Management planning for winter wheat with multiple objectives (2): Ethanol-wheat production

In 1993, the European Community stimulated the production of ethanol-wheat in France by authorising the production of crops for biofuel as an alternative way of using set-aside land. The stakeholders involved aspire to several goals: distillers and farmers seek increased profits whereas the French government wants ethanol-wheat to be economically and energetically sound and non-polluting. The BETHA system was used to design crop management plans suited to the requirements of the stakeholders expressed as a set of acceptable and unacceptable value for field level criteria. As a result, the BETHA system provided low input crop management plans associated with productive and disease resistant varieties. The results were tested using field experiments in the east of France. The BETHA crop management plans showed an improvement in the semi-net margin, a decrease in the cost per ton and in the quantity of pesticides applied compared with those recommended for wheat.