Management and Soil‐Quality Effects on Fertilizer‐Use Efficiency and Leaching

Nissen, Todd; Wander, Michelle M.

doi:10.2136/sssaj2003.1524

Cited by 60 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…Several biological indicators of soil quality have been proposed because they are thought to be integrative variables, sensitive to changes in soil degradation or improvement [27][28][29][30]. However, we are interested in mapping soil quality on the landscape level to monitor change or implement remediation, and there are several problems associated with the use of only biological indicators over field to landscape scales.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Field Scale Studies on the Spatial Variability of Soil Quality Indicators in Washington State, USA

Smith

Halvorson

2011

Applied and Environmental Soil Science

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Arable lands are needed for sustainable agricultural systems to support an ever-growing human population. Soil quality needs to be defined to assure that new land brought into crop production is sustainable. To evaluate soil quality, a number of soil attributes will need to be measured, evaluated, and integrated into a soil-quality index using the multivariable indicator kriging (MVIK) procedure. This study was conducted to determine the spatial variability and correlation of indicator parameters on a field scale with respect to soil quality and suitability for use with MVIK. The variability of the biological parameters decreased in the order of respiration > enzyme assays and qCO 2 > microbial biomass C. The distribution frequency of all parameters except respiration were normal although the spatial distribution across the landscape was highly variable. The biological parameters showed little correlation with each other when all data points were considered; however, when grouped in smaller sections, the correlations were more consistent with observed patterns across the field. To accurately assess soil quality, and arable land use, consideration of spatial and temporal variability, soil conditions, and other controlling factors must be taken into account.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Field Scale Studies on the Spatial Variability of Soil Quality Indicators in Washington State, USA

Smith

Halvorson

2011

Applied and Environmental Soil Science

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“…Organic agriculture is defined as having no synthetic inputs, but organic farms may or may not practise the full suite of cultivation techniques characterizing sustainable agriculture [21,25]. Although the terms 'organic' and 'sustainable' agriculture are not equivalent, studies of organic agriculture have revealed better performance than conventional systems on some (but not all) sustainability metrics, including species richness and abundance, soil fertility, nitrogen uptake by crops, water infiltration and holding capacity, and energy use and efficiency [26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. Here, we provide the most comprehensive calculation of the yield gap between organic and conventional agriculture, building on the work of others [33][34][35][36].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diversification practices reduce organic to conventional yield gap

et al. 2015

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Agriculture today places great strains on biodiversity, soils, water and the atmosphere, and these strains will be exacerbated if current trends in population growth, meat and energy consumption, and food waste continue. Thus, farming systems that are both highly productive and minimize environmental harms are critically needed. How organic agriculture may contribute to world food production has been subject to vigorous debate over the past decade. Here, we revisit this topic comparing organic and conventional yields with a new meta-dataset three times larger than previously used (115 studies containing more than 1000 observations) and a new hierarchical analytical framework that can better account for the heterogeneity and structure in the data. We find organic yields are only 19.2% (+3.7%) lower than conventional yields, a smaller yield gap than previous estimates. More importantly, we find entirely different effects of crop types and management practices on the yield gap compared with previous studies. For example, we found no significant differences in yields for leguminous versus non-leguminous crops, perennials versus annuals or developed versus developing countries. Instead, we found the novel result that two agricultural diversification practices, multi-cropping and crop rotations, substantially reduce the yield gap (to 9 + 4% and 8 + 5%, respectively) when the methods were applied in only organic systems. These promising results, based on robust analysis of a larger meta-dataset, suggest that appropriate investment in agroecological research to improve organic management systems could greatly reduce or eliminate the yield gap for some crops or regions.

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“…Overall, Crowder and Reganold [103] found that though organic yields were lower than industrial, organic price premiums only had to be 5%-7% for industrial and organic farms to have the same profit, although currently premiums far surpass the break-even-point at 29%-32% [103]. Studies of organic agriculture have also revealed better performance than industrial systems in lowering negative externalities and increasing positive ones through enhancing species richness and abundance, soil fertility, nitrogen uptake by crops, water infiltration and holding capacity, and energy use and efficiency [25,[27][28][29][30][31][32]44].…”

Section: Economic Viabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These landscapes are designed to support a greater variety of wildlife, some of which would help to pollinate crops and control pests. Measures to spatially and temporally diversify farms to mimic nature, collectively known as diversification techniques or agro-ecological, ecologically-intensive, biologically diversified or regenerative farming systems, are shown to be less environmentally and socially damaging than industrial in terms of limiting pesticide exposure, soil erosion and biodiversity loss, while enhancing nutrient, energy and water efficiency (e.g., [1,[22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diversification, Yield and a New Agricultural Revolution: Problems and Prospects

Ponisio

Ehrlich

2016

Sustainability

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Abstract:The sustainability of society hinges on the future of agriculture. Though alternatives to unsustainable, high-input industrial agriculture are available, agricultural systems have been slow to transition to them. Much of the resistance to adopting alternative techniques stems from the perceived costs of alternative agriculture, mainly in terms of yields. The general assumption is that agriculture that is less harmful to people and wildlife directly will be indirectly more harmful because of yield losses that lead to food shortages in the short-term and agricultural extensification in the long-term. Though the yield gap between industrial and alternative forms of agriculture is often discussed, does industrial agriculture actually produce the highest yields? In addition, to what aspects of the food system is yield relevant? We review the evidence for differences in crop yields between industrial and alternative systems and then evaluate the contribution of yields in determining whether people are fed, the land in production, and practices farmers will adopt. In both organic and conservation agriculture, different combinations of crops, climate and diversification practices outperformed industrial agriculture, and thus we find little evidence that high input systems always outperform alternative forms of agriculture. Yield, however, is largely irrelevant to determining whether people are fed or the amount of land in production. A focus on increasing yields alone to feed the world or protect biodiversity will achieve neither goal. To promote sustainable agriculture, we must move past focusing on these oversimplified relationships to disentangling the complex social and ecological factors, and determine how to provide adequate nutrition for people while protecting biodiversity.

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Management and Soil‐Quality Effects on Fertilizer‐Use Efficiency and Leaching

Cited by 60 publications

References 54 publications

Field Scale Studies on the Spatial Variability of Soil Quality Indicators in Washington State, USA

Field Scale Studies on the Spatial Variability of Soil Quality Indicators in Washington State, USA

Diversification practices reduce organic to conventional yield gap

Diversification, Yield and a New Agricultural Revolution: Problems and Prospects

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