Landscape dynamics increasingly challenge agronomists to explain how and why agricultural landscapes are designed and managed by farmers. Nevertheless, agronomy is rarely included in the wide range of disciplines involved in landscape research. In this paper, we describe how landscape agronomy can help explain the relationship between farming systems and agricultural landscape dynamics. For this, we propose a conceptual model of agricultural landscape dynamics (ALaDyn) that illustrates the specific contribution of agronomy to landscape research. This model describes the relationship between three elements: farming practices, landscape patterns and natural resources. It can stimulate agronomists to deal with research issues in agricultural landscape dynamics and enhance the interdisciplinary integration of farming systems in wider landscape research. On these premises, we discuss the main research issues that will benefit from an active involvement of agronomy, to understand, but also to assess landscape dynamics and to design relevant decision support systems.

e-mail de contact: ridavide@gmail.comAgriculture faces big challenges, such as feeding a growing population and providing an increasing amount of biomass for energy production. Land is, however, a limited resource and intensification of agricultural practices is deprecated because of the negative impacts on natural resources. Effective answers should therefore be fostered by the development of smarter spatial configurations of agricultural activities. The improvement of farming systems therefore requires agronomy to interact with geography and other disciplines that deal with spatially-explicit aspects of agricultural land management. Different research approaches have supported agronomy in the development of a landscape approach and in this paper we focus on the interactions with geography fostering the enhancement of a common language about the way farming practices are observed and understood by the two disciplines. For this purpose, we compare land management units, identified in recent agronomic literature, with the aim to facilitate future synergies of landscape-oriented research about farming system design. We conclude by arguing for the enhancement of the interface between agronomy and geography and discussing some perspectives on the use of the various land management units in the design of future farming systems with a landscape approach

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En montagne, la diversité de taille et d'orientation des exploitations contribue à préserver des emplois et services dans les territoires, mais freine parfois la rentabilité des ilières. En période de raréfaction des installations agricoles et de réorganisation des ilières, les acteurs de l'élevage et des territoires ont besoin de connaître cette diversité et sa dynamique pour adapter leurs interventions au niveau régional. Dans cette perspective, une analyse des agrandissements et réorientations des élevages d'une zone du Massif central a été élaborée pour la période 1987-2009 à partir d'inventaires d'exploitations à dire d'experts locaux. Les écarts observés entre exploitations plaident pour de nouveaux ajustements des politiques d'installation et de structures.