ESCAPADE

The agricultural production model is undergoing a major change to reduce nitrogen inputs, while maintaining productivity. This change can not happen without technical and organizational innovations. In particular, the levers must account for the organization of agricultural and livestock activities across territories. In this context, the ESCAPADE project is proposed by teams of complementary research areas (biogeochemistry, atmospheric and hydrological transfers, agronomy, socio-economics, mathematics), including the actors involved in agricultural research and those involved in development. The objective of this project is to find innovative strategies at the territory scale, complementing usual approaches at plot and farm scales. Those strategies aim at optimizing the use of nitrogen at landscape and territory scales, reducing nitrogen losses to the environment, and thus preserving sustainable agro-ecosystems while maintaining the productivity of production systems. With this aim in view, scenarios will be co-constructed in relation to nitrogen management within fields (forms, amounts and application dates of nitrogen inputs...) and farms (crop rotations, livestock and manure management...) as well as landscape management (by modifying the landscape structure). Scenarios will be evaluated by using models developed at different spatial scales, focusing on models that integrate the processes of the nitrogen cascade across landscapes (typical size of 5 to 30 km2). Scenarios will be assessed from environmental, agronomical and socio-economical points of view. Dissemination of results to farmers will be made through technical institutes and cooperative partners involved in the project.