MINING DATA FROM THE NATIONAL DEPHY FARM NETWORK: POTENTIAL FOR CONCILING LOW PESTICIDE USE AND HIGH ECONOMIC PROFITABILITY

摘要

Reducing pesticide use in agriculture is a major challenge to improve sustainability that requires a holistic approach. Agronomists have addressed the question using field experiments at the cropping system level for decades. Another emerging approachrelies on large commercial farm networks producing data for contrasted management strategies in various production situations (Lechenet et al., 2014). Here we used data from the French DEPHY farm network to address two major questions: (i) what management strategies are associated to low pesticide use in arable farming, in different farming contexts? (ii) Is the objective of reducing pesticide use antagonistic with maintaining economic profitability at the cropping system level?