Proceedings from the OFE 2023 conference

Intro from Louis Longchamps:

Agriculture and food systems are under tremendous pressure. Today’s agricultural systems are built on succession of revolutions having led to unsustainable use of land, fossil fuel, water and agrochemical uses. Moving toward a global food production system that is sustainable requires change, and change is a people’s process. On-farm experimentation (OFE) fosters the kind of change that is required by changing how knowledge is produced, at three levels. First, OFE supports farmers who investigate the feasibility and the impacts of changing something on their farm, as a continuous process of improvement and adaptation to ever-evolving pressures. Second, experimenting on their farm is how farmers learn, changing progressively their own knowledge and innovation system. This will become more and more important to transition towards sustainable agriculture, which is knowledge-intensive. The third level of change regards scientists. To be able to collaborate effectively with farmers, scientists must change the way they perceive farmer’s learning process, work out how to support this process, and generate new knowledge from the insights it creates. The #OFE2023 conference is an attempt to promote and develop the scientific principles supporting this three-level process of change. As the director of Cornell University Farmers DataLab, I was honored to chair the #OFE2023 conference. As a father of four, I was also thrilled because my eyes are turned towards the future, and I recognize OFE as a way to accelerate our transition to sustainable agriculture in time before we create irreversible damage to our planet. Human interactions are at the core of this scientific approach, and people working together for a greater good is the kind of future that I aspire to for the coming generations. Welcome to the #OFE2023 Book of Proceedings, the result of these collaborations and hopes!

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