Training structure
CIHEAM IAM Montpellier - Partner establishment
Presentation
The MIDAS course follows on from intensive training courses organized since 2010 by CIHEAM-IAMM in partnership with several Mediterranean agronomic research and teaching institutes, and with the global FSD (Farming System Design) network. Over 300 international participants have been trained. Until now, these intensive courses were designed to train young scientists to analyze and assess the sustainability of agricultural systems using integrated approaches. The original feature of the MIDAS course, which will draw on several teaching aids as well as the network of researchers mobilized as part of the intensive training courses, will be to evolve to address questions linked to the design of agricultural systems based on the challenges of food and climate change, and to give pride of place to the role of diversity (both of cropping systems, farms and stakeholders in the field) in improving the resilience of the food function of these systems in the face of climate change and market uncertainties.
Objectives
The aim of this course is to train students for careers in agricultural development engineering as project managers, development project or program managers in national or international organizations, study managers for local authorities or extension services, and so on. The aim is also to train engineers to join international centers and institutes such as the FAO or ICARDA. The course, with its highly methodological focus on the design of innovative agricultural systems and its partnerships with several research laboratories, will encourage the preparation of doctoral theses in line with the themes proposed in this course. >> Find out more
Know-how and skills
This course will enable students to acquire three types of complementary skills:
- Knowledge: designing more resilient agricultural systems in the Mediterranean that make better use of natural resources and meet growing food needs. In particular, this pathway will enable students to communicate more effectively with decision-makers at local level, and to reflect on how to better integrate climate and market factors into the development of agricultural production strategies based on agro-ecological practices.
- Skills: knowing how to work at the interface between different disciplines, using participatory approaches to design resilient agricultural systems. Learning to mobilize multi-criteria and multi-scale analyses in systems approaches. Finally, learn to develop and use conceptual and numerical models to design innovative agricultural systems in the form of scenarios, taking into account climatic and market uncertainties.
- Personal skills: work and communicate in a multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural team, develop rigorous analysis and a sense of responsibility, be autonomous and make proposals. >> Find out more