Applied Tools and Practices for Sustainable Agriculture
Many of the tools and management practices needed to take advantage of nature’s services are already known. They include: Cover crops Conservation tillage Contour plowing Wind breaks Hedge rows Manuring and composting Crop rotations/rotational grazing Int
- PDF / 1,004,061 Bytes
- 36 Pages / 439.37 x 666.14 pts Page_size
- 105 Downloads / 201 Views
Applied Tools and Practices for Sustainable Agriculture
Abstract Many of the tools and management practices needed to take advantage of nature’s services are already known. They include: • • • • • • • • • •
Cover crops Conservation tillage Contour plowing Wind breaks Hedge rows Manuring and composting Crop rotations/rotational grazing Integrated pest management Resource use efficiency through diversity Drip irrigation Other tools and management techniques that need development include:
• • • • • • • • • • • • •
Perennial grains Weed control through allelopathy Microbial priming Natural pesticides Beneficial interactions in mixed species agriculture and forestry Intensive grazing management Mixed species grazing Integrating livestock with cropping Farmscaping -matching crops with environment Increasing resource use efficiency Evaluating sustainability of various organic practices Evaluating all agricultural practices in terms of energy efficiency instead of yield Herbicides – the puzzle for sustainability
Replacing energy intensive tools and practices with methods that utilize the services of nature will increase the sustainability of agriculture. C.F. Jordan, An Ecosystem Approach to Sustainable Agriculture: Energy Use Efficiency in the American South, Environmental Challenges and Solutions 1, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-6790-4_5, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
115
116
5 Applied Tools and Practices for Sustainable Agriculture
Keywords Management for sustainable agriculture • Sustainable agriculture practices • Agricultural practices to increase energy use efficiency • Agricultural practices using the services of nature • Management using the services of nature
5.1
Combating Soil Erosion
Erosion is a major hazard over half of all cropland in the United States (Magdoff and van Es 2000). Erosion occurs when vegetation is removed from the soil surface, and the mineral soil (sand, silt, clay) is exposed to water or wind energy. This occurs when fields are plowed, harrowed, disked, rototilled, or cultivated by any other soildisturbing practice. In undisturbed soils, plant roots bind the mineral soil and keep it in place. Relatively little erosion occurs under the cover of natural ecosystems such as forests or prairies. but when plants are removed to begin an agricultural operation, the soil-binding property of the roots is lost. The roots of many agricultural crops also bind the soil, but the plows, cultivators, and tillers that farmers use to prepare the soil as a seed bed destroy the residual crop roots as well as the roots of weeds (Box 5.1).
5.1.1
Cover Crops
After fall harvest during the cotton era of the South, fields were often left barren and winter rains carved out gullies. Cover crops are commonly used now to prevent erosion through soil-binding properties of their roots. They frequently are part of a crop rotation sequence, and some, such as oats, produce economic yield as well as ecological benefits. There are many kinds of cover crops: winter cover crops and summer cover crops, l
Data Loading...
