Microfarms have been characteristed by Morel and Léger (2016) as commercial farms that meet the following four criteria: (1) soil-based market gardening is the main income generating activity (excludes roof-top gardening, although part of the cultivated acreage can be protected under cold tunnels); (2) a high level of cultivated biodiversity is grown organically, with 30 to 80 vegetables and herbs (excludes mushroom and fruit production); (3) the utilized agricultural area is less than 1.5 ha by full-time equivalent, which is the minimal size generally recommended by French official agricultural development agencies for diversified market 45 gardening ; (4) farmers sell their produce in short supply chains; (5) production is organic.
The data and R script provided in this archive were collected and developped by Kevin Morel during his PhD (UMR SADAPT, INRAE, AgroParisTech, Université Paris-Saclay) about the viability of market gardening microfarms. These data have been used to build the simulation model MERLIN explosring the economic viability (incomes and labour) of microfarms strategic scenarios.
Data were collected from 2014 to 2015 on 10 microfarms in Northern France chosen for their diversity in terms of practices. Collection of data involved semi-structured interviews but also collection of existing data and documents available on the farm. On two farms (C and F), more precise data (for yields and workload) have been collected because farmers were involved in data collection for other research projet or their own use.
In this archive, we distinguish 3 folders: (1) RAW DATA where we prodive all data collected on the 10 farms (2) MODELLING DATA AND SCRIPTS where we provide aggregated data used in the MERLIN MODEL (3) R scripts of the MERLIN Model
Full text of the PhD thesis is available here (chapters are in English): Morel, K., 2016. Viabilité des microfermes maraîchères biologiques. Une étude inductive combinant méthodes qualitatives et modélisation. INRA, AgroParisTech, Université Paris-Saclay, France. 352 p. Open access to thesis: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-02801554
Explanation about the context and diversity of microfarms can be found in:
Kevin Morel, Francois Léger. A conceptual framework for alternative farmers' strategic choices: The case of French organic market gardening microfarms. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, Philadelphia PA: Taylor & Francis, 2016, 40 (5), pp.466-492. Open access to post-print here: https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-02939297
Details about related data collection, treatment and modelling can be found in these two papers:
Morel, K., San Cristobal, M., Léger, F., 2018. Simulating incomes of radical organic farms with MERLIN: A grounded modelling approach for French microfarms. Agricultural Systems, (161): 89-101. Open access to post-print here:https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-02939224
Morel, K., San Cristobal, M., Léger, F., 2017. Small can be beautiful for organic market gardens: An exploration of the economic viability of French microfarms using MERLIN. Agricultural Systems, (158): 39-49. Open access to post-print here:https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-01608929
All references cited in this archive refer to these 3 above publications. l (2016-12-31)
