A framework for designing multi-functional agricultural landscapes: Application to Guadeloupe Island

Abstract

To improve agriculture faced with regional sustainability issues, agricultural landscapes providing a diversity and high level of ecosystem services are necessary.We have developed and tested the MOSAICA-f framework to build innovative multi-functional agricultural landscapes that can consider explicitly: 1) the performance of cropping systems at the field scale, 2) farmers' decision processes on the adoption of cropping systems, and 3) possible scenarios for innovations and policy changes at the regional scale. This framework is based on a scenario approach that encompasses normative, exploratory and optimized scenarios to assess the relevance of combinations of new agricultural policies, changes to the external context (market and regulations) and innovations in cropping systems. The impacts of these changes on sustainability issues are simulated using the regional bioeconomic model MOSAICA for farmers' decision processes regarding the adoption of cropping systems at the field scale throughout a region. Applied in Guadeloupe (French West Indies), the MOSAICA-f framework enabled the design of a scenario increasing agricultural added value, food and energy self-sufficiency, employment and the quality of water bodies and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This sustainable scenario combines new cropping systems tuned to farm types with a reorientation of subsidies, an increased workforce and banning food crop production on polluted soils. It can be used to understand the potential contribution of agriculture to sustainability issues and to help local decision makers define policies that will account for the spatial diversities of farms and fields in a landscape. Beyond the design of such a win-win scenario, MOSAICA-f has revealed trade-offs in the provision of services by agriculture.