Farming systems facing global challenges: Capacities and strategies

Call for Workshops for the 11th European IFSA Symposium in Berlin, Germany, April 1-4, 2014

Farming systems have to face challenges that originate in changes of global dimension in both the bio-physical and the societal sphere:

  • Climate change leads to increasing weather uncertainty and raising average temperatures, thus impacting agro-ecosystems and water supplies;
  • Food safety concerns are spreading in Europe while in other regions food security remains a challenge;
  • Changing consumption patterns and unequal purchasing power contribute to the unsustainable use of natural resources in many countries.

These changes have manifold implications and raise questions with regard to agricultural land use: How do farmers and horticulturists cope with such challenges? What and how shall learning take place, which (human) skills need to be developed? What capacities do farming systems have to innovate, to adapt? Which strategies are promising to support the transition of farming systems at a regional level? What societal institutions and social transformation will support these transitions? And what can farming systems research contribute to address these challenges?

Obviously, these questions need multi-level, multi-actor approaches and a systemic perspective to be tackled. With the 11th European IFSA symposium we seek manifold answers that deal with challenges in an integrative, interconnected way on field and farm level, on regional or landscape level or even at a larger scale. Throughout the symposium, opportunities will be offered to discuss how capacities can be strengthened and what strategies seem promising to address various global challenges. We welcome both researchers who want to present empirical evidence and those who want to discuss conceptual frameworks. We welcome the many different perspectives on farming systems: the diversity allows us to deepen our understanding of both the challenges and the emerging potentials embedded in global changes.

IFSA Europe ( is a platform for European Farming systems research. With global challenges being the topic of 2014 symposium, we nevertheless see a need to upscale. The global IFSA forum will give space – within a limited scope – to highlight the discussion from this perspective with emphasis on the three main challenges mentioned above.

The IFSA community has a long-standing tradition of engagement and self-organisation. It is in this realm, that farming system scientists are invited to build small teams and to become conveners of workshops. For the 11th European IFSA Symposium the following five themes have been proposed by the Steering Committee:

Theme 1 – Innovation, knowledge exchange and learning processes

The bio-physical and societal challenges relating to sustainable agricultural and rural development generate new knowledge needs and call for different ways of support to learning and innovation. New collective dynamics for generating and sharing knowledge and innovations and thus AKIS (Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems) emerge. Theme 1 aims at exploring: a) the bridging of science and farmers’ practices (transdisciplinarity) especially with a view to public good issues and the role of advisory services, and b) the several facets of systems thinking in learning and innovation, in both the conceptual and in the practical sense. Topics include the current state of systems thinking ; strategies and interventions as well as barriers and enablers relating to knowledge sharing and innovation generation in diverse AKIS configurations; organizational forms, methods, tools (and respective constraints) used to promote innovation and collective learning and action; emerging advisors’ roles and needs for capacity building and training, etc. In this respect, both more conceptually oriented, but also country studies and case studies are welcomed.

Theme 2 – Adaptive farming and family farms

The rapid pace of change and its often unforeseeable direction require farmers to keep their farms flexible and adaptive. The workshops in this theme will focus on exploring the attitudes, structures and activities that build and sustain the ability of farmers to cope with environmental, as well as economic, social or political change, and to use the opportunities offered by change. In particular, the workshops in this Theme will examine the factors that support or hinder the capacity of farming systems to create, test and maintain adaptive strategies, as well as the role that flexibility and diversity plays in enabling transformation pathways.

We would like to draw particular attention to family farms, as a tribute to the International Year of Family Farming.

Theme 3 – Climate change: Farming system approaches to mitigation and adaption

Climate change impacts agriculture differently: not only does the impact depend on the region under consideration; it also depends on the farming system. However, agriculture everywhere is being scrutinized and increasingly faces societal demand to reduce its emission of greenhouse gases. System changes based on technological, biological and social innovations are needed to increase the sustainability of land use, to reduce the risks faced by farmers, and to strengthen farm resilience. Mitigation and Adaptation strategies are to be developed on farm, regional and landscape levels of decision making. Reflexive models for communication and social interaction and systemic concepts for organizational development and new institutional processes at both farm and knowledge system level seem necessary to strengthen the ability to generate the innovations needed. Especial attention may be given to (i) soil and land use systems, (ii) grazing cattle and grassland managements, and (iii) to extension and knowledge management issues.

Theme 4 – Feeding the future with sustainable agro-food systems: Alternative production, distribution and consumption views and approaches

The unsustainability of the current agro-food systems is a major concern. These systems have contributed to climate change, produce greenhouse gases and other pollutants, are largely dependent on fossil energy, are a major consumer of drinking water, have led to loss of arable land and fertility, have caused erosion of biodiversity, have produced health risks, have generated social and territorial disparities, and have led to unequal availability of food. Alternative views and approaches to sustainable agro-food systems and food chains have been developed and are being experimented with in Europe and elsewhere. We invite conveners for working group to stimulate the debate focusing on the recent conceptual developments regarding production, distribution and consumption. We also welcome working groups focusing on empirical studies showing how the transition to sustainable systems is being accomplished and the limitations/obstacles/challenges they face.

Theme 5: Landscape and territorial approaches

Farming and forestry constitute an essential part of the landscape. Indeed, these systems play a key role in rural areas, keeping alive the biological relationships essential to safeguard the various components of the natural heritage. They result in unique semi-natural environments, whose variety of habitats and species depends on the continuation of farming activity and, additionally, promote ecological, social and economic benefits with importance for the territory maintenance.

Farming systems are continuously changing. This is not itself harmful to the landscape and to the territory. However, the potentials and limitations of how to balance the economic, social and ecological values of the landscape have to be analysed, and solutions to be adapted and defined on each level, discussed with the stakeholders and matched finally. The workshops in this theme will focus on the landscape systems dynamics, given the different actual contexts in which they are equated, to identify problems and challenges, find solutions and redirect the farming model, adjusted to the global paradigm of the territory sustainability, in which the landscape and rural areas life quality must be maintained.

Instructions to Workshop Conveners in IFSA 2014

Please, submit your proposal for a workshop via e-mail to by May 15, 2013 (acc. to the outline). You can also submit your proposal online via .

Outline for the Workshop proposal

Title of the workshop:

Related to the theme n°:

Convenor(s) (name, email and affiliation):

Abstract (max 60 words):

Description (max 600 words):

Workshop process (how will papers be presented, oral, poster.. ? how will the discussion be organized? what can the participant expect?(max 60 words) :

As convenors your tasks will be to:

  • Review the abstracts; make sure that the contributions are coherent with the Workshop titles and, where relevant, suggest another WS to the author(s) [deadline].
  • Ensure the quality of the abstract for printing in the book of abstracts.
  • Peer review the paper for the proceedings (review instructions and deadline will follow).
  • Work out a program for the workshop, to be handed in to the Organising Committee [DEADLINE].
  • Give instructions to the participants how they shall prepare their presentation and give information about how the WS will be organised.
  • Convene the workshop

The IFSA Europe Steering Committee urges workshop convener to organise their workshop so that sufficient time for discussions is secured. The Committee also encourages workshop formats other than traditional presentations. A very positively rated format in IFSA 2012 (Aarhus) was to reduce presentations’ time span to 5 or 10 minutes each and have 20 – 30 minutes discussion instead.

The Steering Committee recommends that there are three conveners linked to each workshop. Steering Committee members can co-convene workshops if needed.

What a workshop should look like

Workshops are a great way to bring distant colleagues together to discuss current research, to advance your field and to connect with those who share similar interests and concerns.

We see a workshop as a very general term that can encompass a wide variety of formats, e.g.:

  • Paper session: 4-5 presentations of 15 or 20 minutes each, with or without discussant.
  • Slow talk: all participants read the papers ahead of time, no powerPoint presentation, 20-45 min. is devoted to discussing each paper, following a 5 min. review by a participant
  • Interactive short paper session: 10-14 presentations of 5 minutes each, followed by an interactive roundtable discussion of 30-45 minutes among presenters and the audience.
  • Pannel session: discussions among the panel and audience members (no formal presentations) Illustrated paper session: 8 to 12 illustrated papers: 3-5 min. oral presentation of all posters, followed by discussions at individual posters Poster session: 15-30 posters are exhibited for informal browsing with opportunities for individual discussion with poster authors.
  • A tool bazaar
  • A methods bazaar
  • Reports on a EU research project
  • Intensive discussions leading to a joint publication

A workhop is not expected to run the full length of the Symposium. It can be just one session or have up to 5 sessions depending on your design and the number of abstracts you receive.

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