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Biodiversity, Biofuels, Agroforestry and Conservation Agriculture PDF

399 Pages·2010·18.73 MB·English
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Volume 5 Series Editor Eric Lichtfouse For other titles published in this series, go to www.springer.com/series/8380 Sustainable Agriculture Reviews Volume 5 Series Editor Eric Lichtfouse For other titles published in this series, go to www.springer.com/series/8380 Other books by Dr. Eric Lichtfouse Sustainable Agriculture Volume 1, 2009 Organic Farming, Pest Control and Remediation of Soil Pollutants Sustainable Agriculture Reviews. Volume 1, 2009 Climate Change, Intercropping, Pest Control, and Beneficial Microorganisms Sustainable Agriculture Reviews. Volume 2, 2010 Sociology, Organic Farming, Climate Change and Soil Science Sustainable Agriculture Reviews. Volume 3, 2010 Genetic Engineering, Biofertilisation, Soil Quality and Organic Farming Sustainable Agriculture Reviews. Volume 4, 2010 Environmental Chemistry Volume 1, 2005 Rédiger pour être publié! Conseils pratiques pour les scientifiques 2009 Forthcoming Sustainable Agriculture Volume 2 Environmental Chemistry Volume 2 Eric Lichtfouse Editor Biodiversity, Biofuels, Agroforestry and Conservation Agriculture Editor Dr. Eric Lichtfouse INRA-CMSE-PME 17 rue Sully 21000 Dijon France [email protected] ISBN 978-90-481-9512-1 e-ISBN 978-90-481-9513-8 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9513-8 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2010936437 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper Cover illustration: Old world swallowtail (P apilio machaon ) on flowers. Copyright : Louis Vidal, INRA 2010 Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Contents Agroecology as a Transdisciplinary Science for a Sustainable Agriculture ......................................................................... 1 Fabio Caporali Measuring Agricultural Sustainability ......................................................... 73 Dariush Hayati, Zahra Ranjbar, and Ezatollah Karami Sustainable Bioenergy Production, Land and Nitrogen Use ....................... 101 Enrico Ceotto and Mario Di Candilo Biofuels, the Role of Biotechnology to Improve Their Sustainability and Profi tability ........................................................... 123 Meenu Saraf and Astley Hastings Challenges and Opportunities of Soil Organic Carbon Sequestration in Croplands .............................................................. 149 Ilan Stavi and Rattan Lal Conservation Agriculture Under Mediterranean Conditions in Spain ......................................................................................... 175 F. Moreno, J.L. Arrúe, C. Cantero-Martínez, M.V. López, J.M. Murillo, A. Sombrero, R. López-Garrido, E. Madejón, D. Moret, and J. Álvaro-Fuentes Conservation Tillage and Sustainable Agriculture in Semi-arid Dryland Farming ...................................................................... 195 Mohammad J. Zarea Synergism Among Crops to Improve Dryland Crop Production ............... 239 Randy L. Anderson v vi Contents Sustainable Irrigation to Balance Supply of Soil Water, Oxygen, Nutrients and Agro-Chemicals ....................................................... 253 Surya P. Bhattarai, David J. Midmore, and Ninghu Su Agricultural Practices in Northeast India and Options for Sustainable Management ......................................................................... 287 Mritunjay Majumder, Awadhesh Kumar Shukla, and Ayyanadar Arunachalam Microbial Community Structure and Diversity as Indicators for Evaluating Soil Quality ..................................................... 317 Sushil K. Sharma, Aketi Ramesh, Mahaveer P. Sharma, Om Prakash Joshi, Bram Govaerts, Kerri L. Steenwerth, and Douglas L. Karlen Integrating Silvopastoralism and Biodiversity Conservation ..................... 359 A. Rigueiro-Rodríguez, M. Rois-Díaz, and M.R. Mosquera-Losada Index ................................................................................................................. 375 Agroecology as a Transdisciplinary Science for a Sustainable Agriculture Fabio Caporali Abstract Today’s agriculture has to face the new challenge that derives from a new evolutionary era of civilisation that has been called “Anthropocene”. Human dominion on Earth with exploitation of natural resources and environmental pollution is not socially acceptable anymore, since it leads to self-destruction in a confined “ spaceship” like the planet Earth. A different cultural attitude to guide human behaviour is required in order to set up the base of a sustainable development for man and the whole biosphere. Agriculture scientists can play a role in providing a step towards agriculture sustainability. However, agriculture scientists need to be able to educate both themselves and the civic society with a new systems paradigm that focuses more on relations than on single components of agriculture reality, as a di sciplinary approach usually does. Transdisciplinarity in agriculture theory and practice is required in order to face the new challenge of sustainability. Agroecology is a transdisciplinary area of enquiry that has both a scientific and a philosophical base for promoting sustainability in agriculture. Here I review the most important areas of interface that qualify agroecology methodology and contents. Agroecological achievements are presented according to their chronology in order to account for the developmental process that agroecology has undergone. Concerning methodological achievements, four pillars of agroeco- logical epistemology have been identified: (1) the agroecosystem concept; (2) the agroecosystem hierarchy; (3) the farm system as a decision making unity; and (4) the representation of agriculture as a human activity system. These four episte mological tools are models of agricultural organisation that allow us to understand, project and manage it as a process. They constitute the theoretical base of agroecology derived from the systems approach, which is at the core of ecology. With the aid of these four tools of enquiry, an agroecosystem monitoring process worldwide started since the early 1970s and it is still running. Information on the processes of energy F. Caporali (*) Department of Crop Production, University of Tuscia, Via S Camillo de Lellis, 01100 Viterbo, Italy e-mail: [email protected] E. Lichtfouse (ed.), Biodiversity, Biofuels, Agroforestry and Conservation Agriculture, 1 Sustainable Agriculture Reviews 5, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9513-8_1, © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 2 F. Caporali transfer (energetics), productivity, nutrient cycling and biodiversity dynamics at different levels of agroecosystem hierarchy is growing. This constitutes the first knowledge body package of agroecology, a science that links structure and fu nctioning of agroecosystems. This data collection has allowed scholars to raise judgements about the resource use efficiency, the environmental impact and the sustain- ability of agroecosystems at different hierarchical level of organisation. Since the 1990s, agroecology research and applications have focused more and more on the issue of sustainability. Attention to the problem of agriculture sustainability has promoted a spontaneous dialogue between scholars of ecology, agronomy, economics and sociology. Matching ecology with agronomy has p roduced more awareness on the benefits of increasing biodiversity at field, farm and landscape levels. Increasing within-field biodiversity with policultural patterns, such as crop rotations, cover cropping and intercropping, and increasing between-field biodiversity with field-margin management, hedgerow maintenance or i ntroduction, and agroforestry applications, are practical solutions to the problem of enhancing biophysical sustainability of agroecosystems. Recent research on the role of field size for evaluating the trade- off between machinery efficiency and loss of biodiversity-friendly habitats in arable landscapes shows that there is no need for bigger field size beyond an evaluated threshold of 1–2 ha above which machinery efficiency increases very little (Rodriguez and Wiegand 2009). Matching ecology with economics and sociology has instead revealed that contrasting paradigms are still at work. One of the most outstanding example of paradoxical contrast between economic and ecological outcomes is the CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) system for meat production. The CAFO system is economically regarded as the most advanced intensive feedlot system for livestock production, although it contributes large green- house gas emissions. If the use of CAFOs is expanded, meat production in the future will still be a large producer of greenhouse gases, accounting for up to 6.3% of current greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 (Fiala 2008). An ecological conversion of economics is demanded whether the end of sustainability has to be pursued. Organic farming worldwide is the most imp ortant example of agriculture regulated by law with the expressed end of integrating bio-physical and socio-economic requirements of sustainability. The latest report by IFOAM (International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements) (2007) mentions increasing annual rates for organic farming and shows that 32.2 millions of hectare were certified as “organi- cally grown” in 2007 with more than 1.2 mi llions of farmers involved in the world. The global debate about agriculture su stainability has enormously enlarged the cultural landscape for mutual criticism between different disciplinary, traditionally separate areas. The area of agroecology enquiry is now really operating as “glue” at a transdisciplinary level, bridging the gap between different disciplines and between theory and practice of agriculture. Measuring agriculture sustainability through indica- tors of both biophysical and socio-economic performances is now a common praxis of international, national and local institutions. New curricula in Agroecology at aca- demic level are per formed in order to give an institutional base for education towards agriculture su stainability. A final outlook section provides some examples of agroeco- logical approaches and applications for making a crowed planet more sustainable.

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Sustainable Agriculture Reviews 5, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9513-8_1, toring have been energetics, nutrient cycling, biodiversity, and related biophysical.
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Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.