Cultural and recreational services.

Summary Agricultural ecosystems are one of the six components of the French Assessment of Ecosystems and Ecosystem Services (EFESE), a program launched in 2012 by the Ministry in charge of the Environment to provide knowledge on the current state and sustainable use of ecosystems (see Box 2). In 2014, the Ministry of the Environment asked INRA to take charge of the agricultural ecosystems component. The federating research program EcoSerV (Ecosystem Services), launched by INRA in 2013, also supported this study, which it will subsequently complete and extend. The agricultural ecosystem, seen as the set of plots dedicated to the production of agricultural biomass, is configured and managed by the farmer, who combines ecological processes and exogenous inputs in his production practices. One of the major challenges associated with the analysis of ecosystem services is the design of production systems based on the valorization of these services, thus consuming little in the way of exogenous inputs and responding to societal issues such as the conservation of biodiversity or the limitation of environmental impacts.