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Innovative design for agriculture in the move towards sustainability: scientific challenges

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Abstract

Agriculture is facing increasing innovation challenges to meet current societal expectations, yet very few design science studies are devoted to it. This paper highlights some of the particularities of the objects, reasoning and organization of design in agriculture that may open fruitful scientific dialogue between design scientists and agricultural scientists. We first provide an overview of the broad range of objects that are designed in agriculture and point out their specific characteristics with regard to design. We then identify some particular challenges of design activities in agriculture and review how they have been addressed up to now. Finally, we discuss how design challenges and characteristics in agriculture can contribute to current debate in the field of design science. We propose two main lines of enquiry and debate: enhancing the links between design reasoning and organization and further conceptualizing the status of use situations in design to deal with uncertainties and complexity in design processes.

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Acknowledgements

We thank our two research divisions at INRA (French National Institute for Agricultural Research) for their support to the research on design in agriculture: the Science for Action and Development (SAD) division and the Environment and Agronomy (EA) division. This work was realized on the initiative of the newly born INRA institute for design in agrifood systems. We thank Liz Libbrecht for language editing the English version of this paper and are deeply grateful to the three anonymous reviewers for their comments that were of great help for improving this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UMR LISIS, INRA, CNRS, ESIEE Paris, UPEM, Université Paris-Est, 77454, Marne-La-Vallée, France

    Lorène Prost & Marianne Cerf

  2. UMR SADAPT, INRA, AgroParisTech, Université Paris-Saclay, 78850, Thiverval-Grignon, France

    Elsa T. A. Berthet & Jean-Marc Meynard

  3. UMR Agronomie, INRA, AgroParisTech, Université Paris-Saclay, 78850, Thiverval-Grignon, France

    Marie-Hélène Jeuffroy

  4. UMR AGIR, INRA, Université de Toulouse, INPT ENSAT, 31326, Castanet-Tolosan, France

    Julie Labatut

  5. MINES ParisTech, Centre de Gestion Scientifique, PSL Research University, 75006, Paris, France

    Julie Labatut

  6. Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, QC, H9X 3V9, Canada

    Elsa T. A. Berthet

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  1. Lorène Prost
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  2. Elsa T. A. Berthet
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  5. Julie Labatut
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Correspondence to Lorène Prost.

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Prost, L., Berthet, E.T.A., Cerf, M. et al. Innovative design for agriculture in the move towards sustainability: scientific challenges. Res Eng Design 28, 119–129 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00163-016-0233-4

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