Co-innovation of family farm systems: A systems approach to sustainable agriculture S. Dogliotti a,⇑ , M.C. García a , S. Peluffo b , J.P. Dieste a , A.J. Pedemonte c , G.F. Bacigalupe c , M. Scarlato a , F. Alliaume d , J. Alvarez c , M. Chiappe c , W.A.H. Rossing e a Departamento de Producción Vegetal, Facultad de Agronomía, UDELAR, Av. Garzón 780, 11200 Montevideo, Uruguay b Comisión Nacional de Fomento Rural, Dr. S. García Pintos 1138, 11800 Montevideo, Uruguay c Departamento de Ciencias Sociales, Facultad de Agronomía, UDELAR, Av. Garzón 780, 11200 Montevideo, Uruguay d Departamento de Suelos y Aguas, Facultad de Agronomía, UDELAR, Av. Garzón 780, 11200 Montevideo, Uruguay e Farming Systems Ecology group, Wageningen University, Droevendaalsesteeg 1, 6708 PB Wageningen, The Netherlands article info Article history: Available online 6 April 2013 Keywords: Smallholder agriculture Labour productivity Sustainable development Soil degradation Yield gap Planning abstract Meeting the goals of sustainable growth of food production and reducing rural poverty requires assisting family farmers to develop more productive, profitable, resource efficient and environmentally friendly farms. Faced with decreasing product prices and increasing production costs during the last two decades family farmers in south Uruguay tried to maintain their income by intensifying their farms, growing lar- ger areas of fewer crops and increasing the use of irrigation and agrochemicals. Soil degradation was aggravated by this process, limiting crop yields, undermining the farmers’ aim of maintaining their income. A model-aided explorative study had shown that decreasing the area of vegetables, introducing crop rotations, cover crops and manure applications, and including beef-cattle production would be a better strategy. To test this hypothesis, a project was started at the end of 2004 and expanded in 2007, involving farmers, technical advisers and scientists in a co-innovation process that combined systemic diagnosis and redesign of the farm systems, social learning and dynamic monitoring and evaluation. The project involved 14 farms representing a large range of variation in resource endowment. Main prob- lems found on all farms were deteriorated soil quality and low labour productivity, which resulted in low income and high work load. At the end of 2–5 years of redesign farmers had been able to implement most innovations planned. Irrespective of endowment with land, machinery, irrigation water or labour resources, re-design increased the per capita family income (FIp) and the income per hour of family labour (IH) on 13 out of 14 farms, by 51% and 50%, respectively, averaged over all farms. Soil organic car- bon content had increased on 11 out of 14 farms and estimated erosion rates in vegetable fields had halved. Farmers considered ‘multi-year planning’ the most important change introduced into their prac- tice by the project. They concluded that the role of the extension service agents should change from mere consultants of operational–tactical, crop-centred decisions to supporters of the process of farm planning and evaluation. The project showed that even on commercial farms operating under highly competitive conditions, substantial improvements in economic and environmental indicators can be achieved when a whole farm strategic redesign is elaborated. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The larger part of the global rural population lives on family farms, which are responsible for more than half of the world’s food production (FAO, 2011; IFAD, 2012). Meeting the goals of sustain- able growth of food production to provide for the increasing needs of the world’s population and the alleviation of poverty requires assisting family farmers to develop farm systems that are more productive, profitable, resource efficient and environmentally friendly (IFAD, 2011). However, in many regions of the world fam- ily farmers are threatened by decreasing economic returns, deteri- oration of the natural resource base, and lack of access to markets and knowledge (Lipton, 2005; IFAD, 2011). Thus, ‘innovation’ in family agriculture, understood as a process of technical and institu- tional changes at farm and higher levels that impacts on productiv- ity, sustainability, and poverty reduction, is required (Rölling, 2009). The south of Uruguay has the highest concentration of family farms in the country, many of them with vegetables as the main source of income, and the highest degree of soil erosion, with 60–70% of the area classified as moderately to severely eroded 0308-521X/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2013.02.009 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +598 23584560; fax: +598 23542052. E-mail address: sandog@fagro.edu.uy (S. Dogliotti). Agricultural Systems 126 (2014) 76–86 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Agricultural Systems journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/agsy