Résumé
Intercropping (IC) cereal and legume is a practice particularly suited inlow nitrogen input systems where it optimizes the use of N resourcesleading to improved and stabilized yields and increased cereal proteincontent [1]. Nevertheless, IC is only slightly adopted by farmers. Indeed,their potential economic advantage remains questionable because itdepends on many factors (crop prices, cost to separate the grains orinput prices and subsidies).In the context of decision support [2], our work aims at proposing asystematic approach to assess various options available to farmerscombining: i) a qualitative model based on arguments expressed byactors and ii) a quantitative simulation technique based on systems tocompare different scenarios.Simulations were performed to assess and compare the direct marginexpected using actual observations and then 3 independent scenariosunder the following “what if” hypotheses: i) same subsidies, ii)increased cost of inputs and iii) decreased cost of sorting.This study illustrates the interest of the proposed approach and opensnew perspectives, such as including information about product price,fertilizer price and Life Cycle Assessment data in order to help for thesupport of these alternatives in a context of price volatility,environmental concerns and climate change.