Sylvestre Delmotte
Degrees Received
PhD in Agronomy, SupAgro Montpellier, France. Doctoral research conducted in the National Institute for Agricultural Research, INRA
Current Position
Post-doctoral fellow in Modeling Ecosystem Services for Participatory Scenarios Assessment. Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University,
Supervisor: Elena Bennett
Research interests
Being passionate about the world of agriculture from which I come, I obtained an MSc in sustainable crop production in Montpellier SupAgro (France). During this period, I had many experiences, including working on farms in France and Scotland, studying the cotton-based cropping system for almost one year in Mali, realizing portraits of farmers and analyses of rural/agricultural regions in Poland and Czech Republic, and finally learning about the functioning of different perennial (vineyard) and annual systems (rice-wheat in southern France). From these experiences, I become progressively more interested by the role that science and research can play in generating knowledge for the sustainable development of the agricultural systems.
My PhD allowed me to go more deeply into this question of interactions between researchers (in my case from the National Institute of Agricultural Research – INRA) and stakeholders in an agricultural region in the South of France, the Camargue. There, I worked in close interaction with local stakeholders to develop scenarios for the future that would tackle the main issues at stake: adapting to changes of policies (notably the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union), coping with environmental constraints (the need to reduce pesticides use) and assessing the consequences of local changes (the rapid conversion of farms toward organic farming). Through this work, I explored how different types of models can provide information to the stakeholders (and notably farmers) and assist them in negotiation processes.
After my PhD, I tried to better incorporate ecosystem functioning in the assessment of the scenarios, enlarging the range of environmental indicators being used for the assessment. I also tried to improve the assessment of the impacts of such participatory research. For this purpose, I did a post-doc between INRA and the University of Wageningen, the Netherlands, where I developed new types of models that allowed simulating spatial ecological processes.
I am now working within the Connexion Montérégie project with the same philosophy: bringing to the stakeholders of the Montérégie knowledge about the consequences of land use and management change on ecosystem services. For this purpose, I am developing a model that synthesizes our current knowledge in term of ecosystem services provided by agricultural and forested lands in the region, taking into the configuration of these two types of land use in the landscape and the interactions of ecosystem services. This model will be one of the boundary objects that we will use with a group of stakeholder, with which we are developing scenarios of land use change that we will further assess in term of provision of ecosystem services.
Publications
Delmotte, S., Lopez-Ridaura, S., Barbier, J.-M. & Wery, J. 2013. Prospective and participatory integrated assessment of agricultural systems from farm to regional scales: Comparison of three modeling approaches. Journal of Environmental Management, 129, 493-502.
Delmotte S., Lacombe C., Couderc V., Mailly F., Mouret J-C., Lopez-Ridaura S., Barbier J-M., 2013. Freins, leviers et impacts du développement de l’agriculture biologique en Camargue. Innovations Agronomiques 32, 213-226
Mailly, F., Delmotte, S., Schaller, N., Mouret, J. C., Ridaura, S. & Barbier, J. M. 2013. Un modèle de décision d'assolement en riziculture conventionnelle et biologique pour prédire les usages des sols sous différents scénarios : cas de la Camargue (Sud de la France). Cahier Agriculture, 22, 424-31.
Delmotte S., Tittonell P., Mouret J.C., Hammond R., Lopez-Ridaura S.. 2011. On farm assessment of rice yield variability and productivity gaps between organic and conventional cropping systems under Mediterranean climate. European Journal of Agronomy 35(4): 223-236.
N. Lamanda, S. Roux, S. Delmotte, A. Merot, B. Rapidel, M. Adam, J. Wery. 2011. A protocol for the conceptualisation of an agro-ecosystem to guide data acquisition and analysis and expert knowledge integration. European Journal of Agronomy 38(0): 104-116.
Claverie M., Delmotte S., Wery J. 2011. Dépérissement de la syrah : compréhension des dysfonctionnements physiologiques amenant le cep crevassé à la mort. Première partie : élaboration d'hypothèses rassemblées dans un modèle conceptuel. PAV Le Progrès Agricole et Viticole, 128(5-2011): 88-96.
Book chapter
Lopez Ridaura, S., Delmotte, S., Le Page, C., Le Quéré, L., Goulevant, G., Chauvelon, P., Sandoz, A. & Mouret, J.-C. 2013. Multi-critera and multi-scales evaluation of different organic farming extension scenario. In: Penvern, S., Savini, I. & Bellon, S. (eds.) Organic Farming, prototype for sustainable agricultures. Springer, In press.
Selected oral presentations
Delmotte, S., Lopez Ridaura, S., Barbier, J. M., Wéry, J. (2012). Combining modeling approaches for participatory integrated assessment of scenarios for agricultural systems: an application to cereal production systems in Camargue, South of France. 10th European IFSA Symposium : Producing and reproducing farming systems. New modes of organisation for sustainable food systems of tomorrow, Aarhus, Danemark (2012-07-01 - 2012-07-04).
Delmotte, S., Mouret, J.-C., Lopez Ridaura, S. (2012). Transition toward organic agriculture: using an agent-based model to assess with farmers possible trajectories of conversion. In: Abstracts of ESA12, the 12th Congress of the European Society for Agronomy, Helsinki, Finland 20-24 August 2012 (p. 220-221). Department of Agricultural Sciences publication series, 14. 12th Congress of the European Society for Agronomy, Helsinki, Finlande (2012-08-20 - 2012-08-24). Helsinki, FIN : University of Helsinki.
Delmotte S., Lopez-Ridaura S, Goulevant G, Mouret JC, Le Page C, Chauvelon P, Sandoz A, Barbier JM, Wery J. 2011. Combining different modeling approaches for a participative assessment of alternative agricultural systems at different scales. 3rd World Congress of Conservation Agriculture & Farming System Design, Brisbane, Australie. 26-29 sept. 2011.
Delmotte S., S. Lopez-Ridaura, J.M. Barbier, J. Wery. 2010. Integrated analysis of the extension of Organic Agriculture in the Camargue: a participatory approach for model-based indicators at different scales. 9th European IFSA Symposium, 4-7 July 2010, Vienna (Austria). 10p.
Delmotte S., S. Lopez-Ridaura, J.M. Barbier, J. Wery. 2010. How to evaluate the impacts of the extension of innovative farming systems at regional scales? Scenario analysis of organic agriculture in the Camargue. ISDA 2010, Montpellier, June 28-30, 2010. 10p.
Contact information:
Current e-mail address : sylvestre.delmotte at mcgill.ca