Farming does not provide only food to humans. Sustainable agriculture indeed offer many free services named Ecosystem Services, such as climate regulation, water conservation, pollution remediation and social enhancement. Rapidel et al. explain how farming system influences ecosystem services.
Crop management is a complex task because crop yields depend on hardly predictable factors such as climate change and pest occurrence. A solution is to develop apps that help farmers and agronomists to take the best decision for farming practices. Damos reviews decision tools based upon pest and climate data.
Ecosystems could provide many beneficial services to agriculture. But the main question is actually how to apply ecological principles to crop management. Rey et al. provide guidelines deduced from the analysis of case studies.
Industrial agriculture has improved yields but has also induced many negative impacts such as pesticide pollution, greenhouse emissions and soil erosion. Agroecology is a promising alternative that foster the use of biodiversity instead of chemicals. However switching from industrial to agroecological farming is risky because there are actually few guidelines to optimize a such change. Agronomists Duru et al. review the issues of using biodiversity for agriculture. They also propose to design ecological farming at the local level with farmers.
Adding the right amount of nitrogen fertilisers to crop soils is not an obvious task. Too much fertiliser will induce nitrate pollution and extra costs for farmers. Too little will decrease crop yields. Therefore agronomists have developped the nitrogen dilution curve, a simple math tool that helps farmers to calculate the best fertiliser amount to be applied. Reyes et al. show that the nitrogen dilution curve can be also used to manage grasslands.
Organic wastes from agriculture and food industry are increasingly digested then recycled as cheap soil fertilisers. However, waste digestion and spreading is a potential source of greenhouse gases. The agronomist K. Möller reviews the consequences of waste anaerobic digestion on soil fertility and nitrogen compound emissions.
Improving food production is now a difficult task because sustainable cropping depends upon many factors such as climate, pest management, land use and economics. Agronomists Craheix et al. provide guidelines to design software models that optimise the sustainability of farming systems.
Grass species in pristine and agricultural landscapes are essential for biodiversity, soil quality and food production. For instance, grass flowers provide food for honeybees, grass roots decrease soil erosion and clean polluted waters, and grass diversity is known to influence the good taste of milk. It is therefore important to understand how grass species emerge, disappear and adapt to changing environmental conditions and agricultural practices. Da Silveira Pontes et al. review the latest advances on plant strategies in grasslands, using a recent scientific discipline named functional ecology.
Certifying organic crops is not an easy task due to the huge agricultural areas that have to be checked. Agronomists Denis et al. have designed a new, effective method that distinguishes organic and non-organic cotton fields with up to 86% performance in south-western Burkina Faso, West Africa. The method uses remote sensing from space.
Mineral fertilisers containing nitrates and ammonium are almost always applied in excess in crop fields. As a consequence soil waters and rivers are often contaminated by fertilisers, which induce pollution issues such as undrinkable water and unexpected algal blooms. Benckiser et al. review ecological techniques such as nitrogen fixation that recycle nitrogen within the soil, thus decreasing water pollution by nitrates.
