Transitions to sustainable agriculture require dealing with some key societal challenges,
such as feeding the cities, contributing to climate change mitigation, reducing environmental and
human health externalities from agriculture, and preserving functional (e.g., pollinators and pest
predators or parasitoids) and emblematic biodiversity. To address these challenges, researchers
and practitioners are developing agroecological solutions promoting ecosystem services essential to agricultural production, such as soil fertility, nitrogen fixation, erosion control, pollination, andpests and diseases control. These solutions often rely on ecological dynamics at the landscape
scale and require particular spatial arrangement of land-uses (including semi-natural habitats) and
agricultural practices. When considered on isolation, each challenge may call for very specific
solutions, which can be inconsistent with the solutions for other challenges. Consequences of
agroecological solutions on multiple ecosystem services should be assessed to understand the
complex trade-offs operating across multiple scales among interdependent challenges.
The objective of the API-SMAL project is to examine how agroecological solutions can
reconcile economic, ecological and environmental performances in agricultural landscapes. We
aim at exploring and assessing multi-scale landscape management strategies to extend our
understanding of the opportunities offered by agroecology to respond jointly to several
agricultural challenges at different scales (field, landscape, and region). More specifically, API-
SMAL adopts an interdisciplinary approach bringing together agricultural scientists, ecologists,
epidemiologists, modelers and economists to examine the synergies and antagonisms among
different agroecological solutions for crop protection (diseases and insects), agricultural pollution
reduction (greenhouse gases, water pollution by nitrates and pesticides, soil erosion), biodiversity
conservation and biodiversity-based ecosystem services provision. We will use dynamic spatially
explicit models to analyze the trade-offs among different dimensions of agricultural sustainability,
including production, environmental and ecological issues. Collaborations with stakeholders
(farmers, land managers, policy-makers) and public economics approaches will be used to assess
options for landscape management, including coordination mechanisms and public policy
instruments.
The main outcomes of the project will be:

The identification of multi-scale agroecological solutions (land use patterns and practices)
fostering targeted ecosystem services to reconcile agricultural production, biodiversity
and ecosystem services.
A description of the effect of agroecological solutions on ecosystem services and
agricultural production at different scales.
The development and assessment of innovative policy instruments to promote
ecologically-based agriculture in Europe.