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For
a common understanding on Farming Systems, it is necessary to first
reflect on the general "systems" perspective of farming.
A farmer's system can be defined by: its bounderies, its coponents,
its interactions, its inputs, the internal resources and its products
and by-products
 Boundaries:
What belongs to the farm, what is the environment in which it operates?
In agroecology it is important to recognise that natural components,
such as soil biota, insects and weeds are defined as part of the system,
and that that the term "environment" refers to forces and
areas that cannot be influenced by the farmer.
Components:
Crops or cropping systems, livestock system, trees, buildings etc.
Interactions:
The relationships between the components.
Inputs:
Materials, information and energy originating outside the system but
utilised within.
Internal
Resources: Materials, information and energy originating within the
system.
Products
and By-Products.
As
InterDev focuses on innovations, it is important to get a clear view
of the location of the modifications in a farming system and where
they fit in the whole. In order to judge the relevance of agricultural
innovations, questions can be raised such as, "What are the key
elements describing the bio-physical and socio-economic context?"
and "What are the criteria a farmer uses in the decision to adopt
a certain change?".
In farming
systems research farmers are often grouped together in so-called recommendation
domains, and it is assumed that these farmers have a similar demand
for innovations. However, for this working group, the focus is more
on the farm-family level, and the changes in agricultural (forestry,
fisheries) practices that these individual households could adopt.
Innovations
on a higher level of aggregation, especially the institutional innovations
required for management and control of common resources and ecosystems
(such as community forestry or land management) are another important
related topic, which will be dealt with in a separate table in the
database, called "Institutional Innovation".
The concept
of Agroecological Farming Systems includes the idea that the agricultural
practices are both site-specific and specific to the socio-economic
position of the (type of) farmer or farm family applying them.
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