Intra- and inter-specific mixing of populations: participatory on farm-breeding and collective design of experiments in the field, within processing chains and within organisations

The modernization of agriculture in Northern countries has led to a loss of crop diversity, as well as a loss of knowledge, know-how and rights of farmers regarding on-farm seed breeding. Yet, agroecological transformation relies on crop diversication at all levels from field to landscape and a key pathway for this change is for farmers who so wish to regain control over the breeding of population varieties, as well as the ability to experiment on their farms with these populations and their cultivation in mixed-species systems. In France, the Réseau Semences Paysannes (RSP) brings together collectives of actors (farmers, bakers, citizens, gardeners) mobilized in a quest to reclaim these aspects. Participatory research, which brings together groups of stakeholders involved in the fields and research teams, makes it possible to explore avenues for change by grounding them in the local contexts where the solutions developed will be further implemented. In the research presented here, member groups of the RSP and scientific teams from INRAE jointly built 1) experimental set-ups to evaluate different approaches to on-farm selection of wheat population mixtures; and 2) collective design workshops to trial, in the field, within processing channels or within organisations, cereal–legume intercropping using population varieties..