects of farm operation; interactions with policy, community, landscape, and markets; action research and participatory methods; adapting to climate change; and crop-livestock integration.
- Subtheme 1.1 Lifecycle of Value Chains involves research opportunities for economic and environmental efficiencies ‘beyond the farm gate’ in agricultural (including forestry) transport and processing chains. Such research encompasses multiple industries, e.g. grains, livestock, sugar, agroforestry, and wine where the development and application of methods to quantify and evaluate the ‘environmental footprints’ of different agricultural industries from producer through to consumer is addressed.
- Subtheme 1.2 Climate impacts on agricultural systems involves the integration of climate effects and climate change on agricultural system performance and the goods and services derived from these systems.
- Theme 2. Field- scale farm design and improvement involves issues operating at field scale, such as optimizing production systems, integrating genetics and management in production systems, methods to reduce risk in farming systems, novel production or management systems, production system sustainability and externalities, management tools, participatory research.
- Theme 3. Alternative management systems involves issues related to developing farm management systems that provide farmers with alternatives that encourage resource conservation and reduced emissions of potential greenhouse gases while optimizing economic return and social acceptability.
- Subtheme 3.1 Systems for energy and water-use efficient farming will address the concerns about being able to produce food, feed, fiber, and fuel with the most energy and water-use efficient systems.
- Topics that address the energy requirements of farming systems and the comparison of energy use versus energy production in different farming systems will be one of the primary topics in this theme.
- Methods to evaluate water-use efficiency and comparison among farming systems to determine optimum management strategies for water will be another theme.
- Subtheme 3.2 Systems for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing carbon storage involves options to reduce methane emissions from livestock, reduce nitrous oxide emissions from fertiliser use and increase C storage in agricultural soils and forests. Modelling can enable integrated assessments and whole-systems emission budgets to design new land-use systems and development tools for the assessment of “carbon footprints.”
- Subtheme 3.3 Systems for biofuel production and production systems that increase the efficiency of agricultural inputs are critical areas for discussion with increasing attention around the world on use of agricultural systems for production of fuels. The balance of agricultural systems for the production of fuels relative to feed, food, and fiber compared to environmental impacts present a unique challenge for agricultural systems research. Will address alternatives to current production systems to create opportunities for new markets or new crops for a given region.
- Subtheme 3.4 Systems for alternative production
- Subtheme 3.1 Systems for energy and water-use efficient farming will address the concerns about being able to produce food, feed, fiber, and fuel with the most energy and water-use efficient systems.
- Theme 4. Model application and outcomes involves learning from system interventions through the evaluation of new agricultural technologies and practices under real-world conditions. Such research improves the (already impressive) adoption and impact of agricultural research by: better understanding learning and adoption pathways of farmers and agricultural industries; assessing the roles and effectiveness of decision support systems; developing, evaluating and designing the implementation of action research cycles; and conducting impact evaluations (through benefit cost analysis, surveys, longitudinal interviews) on alternative research delivery strategies and pathways to adoption.
- Theme 5. Software Support for Farming Systems Design integrates the complex science of agriculture which represents the crossroads of many disciplines. Performing in depth analyses requires a disciplined approach, taking into account the various scientific perspectives, on the basis of ever increasing amounts of data, which can now be collected at constantly diminishing costs. All of this can rapidly become unmanageable unless we rely on advanced methodologies and tolls to provide efficient solutions for the analysis and design of farming systems. In this context, software systems and tools can be effectively used to support many critical phases in the making of a farming system. In this session we welcome presentations dealing with the design and implementation of decision support systems and integrated assessment tools applied to the analysis and design of farming systems. Of particular relevance are modular systems, able to integrate and reuse software solutions addressing the multifaceted problems characterizing farming systems.