Farming Systems Design 2007
an international symposium on
Methodologies for Integrated Analysis of Farm Production Systems
 
http://www.iemss.org/farmsys07

 
10-12 September 2007 - Catania, Sicily, Italy
 
CALL FOR PAPERS
 

There is a growing interest in agricultural systems that serve multiple
purposes, in the context of driving factors such as climate change,
liberalization, environmental concerns, and changing agricultural
institutions. Farming systems face a continuous pressure to innovate.
The drivers also strongly affect agricultural and environmental
policies, as these must support the sustainability of agricultural
systems and their contribution to sustainable development in general.
This defines a demand on research approaches that enable analysis of
current farming systems, exploration and design of alternative ones as
well as co-learning and dissemination strategies. These research
approaches must provide capabilities for assessing the economic,
environmental and social aspects of farming system*s evolution in
different spatial and temporal contexts. Today, a variety of
quantitative and qualitative methods exist, but there is a lack of
integration in evaluating issues which range from strictly technical to
social, and to landscape related attributes. 
 
The goals of the symposium are to: Provide an opportunity to integrate
knowledge across disciplines targeted at farming system analysis, design
and innovation Compare approaches being used/developed in different
research groups Identify the available operational tools and the future
research needs  The symposium has a methodological focus, and aims at
both quantitative and qualitative approaches, but with a clear scope for
integration across the biophysical and social domains. The symposium
aims at covering a broad range of contexts, both from the developed and
developing world.
 
The call for papers is now open. Abstracts can be submitted accessing
the Authors* page in the web site. The deadline for abstracts submission
is May 15, but we do encourage early submission.
 
The Organizing Committee
ESA, IEMSS, ASA, IFSA

 

*********************************************************************
This email and all contents are subject to the following disclaimer:
Http://www.sasa.org.za/emaildisclaimer.asp
*********************************************************************