Feedback from co-designing innovative, low-herbicide-use systems with farmers: the role of tools in support of facilitation

Reducing herbicide use requires multiple changes in agricultural practices, thought at the cropping system scale. These combined changes have numerous effects (which may limit the adoption of such innovative practices) and make it difficult to assess them by expert assessment. Hence, we used various models (FLORSYS, DEXiPM) to evaluate cropping systems co-designed by groups of farmers. The presentation of the assessment results allowed to broaden the perspective (calculation of new indicators) and to consider long term issues (e.g., resilience of a system in the face of a peak in weed pressure). We also showed that it is possible to use, under certain conditions (available time, training and support, simplicity) a design aid tool (DECIFLORSYS) during the workshop. Using it during the workshop makes it possible to provide evaluation results more quickly, to improve the description of the co-designed innovative system and/or to stimulate the design of a new system to improve sustainable weed management performances.