Runoff and soil erosion are among the major environmental threats related to agricultural land use in Europe. Whereas the off-site damages of soil erosion are often effective at the catchment scale, the actual soil erosion risk is determined by decisions on agricultural management practices taken at the farm scale. Therefore, farm scale management plays a key role in combating soil erosion through implementation of good management practices. Nevertheless, soil protection and conservation measures on agricultural lands have to fit within the farm organisation, which involves the simultaneous consideration of various technical , social, economic and environmental concerns. Within this framework, the meeting is organized in the following way:
The 1st day of the meeting is a plenary session on the "Sustainable Farm-Scale Management". Keynotes papers and some contributions on "Conservation strategies crossing farm and catchment scales : policy, perception and management" will focus on some of this items:
The 2nd day will be devoted to two parallel plenary sessions in the morning. The objective of the first parallel plenary session, organized by WG1 is to review from keynote and contributions, the implication of a new European soil strategy for erosion and conservation policy. The second session organized by WG3 will focus on off-site impacts of sediment or pollutants in small or medium catchments (up to 100 km²). In the afternoon, times will be devoted to a short plenary session on phosphorus issues and general group discussions at the last meeting in Bratislava.
A field trip near Saint Valery en Caux will be organized the 3 rd day to meet some local actors (farmers, chairman of local community watershed federation, agricultural technicians, policy makers, etc.). it will be also possible to see some experimentations at farm scale.