Agroecology, based on natural resources, biological processes and agrobiodiversity within farms and territories, is more and more promoted by scientists, consumers movements, international organizations and farmers as an approach to foster the transition to more sustainable and equitable food systems. Although this promotion, only a very few percentage of farmers have adopted alternative practices up to now. The agroecological transition towards more sustainable agriculture is presently constraining to conceptual frameworks for designing some final systems or assessing the best strategies whereas the agroecological transition requires an innovative design process for radical innovations and challenging assessment methods/approaches: Design and assessment must be thinking at different scales (e.g. field, farm, cooperative, or food system) to connect the innovation dynamics in both domains – innovations are not only technological concerning cropping systems or processing – but also organizational and institutional; The trajectories of change and dynamics must be integrated in the design and in the assessment frameworks to bypass the lock-in from the dominant system; The notion of performance must be redefined further than only the technico-economic optimum by integrating the diversity of services fostered by agriculture and to guarantee the economic and social sustainability of the redesigned system; Design and assessment must favor the sharing of expectations, learnings and knowledge. We invite experts and researchers to contribute to our Special Issue with original research, both methodological and experimental, and reviews covering all issues related to Farming System Design and Assessment for Sustainable Agroecological Transition. Authors are particularly encouraged to propose multidisciplinary articles that bridge agronomy, cropping and farming system research with ecological, genetic, environmental, economic and social sciences. Systemic approaches at the livestock, field, and farm are encouraged.
Keywords: Farming system design; Multicriteria evaluation; Agroecological transition.