How to make my mixed fruit tree-vegetable systems resilient?

We conducted 18 semi-structured interviews with farmers who have adopted a MFVS in the French Mediterranean area. We found that two types of levers confer resilience to MFVSs: piloting and structuring the system. Regarding the ranges of resilience levers, farmers either adopted multidimensional levers that combine agronomic, ecological, economic and social levers, or that mainly rely on ecological levers. The satisfactory states that farmers are looking for in their MFVSs are described according to five components: (i) global organization of the farm; (ii) agroecological management of the plot; (iii) economic performance; (iv) provision of ecosystem services; and (v) belonging to a knowledge producing community. Our work also showed that the relative importance and hierarchy of these components partly reflect the weight that farmers give to the different levers they choose to mobilize in order to be resilient. This work emphasizes the multiple choices of resilience levers of farmers and the diversity of identities of MFVSs, calling for research to adapt the evaluation of resilience to farmers’ specific objectives.