Tenure Track Junior Professorship

Context and stakes for the Global South

The transition to sustainable and resilient agricultural systems requires a multi-stakeholder co-design of diversified agricultural landscapes that integrate the farmer logics about crop allocations and practices under environmental, organizational and economic constraints. This is at core of the antagonisms between SDGs 2, 6, 14 and 15 that are exacerbated in southern Mediterranean and tropical rainfed agroecosystems. The position aims to tackle this issue within the LISAH laboratory, by relying on the IRD partnership network, within the MUSE framework including the UNESCO ICIREWARD center on water issues. It contributes to the promotion of scientific research based on an equitable partnership with developing countries.

Scientific objectives

Within the framework of landscape agronomy (geography - agronomy interface), the project aims to study the influences of farmer individual and collective bio-decisional logics about the territory spatio-temporal patterns that impact soil conservation, rainwater efficiency and contamination mitigation. It relies on case studies in India (groundwater - Joint Research Laboratory CEFIRSE / Environmental Observatory MTROPICS), in Tunisia (surface water - International Laboratory NAILA / Environmental Observatory OMERE), or West Indies (agricultural reconversions on polluted soils / Environmental Observatory OPALE). It focuses on understanding the logics of the spatio-temporal distribution of cropping systems and infrastructures at the nested scales of plot, farm and landscape. It identifies the social, economic, technical and environmental drivers at these scales, using an approach that combines surveys and observations (agro-hydrological observatories, national spatial data infrastructures). It integrates these drivers into bio-decisional models to formalize territorial scenarios of agricultural transitions in relation to resource management. These bio-decisional models are coupled to biophysical functioning models within modeling platforms, in order to evaluate the impacts of scenarios on soil / water resources and agricultural production, via collaborations within and outside the laboratory.

​Teaching objectives

Teaching duties consist of designing and delivering learning sequences in systemic agronomy at the landscape scale (geo-agronomy), in relation to resource management (water, soil), within the framework of prospective studies on the effect of global changes (volume of about 30 hours of lectures per year). These sequences are developed at the master and PhD levels within the Montpellier University (MUSE). The project develops lectures and student projects on identification and formalization of famer logics within a systemic, territorial and global change framework. It participates in various Montpellier master programs (e.g., Water Sciences, IDIL). He also contributes to doctoral sequences of the GAIA Doctoral School, and to international field schools offered by the Montpellier University (MUSE) and its international partners.

​Funding available

The laureate of the Chair will be awarded (1) by the ANR 200 k€ of funding (of which a minimum of 120 k€ for salaries -doctoral students, post-docs, IT contractual staff- the balance being reserved for the running of the project), (2) by the IRD a doctoral contract or two years of post-doctoral contract and 30 k€ for a long-term mission (about 6 months), and (3) by Aix-Marseille University 30 k€ for the financing of small equipment.