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The reconciliation of economy and environment is a key factor in achieving sustainability. The European Union wishes to achieve the sustainability of its agriculture in order to produce high quality food materials and to manage energy crisis and the risks related to climate and market fluctuations. These risks can be mitigated by reducing negative impacts of agricultural activities on the environment. Therefore, this study was designed to derive and promote the potential tools to increase the land area under grain legumes in Midi-Pyrenees region (France) where it currently stands at only 1 to 3%. For this purpose modeling chain APES-FSSIMIndicator was used to assess different alternative scenarios of proposition of new grain legumesbased cereals rotations, provision of higher premium on grain legumes, increase in sale price and yield of grain legumes, reduction in price and yield variability of grain legumes and combination of all these scenarios. Results showed that alternative scenario of provision of more premiums on grain legumes was more efficient in increasing the grain legume area than other alternative scenarios, but this would require a level of subsidies much higher than the current crop-specific subsidies in EU. However, in case of combination of all these scenarios, the increase in grain legumes area was maximum for all three selected farms from the study area. In addition farm income was increased by 11 to 26% and energy consumption was decreased by 4 to 9% for the selected farms. It is concluded that grain legumes area in Midi-Pyrenees farming systems can be increased by following the above mentioned alternative strategies.

This manuscript attempts to characterize the diversity of farm households in the Saïs region of Morocco on the basis of their cropping systems and analyze how they influence their economic, environmental and food performances. The paper also uses the composite and input-specific technical efficiency measures to evaluate the performance of each cropping system where multidimensional comparisons are made across all the economic, environmental, efficiency and environmental indicators.

Mapping desertification has proven to be a challenging task. Difficulties derive from its ambiguous definition and the comprehensive integration of various biophysical and socioeconomic indicators that need to be considered in the evaluation process. In the early 1990s, assessments and mapping were based primarily on expert opinions that introduced uncertainties and obvious shortcomings. Later on, with the development of the remote sensing technology and the advancement of the geographic information systems, global mapping became common place. Results showed that temporal and spatial scales are crucial components of the mapping and assessment process, but great difficulties arose comparing maps that were developed using different methodologies. Global maps could depict only general trends in desertification caused by human-induced land-use changes or climatic variations but proved to be of limited value at local level. On the other side, local studies have problems of extrapolation. This necessitates the performance of mapping at various scales, but only after a methodological approach has been developed that accounts for all the components of the desertification process, allowing upscaling from global to local level and vice versa. Desertification mapping is under way by the new World Atlas of Desertification (WAD) 3rd edition to be published. The WAD places particular importance to case studies that document local realities affected by desertification as well as mitigation actions. Finally, concerned efforts must be made to develop and implement sustainable land-use planning and land management techniques that arrest and reverse the negative consequences of desertification.

Biophysical restoration or rehabilitation measures of land have demonstrated to be effective in many scientific projects and small-scale environmental experiments. However circumstances such as poverty, weak policies, or inefficient scientific knowledge transmission can hinder the effective upscaling of land restoration and the long term maintenance of proven sustainable use of soil and water. This may be especially worrisome in lands with harsh environmental conditions. This review covers recent efforts in landscape restoration and rehabilitation with a functional perspective aiming to simultaneously achieve ecosystem sustainability, economic efficiency, and social wellbeing. Water management and rehabilitation of ecosystem services in croplands, rangelands, forests, and coastlands are reviewed. The joint analysis of such diverse ecosystems provides a wide perspective to determine: (i) multifaceted impacts on biophysical and socio-economic factors; and (ii) elements influencing effective upscaling of sustainable land management practices. One conclusion can be highlighted: voluntary adoption is based on different pillars, i.e. external material and economic support, and spread of success information at the local scale to demonstrate the multidimensional benefits of sustainable land management. For the successful upscaling of land management, more attention must be paid to the social system from the first involvement stage, up to the long term maintenance.

En Algerie, la superficie ensemencee en cereales d'hiver est comprise entre 3 et 3,5 millions d'hectares. Presque la totalite des surfaces est conduite en conditions pluviales dont les deux tiers sont menees dans des zones a moyennes potentialites agroclimatiques. L'insuffisance des precipitations et leur irregularite intra et interannuelle se traduisent souvent par la compromission d'importantes superficies cerealieres et I'obtention de faibles niveaux de rendement. Devant cette situation et pour remedier a un deficit hydrique regrettable, Ie recours it I'irrigation d'appoint devient indispensable. La connaissance de chaque phase de developpement du ble et I'identification exacte de chaque stade sont obligatoires a I'agriculteur pour intervenir au bon moment a chaque situation de la culture. Realisee sur la base des connaissances capitalisees par I'ITGC en la matiere, cette fiche technique a pour but d'apporter des elements d'information simples destines aux producteurs cerealiers. Elle sera reactualisee en fonction des resultats de recherche obtenus selon les caracteristiques agroclimatiques de chaque zone de production. Le respect des recommandations proposees permettra sans nul doute, de mieux valoriser I'eau, d'augmenter la production cerealiere et d'ameliorer Ie revenu du producteur.

Agriculture is a major sector of the economy in southern Mediterranean countries. Nowadays, in many of these countries, agriculture accounts for no less than 12% of the total GDP (FAO, 2006). The increase in production in the region however cannot always meet the food requirement of the southern Mediterranean population, which is expected to rise by more than 65% between 1990 and 2020 (Mediterra, 2008). Indeed, today, the cereal imports of southern Mediterranean countries are estimated at 12% of global cereal imports, while these countries merely account for 4% of the world population. Similarly, since the beginning of the sixties, cereal imports have increased by 21 fold in Algeria, 20 fold in Morocco, 13 fold in Tunisia and 4 fold in Egypt (Fao, 2006). These trends should continue to increase in the years to come in order to meet the food requirements of their respective populations. In this context, states are will need to further intensify agricultural production so as to meet the food needs of populations. Nevertheless, this intensification ought to be moderate and carried out without increasing the pressure on natural resources. The current state of water and land resources in the Mediterranean region shows, in several cases, an alarming and irrational use of resources. The Mediterranean area presents fragile and limited water resources, and agriculture constitutes the biggest share (64%) in total water demand, 82% of which is concentrated in the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean (Ait Kadi et al., 2008). The purpose of the current article is to develop a consistent typology of farm households to assess and categorize the diversity of the farmers’ strategies in the Saïs plain, Morocco. Its aim is to show how farmers in the Saïs plain make their choices depending not only on the ecosystems cultivated, the main production factors and the objectives of their production (market oriented vs. self-consumption oriented), but also their implications on water, nitrate and labour production system efficiencies. This study was carried out as part of the CRP-DS programme aimed at developing a decision-support tool to help boost sustainable intensification in the dray land areas (CGIAR, 2013).

ان المساحات المخصصة لزراعة الحبوب المروية في الجزائر تتراوح من 3 – 3.5 مليون هكتار. لكن جل هذه المساحة غالبا ما تسير بصفة كلية حسب توفر مياه الأمطار، ثلثي منها مقتصر على مناطق ذات كمونات مناخية فلاحية متوسطة. كما ان نقص الأمطار في الجزائر، وسوء توزيعها بين مختلف الأعوام، يؤدي إلى ضياح مساحات كبيرة من الحبوب وبالتالي الحصول على مردود ضعيف. امام هذه الوضعية ولتفادي اي نقص مائي محتمل فان اللجوء ِالى الري التكميلي اصبح ضروري. فعلي الفلاح ان يلم بالتعرف الدقيق لكل مرحلة من مراحل نمو وتطور النبات ، حتى يتسنى له التدخل المناسب وبالطرق الانسب. واستنادا على المعلومات المحصل عليها من طرف المعهد التقني للمحصيل الكبرى في هذا المجال فان هذه البطاقة التقنية تهدف الى تقديم معلومات بسيطة لمنتجي الحبوب، الذي سيجدد تبعاُ لنتائج البحث المحصل عليها حسب الخصائص الزراعية والمناخية لكل منطقة. ان احترام هذه التوصيات المقدمة ستسمح من دون شك من رفع انتاج الحبوب وتحسين مدخول المنتج

Cropping system simulation can address the complex and interactive nature of resilience and allows for biological (crop growth and development), physical (soil-water dynamics), chemical (soil carbon and N turnover), and managementrelated (e.g. crop choice, applications of nitrogen fertilizer, timing of sowing) aspects of resilience to be quantified. Soltani & Sinclair (2012) recently presented a non-calibrated, mechanistic, simple model, called Simple Simulation Model (SSM), which uses a generic approach for simulating the growth and yield of cereal and legume crops. The robustness of the legume and cereal versions of SSM has been demonstrated for a wide range of environments and various species including wheat (Soltani et al., 2013) and chickpea (Vadez et al. 2013). In cropping systems of the semi-arid Mediterranean region, variable and deficient rainfall and drought episodes are primary constraints to productivity. Under these conditions, maximizing water-use efficiency (WUE, defined as the ratio of yield per unit evapotranspiration) is critical. Hence the accurate prediction of soil-water dynamics and crop–water relations is required to identify management strategies that increase the use of scarce rainfall and its conversion into grain yield. We applied SSM to examine rotations including wheat and chickpea that are representative of rainfed environments of the southern and eastern Mediterranean.