Agriculture provides society with many services such as food, carbon sequestration, pest regulation and jobs. The efficiency of those services depends on managament choices by farmers at the landscape scale. Chopin et al. designed a new method to study the evolution of farming systems at the landscape scale.
ASD
Europe helps farmers to use less pesticide for sustainable agriculture
European farmers should adopt integrated pest management from 2014. Indeed, applying the principles of integrated pest management and organic farming should lead to a more sustainable agriculture with less pesticide. Lefebvre et al. designed a framework to understand what incentives encourage farmers to adopt integrated pest management. Their findings help to understand farmer reaction to policy incentives. Results also show how should public money be used to favour sustainable agriculture.
Urban tomato against poverty in Benin
Urban farming is a potential way to reduce poverty and improve food safety. In sub-Saharan African cities, urban farmers have intensified vegetable production to meet the demand from inhabitants. A such rapid change may induce unintended hazards. A study of tomato production in urban gardens in Benin by Perrin et al. indeed revealed poor practices and high risks for health and the environment.
Weed migration under climate change in Central Europe
Crop weeds are a major cause of economic loss. Recent changes such as global warming and pesticide-free cropping are changing weed patterns in agriculture. For example, thermophile weeds – weeds that like warm – such as tumbleweeb (Amaranthus retroflexus) have become more abundant in some cropping systems due temperature and precipitation changes. The review article by Peters et al. analyses the ecological mechanisms ruling weed migration.
A social explanation for increasing pesticide pollution by agriculture
Despite many initiatives for more sustainability, agriculture moves in the opposite direction with increasing pesticide impacts and decreasing nature quality. Using social system analysis Noe and Alrøe found that there is a need to find news ways recoupling of food production and other aspects of sustainability.
Cashew farmers need help
Cashew is a South American tropical tree native that has been introduced in Asia and Africa by European explorers during the 16th century. Now cashew grows worldwide, particularly in emerging countries. Cashew production a major resource for smallholder farmers. However cashew farmers face several issues such as lack of agricultural education and access to cultivation hardware, and few investment in cashew production. Those issues are particularly impacting women. Agronomists Dendena and Corsi review the cashew production chain including management practices, processing methods and uses of products and by-products. They found a lack of integrated and systematic research on cashew production and on potential solution to help smallholder farmers.
Maps of natural agriculture in Europe
Farms that keep natural or semi-natural areas have better environmental performance. Such areas include hedgerows, buffer strips, field margins, woodlots, grasslands, agroforestry and traditional orchards. García-Feced et al. have drawn maps to show the link between agricultural production and changes of natural vegetation.
Rice cultivation with less water
Rice is traditionally cultivated by transplantation by farmers in water. However there is an increasing scarcity of water in a time of climate change. Moreover, transplanting in water is costly because many workers are needed. Therefore dry direct-seeded rice cultivation appears as a promising alternative. Liu et al. have compared dry direct-seeded rice and transplanted-flooded rice. They propose that dry direct-seeded rice should successfully replace transplanted rice in Central China due to less water requirement, identical grain yield and higher resource use efficiency.
Insects for food, fertilisers and waste management
Agriculture is actually facing three major issues. The first issue is to produce enough food for the ever growing world population. The second issue is the increasing cost and use of mineral fertilisers. The third issue is the huge amounts of organic waste produced by human activities. Insects could solve those issues. Indeed insects can be used as food and feed. Also insect larvae often feed on decaying organic matter in nature. A such process can thus be used to transform organic waste, such as compost, into food and feed. Moreover, the compost residue can be used as plant fertiliser. Lalander et al. used black soldier fly to transform compost into biomass. They observed a high waste conversion and a reduction of microbial diseases.
Microbes help plants to grow in saline soils
Plant growth is decreased by the presence of salt in soils. In the world 20% of agricultural land and 50% of cropland is stressed by salt. This issue will increase with global warming and soil salinization is decreasing cropping land by 1–2% yearly. A potential solution is to favour the development of some rhizobacteria, that are bacteria living in the root zone, named the rhizosphere. Paul and Lade review the beneficial effects of plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria for plants growing in saline soils. The photo clearly shows the poor growth of wheat in the saline zone at the bottom. Salt causes yellowing and death of wheat leaves.
