Diverse perennial circular forage systems are needed to foster resilience, ecosystem services, and socioeconomic benefits in agricultural landscapes

Abstract

Prevailing agricultural systems dominated by annual crop monocultures, and the landscapes that contain them, lack resilience and multifunctionality. They are vulnerable to extreme weather events, contribute to degradation of soil, water, and air quality, reduce biodiversity, and negatively impact human health, social engagement, and equity. To achieve greater resilience, stability, and multiple ecosystem services therein, and to improve socioeconomic outcomes, we propose a practical framework to gain multifunctionality at multiple scales. This framework includes forages within agroecosystems that have the essential structural features of diversity, perenniality, and circularity. These three structural features are associated with increased resilience, stability, and provision of several ecosystem services, which in turn improve human health and socioeconomic outcomes. This framework improves understanding of, and access to, tools and materials for promoting the adoption of diverse circular agroecosystems with perennial forages. Application of this framework can result in land transformations that solve sustainability challenges in agriculture if policy, economic, and social barriers can be overcome by a transdisciplinary process of equitable knowledge production.

Intercropping legumes and intermediate wheatgrass increases forage yield, nutritive value, and profitability without reducing grain yields

“…The frequent tillage of soils and a lack of vegetation cover for prolonged periods have led to extensive soil erosion, soil carbon loss, and nutrient runoff into groundwater, among other problems, which demands the rethinking of the way humans produce food. Some novel approaches seek to diversify and perennialize cropping systems by reducing soil tillage (Crews and Rumsey, 2017), replacing fallow periods with service crops (Schipanski et al, 2014;Pinto et al, 2017), integrating crop and livestock systems (de Faccio Carvalho et al, 2021;Franco et al, 2021;Picasso et al, 2022), intercropping multifunctional species (Malézieux et al, 2009;Gaba et al, 2015) or including dual-purpose perennial crops in the agricultural rotations (Hunter et al, 2020b;Franco et al, 2021). Recent advances in domestication and breeding of perennial cereals for seed yield offer the opportunity to reintroduce perennial polycultures and regenerate components and processes of natural ecosystems to agroecosystems (Glover et al, 2010;Pimentel et al, 2012;Ryan et al, 2018).…”

The Impact of Nanomaterials on Photosynthesis and Antioxidant Mechanisms in Gramineae Plants: Research Progress and Future Prospects

“…Finally, the agricultural application of nanotechnology may lead to increased production costs and changes in production methods, impacting traditional agricultural knowledge and practices and thus affecting socio-economic welfare and ecosystem services [117]. Especially in developing countries, the inequality in technology access and benefit distribution could worsen, and small-scale and resource-poor farmers may struggle to afford the high costs of nanotechnology [118].…”

Framework to develop an open‐source forage data network to improve primary productivity and enhance system resiliency

“…Perennial cropping systems promote pollinator habitat, soil and nutrient conservation, and accrual of soil carbon, all of which are needed to meet the projected 60% increases in sustainable food demands by 2050. Annual crop monocultures lack resilience and multifunctionality and to achieve greater resilience, stability, and multiple ecosystem services, systems containing diversity and perenniality are needed (Picasso et al., 2022; Sanford et al., 2021). Previous research on a North American database of historic yields of alfalfa has shown productivity, stability, and resilience can be quantified as independent traits (Picasso et al., 2019).…”