Agroecological practices for whole-system sustainability

Abstract

Current food production systems are major contributors to the environmental degradation that leads to climate change and biodiversity loss. Levels of production required for future food security cannot be met by further increases in inputs of non-renewable resources. The world's food crops must therefore be managed in a sustainable way that maintains long-term ecological functioning, including nutrient, carbon and water cycles, soil quality, primary productivity, microbe-plant associations, pest and pathogen regulation, pollination and arable food web resilience. All of these are determined by agronomic practices at local and regional scales, and all are sustained by the abundance, diversity and functional composition of plants, microbes and invertebrates in the farmed ecosystem. Presence of viable populations and communities of these organisms is therefore essential for system resilience. Long-term sustainability must rely more heavily on the internal generation of products and regulatory ecosystem services than on external inputs. Fully closed systems are impossible to achieve in agriculture as the product is removed for human consumption. There is ample evidence, however, that semi-closed, regenerative, systems can harness the ecosystem services provided by functional biodiversity to enhance crop production whilst simultaneously improving environmental quality. Here, agroecological alternatives to intensive farming practices are reviewed, focusing on key functional indicators and whole-system integration of practical management options designed to achieve multiple beneficial outcomes at field and farm scales.

Bioenergy and sustainable agriculture: A review of synergies and potential conflicts

“…Additionally, the use of agroecological principles, such as polyculture and companion planting, can be explored to foster synergies between bioenergy and agriculture (Hawes et al, 2021). These approaches leverage natural ecological processes to enhance crop resilience, improve soil health, and minimize the need for external inputs.…”

4 - Quels indicateurs pour l’évaluation des systèmes agricoles en transition agroécologique ?

“…Il est à noter que Puech et Stark (2023) se sont focalisés sur des flux de matière et n'ont pas traité des interactions biotiques ou des processus écologiques. Le réseau causal complexe dans un système agroécologique de culture en plein champ, proposé par Hawes et al (2021) pourrait servir de base à un tel travail. Ces auteurs ont relié les pratiques, les composantes biologiques (ex : ravageurs, auxiliaires), les SE et les sorties (Rendements et impacts environnementaux).…”

A Multifunctional Solution for Wicked Problems: Value-Chain Wide Facilitation of Legumes Cultivated at Bioregional Scales Is Necessary to Address the Climate-Biodiversity-Nutrition Nexus

“…Traditional organic systems seek to reverse these trends by replacing agrochemicals with biologically based substitutes (Röös et al, 2018) which, although they may benefit local biodiversity (Bengtsson et al, 2005), may not necessarily have a significant impact on system sustainability-since they still tend to rely heavily on external inputs, plowing, and livestock. Integrated crop production systems based on regenerative agricultural practices utilize diversity for enhanced resilience, thereby reducing reliance on external inputs to maintain productivity (Hawes et al, 2021). In these systems, incorporating a greater diversity of crop types, including legumes and other underutilized crops, enables an increase in production efficiency through facilitation and complementation mechanisms to deliver multiple functional and resource-use benefits over more traditional cropping systems (Lin, 2011).…”

“…The potential of whole (cropped) system-interventions andfunction indicators for cropped systems at more practical field-, farm-, and regional-scales has been demonstrated (Hawes et al, 2019(Hawes et al, , 2021. Field-and farm-scale system function indicators have been allied to the evolution of approaches for whole system accounting, from farm-to-fork.…”