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Increasing the level of feed autonomy isusually considered as a prerequisite for conversion of cattle farms to organic management. This study is aimed at generating references for organic dairy and beef production through a technical and economic assessment of feed autonomy in commercial farms. Data were collected in 2014 and 2015 on 11 farms located in distinct agricultural regions of Wallonia, Belgium. Dry matter (DM) production, animal performance and all cash in- and outflows were recorded. Economic efficiency (EE) was computed as the share of the feed margin, i.e., the gross product minus the total feed and processing costs, in the gross product. The mean level of mass feed autonomy (FAm) was 94 ± 6%. Feed production costs(p 65% had a level of FAm ≥ 90%; however, one farm with FAm ≥ 90% had a mean EE of 55% over both study years. This observation suggested that a 90% level of FAm is necessary, but not sufficient, to increasing the level of feed autonomy is usually considered as a prerequisite for conversion of cattle farms to organic management. This study is aimed at generating references for organic dairy and beef production through a technical and economic assessment of feed autonomy in commercial farms. Data were collected in 2014 and 2015 on 11 farms located in distinct agricultural regions of Wallonia, Belgium. Dry matter (DM) production, animal performance and all cash in- and out flows were recorded. Economic efficiency (EE) was computed as the share of the feed margin, i.e., the gross product minus the total feed and processing costs, in the gross product. The mean level of mass feed autonomy (FAm) was 94 ± 6%. Feed production costs(p 65% had a level of FAm ≥ 90%; however, one farm with FAm ≥ 90% had a mean EE of 55% over both study years. This observation suggested that a 90% level of FAm is necessary, but not sufficient, to be economically efficient in organic cattle farming. Four production systems with EE > 65% and thus FAm ≥ 90% were finally characterized based on the observed crop rotations, overall DM yields, stocking rates and animal performances.

Description of the subject. Many decision support tools (DSTs) have been developed to help dairy farmers optimally manage the high variability in the quality and availability of grass-based fodder, but their adoption rate remains low. Objectives. The objective was to characterize and understand the adoption rate of DSTs related to using grass-based fodder. Methodology. A sample of 61 Walloon (Belgium) dairy farmers responded to an online survey concerning their current use of 23 DSTs related to using grass-based fodder either directly (pasture or grassland) or indirectly (feeding or techno-economic), as well as barriers to and incentives for adopting them, their current interest in DSTs, and satisfaction with the guidance on using these DSTs. Results. Pasture management DSTs were used the least, even though farmers were the most interested in them. Farmers used simple indicators rather than software or automated tools. Farmers indicated that DSTs were too expensive and time consuming, even if they could ultimately save them time and money. Continuing education is lacking. Four types of users were identified who influence the use of DSTs: high user no grazing (H-NG), high user traditional or technical grazing (H-T/TG), low user traditional grazing (L-TG), and moderate user organic (M-ORG). Conclusions. Communicating with end-users during each step of DST development would help (1) identify the specific needs of a diverse set of dairy farmers and (2) develop DSTs that better correspond to their practices. More long-term guidance is required to inform farmers about existing DSTs and to transfer the knowledge required to use them.

• Crop diversification is a dynamic pathway towards sustainable agrifood systems. • Technological and institutional barriers restrict uptake of crop diversification. • More coordination and cooperation among agrifood system stakeholders is required. • The European Crop Diversification Cluster calls for multiactor networks. European cropping systems are often characterized by short rotations or even monocropping, leading to environmental issues such as soil degradation, water eutrophication, and air pollution including greenhouse gas emissions, that contribute to climate change and biodiversity loss. The use of diversification practices (i.e., intercropping, multiple cropping including cover cropping and rotation extension), may help enhance agrobiodiversity and deliver ecosystem services while developing new value chains. Despite its benefits, crop diversification is hindered by various technical, organizational, and institutional barriers along value chains (input industries, farms, trading and processing industries, retailers, and consumers) and within sociotechnical systems (policy, research, education, regulation and advisory). Six EU-funded research projects have joined forces to boost crop diversification by creating the European Crop Diversification Cluster (CDC). This Cluster aggregates research, innovation, commercial and citizen-focused partnerships to identify and remove barriers across the agrifood system and thus enables the uptake of diversification measures by all European value-chain stakeholders. The CDC will produce a typology of barriers, develop tools to accompany actors in their transition, harmonize the use of multicriteria assessment indicators, prepare policy recommendations and pave the way for a long-term network on crop diversification.

Crop diversification represents a key lever to support the development of sustainable agri-food systems. Knowledge on trade-offs and carry over effects from different crop diversification strategies is essential to inform agricultural stakeholders of potential costs and benefits. This knowledge is limited by existing data and performance measures predominantly focused on single crops, rather than complete rotations. Moreover, sustainability performance indicators are often used for assessment purposes, rather than supporting stakeholder learning and actions. A new set of 32 indicators was developed to address these needs, and used to evaluate the environmental, economic and social sustainability of the diversified agricultural systems highlighted in the case studies, which are often characterized by data availability constraints. This approach was tested in France, Germany and Italy to determine a critical ex-post diagnosis of the existing systems, and for the assessment of ex-ante innovative scenarios. The results will be used to support these case studies in the identification and design of more sustainable agricultural systems. Although the framework is based on feasible and proxy indicators, the assessment outcomes have allowed local actors to reflect on the effects generated by the implemented crop diversification strategies. Key issues include trade-offs occurring between optimizing economic and environmental performance.

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a useful tool for investigating the environmental performance of agricultural products. For many crop-based products, the agricultural production step shows substantial impacts in LCA results. Using the illustrative case of cereal production in Wallonia, Belgium, the study uses sensitivity analyses to explore the parameters to be adjusted in priority when conducting a local LCA for crop production, taking into account uncertainties tied to input and output inventory data and impact characterization factors. The analysis investigated local specificities in the production of eight cereal crops in Wallonia. Cropping systems were modeled according to accounting data from representative farms, including areas, yields, inputs, and machinery. Sensitivity and uncertainty analyses for input parameters and methodological choices were performed. The following parameters were evaluated: the influence of the functional unit (kg, ha, €), the link between yield and LCIA results, the relevance of using up-to-date data for mineral fertilizer production, the type of mineral fertilizer, the model for direct field emission calculation, and the allocation rules. We observed that the use of several functional units embracing the multifunctional role of agriculture enables identifying crops with low impacts per kilogram, hectare, and euro at the same time. The cereal production steps with the greatest impact were mineral fertilizer production (up to 84% of the total impact, depending on crop and impact category) and emissions from the application of mineral (up to 65%) and organic (up to 94%) fertilizers. Sensitive parameters to be adjusted in priority were identified. Despite the high correlation between yield and results, simply extrapolating impacts on the basis of yield seemed mostly inappropriate. Using updated data for mineral fertilizer production reduced impacts by 6–160%. Shifting models for field emission calculation influenced acidification and eutrophication by 5–142%. Hypotheses on allocation factors affected results by 10–26%. An LCA for the production of major Walloon cereals was conducted taking into account local cropping practices and yields. The parameters relevant for conducting a regional LCA of crop production were identified and discussed in comparison with generic data and models. As LCA is an iterative process, further improvements would include the use of more specific models for direct field emission calculation. The results could serve as a reference for products using Walloon cereals and help enhance the quality of LCAs conducted for these products.

Agent-Based Models (ABMs) are becoming a widespread approach to model human-environment interactions. They belong to the class of individual-based modelling approaches, which allow a bottom-up representation of the system being modelled, eliciting its macro-level evolution while modelling the micro-level behavior of its individuals. This paper deals with the application of an ABM to simulate future crop patterns in the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg under a pre-defined scenario. The simulated scenario deals with the introduction of a “green consciousness” component in farmers' decisions, substituting a purely rational approach based only on profit maximization. The results of the ABM are used to perform a life cycle assessment of Luxembourg's agricultural system. The paper first describes the difficulties and the challenges connected with building an ABM for agriculture and then shows the results of the selected case study. The results show that, from a lifecycle perspective, a “greenness” criterion aimed only at reducing greenhouse gases emissions reveals patently a sub-optimal choice and causes burden shifts to other impact categories. Finally the ABM-based (bottom-up) approach is compared with a top-down approach applied in a previous study by the same authors to model the same system. Assets and drawbacks of the two approaches are highlighted.

The study examined the prediction error of near infrared reflectance spectroscopy of faeces (FNIRS) in estimations of in vivo organic matter digestibility (OMD) and dry and organic matter voluntary intake (DMVI and OMVI) of forages by ruminants in established calibration datasets from our laboratories. It also examined the repeatability of the FNIRS measurements of these parameters and the proportion of grass and clover in ingested forage. The prediction error of NIRS calibrations depends on the accuracy and precision of reference data. In this study, the variability in reference data for OMD, DMVI and OMVI was less than 10% of the mean. Correction for the error in the reference method almost halved the standard error of prediction (SEP) for OMD to 0.0155. For DMVI and OMVI, the corrected SEP was 8–9 g/kg BW 0.75 , similar to the apparent SEP. These results suggested that the FNIRS calibrations were precise enough to predict OMD adequately, but probably not DMVI or OMVI. The repeatability of FNIRS spectra and predictions assessed by repeated measurements of the same sample was satisfactory for all tested parameters. For OMD, DMVI, OMVI and the grass and clover proportion of the ingested forage, prediction repeatability was lower than, or similar to, the standard error of cross-validation (SECV) of the FNIRS calibration. The study showed that FNIRS could be a reliable method for predicting the OMD of ruminants, but the prediction of voluntary intake with acceptable error was less satisfactory because of uncertainties in the FNIRS calibration models.

We build an ABM for simulation of incentives for maize to produce bio-fuels in Luxembourg with an aim to conduct life cycle assessment of the additional maize and the consequent displacement of other crops in Luxembourg. This paper focuses on the discovery of market price for crops. On the supply side we have farmers who are willing to sell their produce based on their actual incurred costs and an expected markup over costs. On the demand side, we have buyers or middlemen who are responsible for quoting prices and buying the output based on their expectation of the market price and quantity. We have N buyers who participate in the market over R rounds. Each buyer has a correct expectation of the total number of buyers in each market. Thus in each round, the buyer bids for a quantity \(q_b^r=\frac {Q_b^e}{N \times R}\), where \(Q_b^e\) is the expected total output of a crop. The buyer at each round buys \(\min (q_b^r,S_t^r)\), the minimum of the planned purchase at each round r and the total supply \(S_t^r\) by farmers in the round at a price \(p_b^r\). The market clears over multiple rounds. At each round, the buyers are sorted by descending order of price quotes and the highest bidder gets buying priority. Similarly the farmers are sorted according to the ascending order of quotes. At the end of each round, the clearance prices are visible to all agents and the agents have an option of modifying their bids in the forthcoming rounds. The buyers and sellers may face a shortfall which is the difference between the target sale or purchase in each round and the actual realised sale. The shortfall is then covered by smoothing it over future rounds (1–4). The more aggressive behaviour is to cover the entire shortfall in the next round, while a more calm behaviour leads to smoothing over multiple (4) rounds. We find that there is a statistically distinct distribution of prices and shortfall over smoothing rounds and has an impact on the price discovery.

Producing biogas via anaerobic digestion is a promising technology for meeting European and regional goals on energy production from renewable sources. It offers interesting opportunities for the agricultural sector, allowing waste and by-products to be converted into bioenergy and bio-based materials. A consequential life cycle assessment (cLCA) was conducted to examine the consequences of the installation of a farm-scale biogas plant, taking account of assumptions about processes displaced by biogas plant co-products (power, heat and digestate) and the uses of the biogas plant feedstock prior to plant installation. Inventory data were collected on an existing farm-scale biogas plant. The plant inputs are maize cultivated for energy, solid cattle manure and various by-products from surrounding agro-food industries. Based on hypotheses about displaced electricity production (oil or gas) and the initial uses of the plant feedstock (animal feed, compost or incineration), six scenarios were analyzed and compared. Digested feedstock previously used in animal feed was replaced with other feed ingredients in equivalent feed diets, designed to take account of various nutritional parameters for bovine feeding. The displaced production of mineral fertilizers and field emissions due to the use of digestate as organic fertilizer was balanced against the avoided use of manure and compost. For all of the envisaged scenarios, the installation of the biogas plant led to reduced impacts on water depletion and aquatic ecotoxicity (thanks mainly to the displaced mineral fertilizer production). However, with the additional animal feed ingredients required to replace digested feedstock in the bovine diets, extra agricultural land was needed in all scenarios. Field emissions from the digestate used as organic fertilizer also had a significant impact on acidification and eutrophication. The choice of displaced marginal technologies has a huge influence on the results, as have the assumptions about the previous uses of the biogas plant inputs. The main finding emerging from this study was that the biogas plant should not use feedstock that is intended for animal feed because their replacement in animal diets involves additional impacts mostly in terms of extra agricultural land. cLCA appears to be a useful instrument for giving decision-makers information on the consequences of introducing new multifunctional systems such as farm-scale biogas plants, provided that the study uses specific local data and identifies displaced reference systems on a case-by-case basis.

Greenhouse gas emission intensity (GHGI; kilograms carbon dioxide equivalents/kilograms liveweight gain) have to be reduced so as to limit the impact of human activities on global warming while furnishing food to human. In this respect, performances of 654 Belgian Blue double-muscled bulls (BBdm) during their fattening phase were recorded. On this basis, their greenhouse gas emissions were modelled to estimate variation in GHGI and investigate mitigation options at that level. The relevance of theses option is discussed, taking into account the whole life and production system scales. Large variations (mean (s.d.)) were observed (from 7.2 (0.4) to 10.0 (0.7) kg carbon dioxide equivalents/kg liveweight gain) for, respectively, the 1st- and 4th-quantile groups defined for GHGI. Early culling, low liveweight and age at start of the fattening phase of the bulls would lead to a reduction of GHGI. Nevertheless, more than 32% of the variation remained unexplained. However, decision leading to reduction of GHG intensity at this stage of the life may be compensated in the early stage of BBdm. Attention is drawn on the necessity to encompass the whole life of BBdm for investigating mitigation options and on the sensitivity of the results on models and methodological choices.