Perspectives for Agronomy: Adopting Ecological Principles and Managing Resource UseM.K. van Ittersum, S.C. van de Geijn Elsevier, 1997 M12 11 - 363 pages During the 4th ESA-Congress, held in the Netherlands, 7-11 July 1996, a new perspective for agronomy emerged. Various contributions demonstrate the need for a new role of agronomy and its tools. In recent decades, agriculture has evolved from an activity with mainly productivity aims, into an issue conciliating environmental, agricultural, and economic and social objectives. Placing agriculture in such a broadened perspective requires a different agronomy, with new tools and approaches at a range of aggregration levels. It calls for detailed knowledge concerning the functioning, productivity and ecological relationships of agricultural plants and crops. In addition, it calls for a constant update and synthesis of existing and newly generated knowledge, the design of new ideotypes and genotypes, new production technologies, cropping systems, farming systems and agro-ecological land use systems. This proceedings book presents a set of case studies illustrating the various agronomic tools that can be used for specific agronomic questions. The case studies are grouped in sections illustrating relevant subquestions in developing an agriculture with broadened objectives. The book starts with an introductory paper on the role of agronomy in research and education in Europe. The second section deals with agricultural land use, food security and environment. This is followed by a set of papers describing experimental research and modeling approaches used to design new ideotypes of crops, including physiological properties in relation to growth factors such as radiation, CO2, temperature and water. Sustained soil fertility directly links to nutrient cycling and soil organic matter. A selected set of papers addresses the improvements in resource use efficiency and as such their contribution towards economic, environmental and agricultural objectives. The final section addresses the design of integrated and ecological arable farming systems. It highlights the role of prototyping interaction with leading-edge farmers, as promising tools to design, implement and test new farming systems. It is hoped that the activities of the European Society for Agronomy and the Proceedings of its 4th Congress will stimulate to serve the new perspectives of agronomy, i.e. to adopt ecological principles, to optimally manage the use of resources and to meet social and economic objectives. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 77
... Average yield level or wheat in the Netherlands increased from 1.5 tha to 8.5 tha and labor requirement decreased from 300 to 15 man hours/ha (de Wit et al., 1987). At present yield levels of 10 t/ha are not exceptional. Similar ...
... average maize yields versus nitrogen fertilizer rate in USA during the period 1945–1982. (From: Sinclair, 1990). minthosporium – the fertilizer response returned to its previous level. These relationships become even more evident when ...
... average recovery rate of nutrient inputs (Wooning, 1992). Agroforestry is defined as a land-use system in which woody plants are grown in association with agricultural crops, pastures or livestock. Apart from diversification of the ...
... average 230 310, 155” Enrichment factor C" 1–3 Average 1.3 Enrichment factor N” 1–3 0.9–1.3 Enrichment factor P* 1–3x 0.8-3.1 Light interception Isolated tree (%) Average 47 50, 65” Cereal yield increase Faidherbia x millet" Maximum ...
... average enrichment factor for total P was only 1.1. The combination of drought and heavy exploitation rates (cropping and grazing mainly) on the ranch must be the explanation for the overall limited enrichment effects of woody plants ...
Contents
17 | |
65 | |
Section 4 MANAGING RESOURCE USE | 169 |
Section 5 DESIGNING FARMING SYSTEMS | 291 |
Author Index | 361 |
Subject index | 363 |