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Abstract:

This thesis is based on the fact that a dialogical design process is necessary between available knowledge on technical innovations, described with characteristics enhancing their use by people designing new cropping systems, knowledge and experience from farmers, exploration of technical solutions, some of them being still unknown, and production of new knowledge, the need of which being induced by the exploratory process of design (Mischler et al., 2009 ; Doré et al., 2011 ; Coquil et al., 2013 ; Toffolini et al., 2016b). We assume that it is possible to organize this dialogue within an interactive and collaborative web-based tool supporting design, that can be used by the actors concerned by cropping systems change. The tool GECO was designed to enhance sharing, learning and design of innovative and high-performance cropping systems, but its ability to support a design process of agroecological cropping systems remains questionable.

The scientific challenge of the thesis is first to identify, in the agricultural systems, the diversity of design situations, to characterize them by their ways of organization, and the specificities of their reasoning. The second challenge is to use this information to build operational resources able to support them. Then, the third challenge is to contribute to the organization of the sociotechnical device aiming at managing and qualifying knowledge, and to moderate the exchanges to enhance a dynamics of open and distributed design.

The socio-economical challenge of the thesis is to design an operational tool, efficient to support the design of agroecological cropping systems, for actors of agriculture wishing to implement this process.