Perspectives for Agronomy (eBook)

Adopting Ecological Principles and Managing Resource Use

S.C. van de Geijn, M.K. van Ittersum (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: PDF

1997 | 1. Auflage
363 Seiten
Elsevier Science (Verlag)
978-0-08-053866-2 (ISBN)

Infos

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.

Inhalt

Cover 1
Table of contents 10
Preface 6
Acknowledgements 8
Section I: Introduction 14
Chapter 1. Role of research and education in the development of agriculture in Europe 16
Section 2: Agricultural Land Use, Food Security and Enviroment 30
Chapter 2. Land use transformation in Africa: three determinants for balancing food security with natural resource utilization 32
Chapter 3. Agro-ecological characterisation, food production and security 42
Chapter 4. The potential benefits of agroforestry in the Sahel and other semi-arid regions 52
Chapter 5. Chemical crop protection research and development in Europe 62
Chapter 6. Emissions of CO2, CH4 and N20 from pasture on drained peat soils in the Netherlands 70
Section 3: Crop Physiology and Ideotyping 78
Chapter 7. Effects of CO2 and temperature on growth and yield of crops of winter wheat over four seasons 80
Chapter 8. Use of in-field measurements of green leaf area and incident radiation to estimate the effects of yellow rust epidemics on the yield of winter wheat 90
Chapter 9. Simulating light regime and intercrop yields in coconut based farming systems 100
Chapter 10. Improving wheat simulation capabilities in Australia from a cropping systems perspective: water and nitrogen effects on spring wheat in a semi-arid environment 112
Chapter 11. Comparison of CropSyst performance for water management in southwestern France using submodels of different levels of complexity 126
Chapter 12. Root growth of three onion cultivars 136
Chapter 13. Interspecific variability of plant water status and leaf morphogenesis in temperate forage grasses under summer water deficit 148
Chapter 14. Evaluation of sunflower (Helianthus annuus, L.) genotypes differing in early vigour using a simulation model 158
Chapter 15. Options of breeding for greater maize yields in the tropics 168
Section 4: Managing Resource Use 182
Chapter 16. Nitrogen budgets of three experimental and two commercial dairy farms in the Netherlands 184
Chapter 17. Resource use at the cropping system level 192
Chapter 18. The efficient use of solar radiation, water and nitrogen in arable farming: matching supply and demand of genotypes 204
Chapter 19. Soil-plant nitrogen dynamics: what concepts are required? 214
Chapter 20. Modeling crop nitrogen requirements: a critical analysis 230
Chapter 21. Maize production in a grass mulch system - seasonal patterns of indicators of the nitrogen status of maize 240
Chapter 22. Nitrogen transformations after the spreading of pig slurry on bare soil and ryegrass ~5N-labelled ammonium 250
Chapter 23. Size and density fractionation of soil organic matter and the physical capacity of soils to protect organic matter 258
Chapter 24. Characterization of dissolved organic carbon in cleared forest soils converted to maize cultivation 270
Chapter 25. Analysis of impact of farming practices on dynamics of soil organic matter in northern China 280
Chapter 26. Agronomic measures for better utilization of soil and fertilizer phosphates 290
Section 5: DEsigning Farming Systems 304
Chapter 27. A methodical way of prototyping integrated and ecological arable farming systems (I/EAFS) in interaction with pilot farms 306
Chapter 28. The Logarden project: development of an ecological and an integrated arable farming system 322
Chapter 29. Integrated crop protection and environment exposure to pesticides: methodes to reduce use and impact of pesticides in arable farming 332
Chapter 30. Use of agro-ecological indicators for the evaluation of farming systems 342
Chapter 31. Model-based explorations to support development of substainable farming systems: case studies from France and the Netherlands 352
Chapter 32. Learning for substainable agriculture 366
Author Index 374
Subject index 376

Textauszug

Role of research and education in the development of agriculture in Europe

E. Porceddua,*; R. Rabbingeb    a Department of Agrobiology and Agrochemistry, University of Tuscia, Via S. Camillo De Lellis, 01100 Viterbo, Italy
b Department of Theoretical Production Ecology, Wageningen Agricultural University, P.O. Box 430, 6700 AK Wageningen, The Netherlands
* Corresponding author.

Abstract

Agricultural research and education in Europe has played a major role in the advancement of agriculture and land use during the last century. The scientific basis of agriculture has been strengthened and the use of insight, knowledge and expertise in farmers’ fields is widely adopted. As a result of this development, productivity per hectare, efficiency and efficacy of use of external inputs has increased considerably. During the last decades, objectives of agriculture and land use have broadened and this illustrates the need for further ecotechnological knowledge and insight to reach, in a balanced way, multiple goals of agriculture, productivity, protection of the environment, nature conservation and development. Research and education have to be developed in that direction to make agricultural science and technology more responsive to changing societal demands. The disciplinary scientific quality and depth should develop in tandem with integrating problem-oriented multidisciplinary research activities. Systems approaches may serve as an instrument to that goal. © 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.

Keywords

Systems approaches

Reorientation agricultural research

Broadened objectives

1 Introduction

Since mankind started to exploit plants and other organisms to fulfill the changing demands for food and other needs, agriculture has been an important activity of mankind. The continuous evolution and manipulation of organisms and their function has been based on empiricism, knowledge, insight and expertise. The development has accelerated during the last century, when the scientific basis for agriculture strengthened and its simultaneous implementation became possible. The last decades have seen a broadening of aims and objectives of agriculture and an increased importance of various environmental and socio-economic constraints. The ways that development took place, the change from old concepts to new perspectives and the challenges of agricultural research in general and more specifically of agronomy, are described in this introductory article to the Proceedings of the 4th ESA conference. The possibilities to reach those aims, and the new institutions and concepts which recently were introduced and adopted, are described.

2 Historical setting

Scientific developments in agriculture during the 19th century were dominated by two scientists: Justus von Liebig and Gregorius Mendel. Their discoveries in the field of plant nutrition and the laws of heredity opened entirely new roads. Even today they still inspire scientific progress in fields very distant from the ones in which they originally made their contributions. A careful examination of their scientific experiences leads us to understand that, contrary to what is often reported, they worked in a lively and stimulating environment. It laid the basis for agricultural sciences and the institutionalization of research in agriculture; an event that Whitehead (1925) considered as the greatest innovation of the 19th century.

The experiments carried out by private farmers, including the introduction of new crops, the establishment of chairs of agriculture at several university level teaching institutions, and the initiation in 1786 of the first public experimental farm near Braunschweig and a farm school in Hamburg, gave birth to agricultural research and experimental institutes in most European countries. The forestry school and the pomology institute of Weihenstephan were set up in 1803, followed by the research and teaching institutes at Hohenheim in 1818 and at Moglin in 1819. By the end of the century, Germany could boast as many as 87 research institutes, many of them in Prussia (Nomisma, 1996).

The movement soon spread to France, where, at the initiative of private societies, farm schools were set up in Roville, near Nancy in 1822, Le Saussaie in 1828, and Bechelbon in Alsace in 1834. The first public institution became eventually operational in Versailles in 1848. In total there were 61 experimental stations in France at the end of the century (Nomisma, 1996).

In the United Kingdom, the first experimental institution was set up in Rothamsted in 1844 as a private foundation, a form it was to retain until the end of the century; it was later joined by similar organizations in Woburn and Pumpherstone. By the end of the century agricultural colleges had been established at Bangor in 1889, Leeds in 1890, Aberystwyth in 1891, Nottingham in 1893, Reading in 1893, Cambridge in 1894 and Wye in 1894 (Speedy, 1994).

In Italy, a private school opened in Tuscany in 1834 with a program of theoretical and practical lectures. Six years later it was transformed into a university level institution attached to the University of Pisa (Coppini and Volpi, 1991). Within a few years of the unification of the country, in 1866, the University of Naples started planning a Faculty of Agriculture. It eventually became operational in 1872, though by that time it had been preceded by a Higher School of Agriculture, set up in 1870 by the University of Milan. Three agricultural experimental stations were set up in the same year. The last institution set up during last century in Italy was the Higher School of Agriculture at the University of Perugia in 1896.

In Spain teaching started in 1855 at the Agricultural Central School in Aranjuez, close to Madrid, which had been promoted by the Ministry of Agriculture (J.A. Cubero, in litteris). In many countries of Eastern Europe similar developments took place, although in most cases much later. During 1850–1900 many National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS), including academic education and extension, were developed. However, during the last decade of the 19th century, many of these systems suffered due to considerable contraction of the agricultural sector.

The story of the agricultural research institutes was very different in Denmark and the Netherlands, where the stimulus for extensive teaching and experimentation activities was provided by the great agricultural crisis of the last quarter of the 19th century. While other countries adopted protectionistic measures, these two countries reacted by rising the level of cultivation and agronomic techniques of their farmers. As a result, their competitive capacity increased. Agricultural research in Denmark was entrusted to four experimental stations, while teaching was concentrated at the Higher School of Agriculture in Copenhagen. In the Netherlands, the Faculty of Agriculture, then still a Higher School, was founded at Wageningen in 1876. Very quickly it gave rise to four distinct bodies: the Higher School of Agriculture, the School of Horticulture, the Agricultural Secondary School, and the Agricultural Colonial School. Agricultural extension was started and an intensive system of experimental stations and farmer field experiments initiated (Eveleens and Rabbinge, 1994).

This is not the place for attempting a full-scale historical review of Europe’s agricultural research, experimentation, and teaching institutions, but the few words devoted to their origin demonstrate not only the fervor that existed in Europe for agricultural research and teaching, but also that this fervor made it possible to develop and exploit certain processes. In no more than a century these lead to greater transformations in agriculture than the ones that had occurred in the two preceding millennia. Both in arable farming and dairy farming, increases in land and labor productivity in the last 100 years were dramatic, compared with all ages before. In Italy, wheat production, which at the beginning of the century was of the order of 1 t/ha, is today four times as great; the cultivation of 1 ha of wheat today absorbs 4 man days or 30 h of labor, while as many as 70 man days were needed only 70 years ago. Similar developments occurred in other industrialized countries. Average yield level or wheat in the Netherlands increased from 1.5 t/ha to 8.5 t/ha 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 developments can be observed in other crops.

The increased productivity coupled with an expansion of the agricultural land allowed most of the European countries to produce enough food commodities and meet the increasing demand through population growth and diet change. Severe famine crisis could thus be prevented. Also, emigration, which drained more than 40 million Europeans during the 19th century, could be prevented in this century.

3 Recent developments in agricultural productivity and employment

Events during the last quarter of the present century, a period even the youngest scientists have experienced at first hand, are well documented. At the end of the 1960s the number of people served by a single European Union farmer was only half the present number (Table 1), and the amount of produce provided by such a farmer was half of what it is today (Table 2). This has left an ever larger number of people free to be engaged in other activities, to leave the...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 11.12.1997
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► EU / Internationales Recht
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► Privatrecht / Bürgerliches Recht ► Sachenrecht
• Themenwelt: Technik
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft
• Themenwelt: Weitere Fachgebiete ► Land- / Forstwirtschaft / Fischerei
• ISBN-10: 0-08-053866-5 / 0080538665
• ISBN-13: 978-0-08-053866-2 / 9780080538662