Sustainability and innovation in staple crop production in the US Midwest

Abstract

An agroecosystem is constrained by environmental possibility and social choices, mainly in the form of government policies. To be sustainable, an agroecosystem requires production systems that are resilient to natural stressors such as disease, pests, drought, wind and salinity, and to human constructed stressors such as economic cycles and trade barriers. The world is becoming increasingly reliant on concentrated exporting agroecosystems for staple crops, and vulnerable to national and local decisions that affect resilience of these production systems. We chronicle the history of the United States staple crop agroecosystem of the Midwest region to determine whether sustainability is part of its design, or could be a likely outcome of existing policies particularly on innovation and intellectual property. Relative to other food secure and exporting countries (e.g. Western Europe), the US agroecosystem is not exceptional in yields or conservative on environmental impact. This has not been a trade-off for sustainability, as annual fluctuations in maize yield alone dwarf the loss of caloric energy from extreme historic blights. We suggest strategies for innovation that are responsive to more stakeholders and build resilience into industrialized staple crop production.

Re-registration Challenges of Glyphosate in the European Union

“…The study claims that increases in herbicide usage increased more rapidly on non-GM crops than on GM crops, and concludes that the replacement of glyphosate with other herbicides would be likely to result in increased chronic health risks to pesticide applicators. This strongly contradicts to earlier surveys (Heinemann et al, 2014;Benbrook, 2016;Perry et al, 2016), and is likely to be related to the fact that Kniss' study considered 159 herbicide formulations of 118 herbicide active ingredients, while herbicide-tolerant (HT) crops are designed against 8 herbicide active ingredients or active ingredient types (2,4-D, dicamba, glufosinate, glyphosate, oxynil type, sulfonylureas, imidazolinones, isoxaflutole), of which glyphosate by far is used most substantially in cultivation. Therefore, such an "overall" trend of all active ingredients considered, the vast majority of which not being related to HT crops is biased particularly for glyphosate, concealing the immense increases in glyphosate use in the grand average.…”

Agroecology: A Global Paradigm to Challenge Mainstream Industrial Agriculture

“…Calls have also been made to revisit issues of agricultural sustainability concerning the impending environmental impacts of climate change and its effect on agriculture [3,[32][33][34]. With potential global crop yield losses of over 50%, calls have thus been made to develop more "resilient" production systems to better withstand the impending impacts of climate change [16,[35][36][37][38][39].…”

“…An analytical comparison of mainstream agronomic systems in the USA that are based on the "single tactic" pest management approach, as compared to the more diversified systems in Europe, found a generally lower sustainability in the USA systems [39]. The lower sustainability of the USA vs. European cropping systems was observed in the form of relatively lower yields, increased pesticide use, increased consolidation of the supply industry, and a general narrowing of the germplasm diversity in the Midwestern USA, as compared to the European cropping systems [39].…”

“…The importance of small farms to maintain biodiversity [66]. The importance of public seed sources to maintain agrobiodiversity [39,67]. The importance of biodiversity and habitat management for pest control [61].…”

Genetically modified crops in Switzerland: implications for agrosystem sustainability evidenced by multi-criteria model

“…A meta-study merging data from 147 original studies emphasise an increase in yield in GM crops by 22 % that is entirely attributed to change in pest management (Klümper and Qaim 2014). On a global scale, the Food Agriculture Organization (FAO) statistics showed no difference between maize yields of GM-growing Midwest and GMfree EU areas for the past 20 years (Heinemann et al 2014;FOA 2015). This suggests that GM advantages reside mainly in keeping yields stable.…”