Time for a shift in crop production: embracing complexity through diversity at all levels

Abstract

A radical shift in our approach to crop production is needed to ensure food security and to address the problems of soil degradation, loss of biodiversity, polluted and restricted water supplies, coupled with a future of fossil fuel limitations and increasingly variable climatic conditions. An interdisciplinary network of European scientists put forward visions for future crop production embracing the complexity of our socio-ecological system by applying the principle of diversity at all levels from soil micro-organisms to plant varieties and cropping systems. This approach, integrated with careful deployment of our finite global resources and implementation of appropriate sustainable technology, appears to be the only way to ensure the scale of system resilience needed to cope with many of our concerns. We discuss some of the most important tools such as (i) building soil fertility by recycling of nutrients and sustainable use of other natural and physical resources, (ii) enhancing biological diversity by breeding of crops resilient to climate change and (iii) reconnecting all stakeholders in crop production. Finally, we emphasise some of the changes in agricultural and environmental regulation and policy needed in order to implement the visions.

Impacts of climate change on plant diseases—opinions and trends

“…Similarly important is the development of a range of different predictive techniques, so as to be able to take advantage of a diversity of analytical approaches. Equally, the greater integration of plant diversity in production systems is expected to buffer against the unpredicted or unpredictable alterations that pathosystems will experience in a changing climate (Østergård et al 2009;Brummer et al 2011;Döring et al 2011;Jarvis et al 2011).…”

Collaborative Plant Breeding for Organic Agricultural Systems in Developed Countries

“…Many authors have pointed to a need for greater diversity in agriculture [1,3,[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. Due to greater heterogeneity of environmental conditions (both spatial and temporal) in organic systems, there is a particular need to increase genetic diversity on organic farms [13][14][15][16][17][18].…”

Energy Analysis of the Danish Food Production System: Food-EROI and Fossil Fuel Dependency

“…These strategic goals do not necessarily match well with the dominating economic and agricultural paradigms but are supported by some agricultural scientists [7,56].…”

“…Nitrogen (N) is the most common yield-limiting nutrient [6] and much effort has been put into how to manage the crop to prevent yield loss [7]. The discoveries in the early 20th century of how to synthesise ammonia from atmospheric N 2 (by Habor) and how to produce N on a large-scale (by Bosch) have fundamentally changed the global N-cycle: From 1950 to 2000 the global consumption of N fertiliser increased from roughly 4 to more than 85 million ton per year [8].…”