The Necessary Marriage Between Ecology and Agriculture

Jackson, Wes; Piper, Jon K.

doi:10.2307/1938090

Cited by 74 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…These increasing concerns about environmental impacts and reduction of inputs require a transformation of current cropping systems for improved efficiency and sustainability (Cox and Atkins 1979;Jackson and Piper 1989;Vandermeer et al 1998;Griffon 2006). Organic farming is thus regarded as one prototype to enhance the sustainability of present agriculture and cereal-rich cropping systems because organic farming does not allow the use of chemicals and is also in general assumed to rely on higher crop diversity than its conventional counterpart.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological principles underlying the increase of productivity achieved by cereal-grain legume intercrops in organic farming. A review

Bedoussac¹,

Journet

Hauggaard-Nielsen

et al. 2015

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

576

460

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World population is projected to reach over nine billion by the year 2050, and ensuring food security while mitigating environmental impacts represents a major agricultural challenge. Thus, higher productivity must be reached through sustainable production by taking into account climate change, resources rarefaction like phosphorus and water, and losses of fertile lands. Enhancing crop diversity is increasingly recognized as a crucial lever for sustainable agro-ecological development. Growing legumes, a major biological nitrogen source, is also a powerful option to reduce synthetic nitrogen fertilizers use and associated fossil energy consumption. Organic farming, which does not allow the use of chemical, is also regarded as one prototype to enhance the sustainability of modern agriculture while decreasing environmental impacts. Here, we review the potential advantages of eco-functional intensification in organic farming by intercropping cereal and grain legume species sown and harvested together. Our review is based on a literature analysis reinforced with integration of an original dataset of 58 field experiments conducted since 2001 in contrasted pedo-climatic European conditions in order to generalize the findings and draw up common guidelines. The major points are that intercropping lead to: (i) higher and more stable grain yield than the mean sole crops (0.33 versus 0.27 kg m −2 ), (ii) higher cereal protein concentration than in sole crop (11.1 versus 9.8 %), (iii) higher and more stable gross margin than the mean sole crops (702 versus 577€ha −1 ) and (iv) improved use of abiotic resources according to species complementarities for light interception and use of both soil mineral nitrogen and atmospheric N 2 . Intercropping is particularly suited for low-nitrogen availability systems but further mechanistic understanding is required to propose generic crop management procedures. Also, development of this practice must be achieved with the collaboration of value chain actors such as breeders to select cultivars suited to intercropping.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological principles underlying the increase of productivity achieved by cereal-grain legume intercrops in organic farming. A review

Bedoussac¹,

Journet

Hauggaard-Nielsen

et al. 2015

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

576

460

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This contrasts with the more descriptive attitudes historically prevalent in the science of ecology (Jackson and Piper 1989 ) and possibly with agroecology which, at least in its earlier phases, devoted much effort in documenting and understanding the ecological rationale underlying traditional tropical agriculture.…”

Section: Defi Nition and Principles Of Ecological Intensifi Cation Fomentioning

confidence: 90%

Ecological Intensification for Crop Protection

Ratnadass

Barzman²

2014

Sustainable Agriculture Reviews

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We need to break away from intensive agriculture based on non-renewable and toxic inputs. Safer practices are indeed emerging. Sustainable agriculture started about 50 years ago with the design of integrated pest management (IPM) to counteract pesticide misuse and abuse. Ecological intensifi cation emerged only a few years ago. Here we review the literature to compare ecological intensifi cation and IPM, from the point of view of crop protection. We present also agroecology and organic farming. Neither ecological intensifi cation nor IPM have philosophical bases such as agroecology, or to an even larger extent, biodynamic agriculture. Ecological intensifi cation, IPM and agroecology are polysemous, fl exible and pragmatic approaches, whereas organic farming is well-defi ned by its scope and standards. Ecological intensifi cation, in explicitly pursuing the goal of increasing food production to feed the planet, differs from agroecology, whose proponents think that the view that world hunger will be solved by merely increasing yield is an oversimplifi cation. In terms of cropping system design, in its actual practice, IPM often remains based on methods that increase the effi ciency of chemical pesticide use. Or, along with organic agriculture, it may remain based on substitution of pesticides by less harmful alternatives. In contrast, ecologically intensive crop protection usually requires cropping system redesign.In terms of ecosystem service provision, IPM tends to focus on the pest-pathogen regulation service. In contrast, both ecological intensifi cation and agroecology pay attention to both practices which were designed for crop protection and biomass provision purposes, as well as practices with broader scope, primarily designed to offer other ecosystem services which are found to have indirect effects on crop Ecological Intensifi cation for Crop Protection Alain Ratnadass and Marco BarzmanA. Ratnadass (*) UR HortSys, CIRAD , Boulevard de la Lironde , F-34398 Montpellier , France e-mail: alain.ratnadass@cirad.fr M. Barzman Eco-Innov, INRA , F-78850 Thiverval-Grignon , France e-mail: Marco.Barzman@grignon.inra.fr 54 protection. This chapter also describes selected tropical case studies of crop protection, such as upland rice seed-dressing and fruit fl y control in orchards, to compare and contrast crop protection in these contexts. Finally, we propose to consider IPM and ecologically intensive crop protection as complementary rather than confl icting approaches. The concept of "ultimate IPM" brings IPM closer to ecologically intensive crop protection. This new approach involves starting from a nearly natural ecosystem to which inputs are gradually added when absolutely necessary, rather than starting from a conventional agroecosystem and gradually remove inputs from it. Keywords

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“…These cooperatives present a specific set of skills facilitating adaptation to a greater diversity of cultures, allowing us to qualify their logistical organization as more resilient. (JEL: D2, O3, L2, Q13, Q56) KEYWORDS: innovation, technical change, organisational change, lock-in, resilience, logistics A u cours des cinquante dernières années, l'intensification de l'agriculture permise par la sélection variétale, la mécanisa-tion et l'utilisation des intrants chimiques a contribué à l'apparition de problèmes environnementaux : érosion des sols, pollutions environnementales par les engrais et les pesticides, mais aussi sélection de maladies, ravageurs et mauvaises herbes résistantes aux traitements chimiques (Cox et Atkins, 1979 ;Jackson et Piper, 1989 ;Vandermeer et al, 1998 ;Griffon, 2006). Face à ces problèmes, développer de nouvelles solutions agronomiques devient urgent (Griffon, 2010).…”

Section: Mots-clés : Innovation Changement Technique Changement Orgunclassified

Pratiques agricoles innovantes et logistique des coopératives agricoles. Une étude ex-ante sur l’acceptabilité de cultures associées blé dur-légumineuses

Magrini

Triboulet²,

Bedoussac³

2013

economierurale

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The Necessary Marriage Between Ecology and Agriculture

Cited by 74 publications

References 7 publications

Ecological principles underlying the increase of productivity achieved by cereal-grain legume intercrops in organic farming. A review

Ecological principles underlying the increase of productivity achieved by cereal-grain legume intercrops in organic farming. A review

Ecological Intensification for Crop Protection

Pratiques agricoles innovantes et logistique des coopératives agricoles. Une étude ex-ante sur l’acceptabilité de cultures associées blé dur-légumineuses

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