Division 3: Cropping Systems at Farm, Regional and Global Scales
		Chairman: Olaf Christen (D)

Cropping Systems at Farm, Regional and Global Scales : the Cropping System in its embedding systems

This division will be centered on the cropping system considered as a combination  of a technical system linked to farm structure, objectives and resources, and a biophysical system made of the various fields of the farm territory. The Farming System Design symposium organized by ESA in 2007 has clearly shown that there is an active community developing tools and knowledge to assess or design cropping systems and farming systems with this approach.
The objective is here to strengthen and enlarge this community at the interface of the D2 division and other disciplines applied at farm scale (animal science, economy…) and not represented in ESA.

This division will also address the relationships between the structure and management of the cropping systems and the embedding systems where environmental impacts, multifunctionality  and sustainability must be addressed (e.g. the landscape for biodiversity, the watershed for water quality, the territory on which an industry collect agricultural products….). This include research on agro-ecosystems functions and services (CO2 and water fluxes, resilience….).
This research domain is very active in the agronomic community but there is a need to strengthen it around the cropping systems to avoid it’s dispersal in other scientific communities (landscape ecology, hydrology, supply chain economy…).