Reconciling Techno-simplicity and Eco-complexity for future food security
2015
Poggio, Santiago L. | Macfadyen, Sarina | Bohan, David | Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiologicas y Ecologicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura (IFEVA) ; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas [Buenos Aires] (CONICET)-Facultad de Agronomía [Buenos Aires] ; Universidad de Buenos Aires [Buenos Aires] (UBA)-Universidad de Buenos Aires [Buenos Aires] (UBA) | Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation [Australia] (CSIRO) | Agroécologie [Dijon] ; Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA)-Université de Bourgogne (UB)-AgroSup Dijon - Institut National Supérieur des Sciences Agronomiques, de l'Alimentation et de l'Environnement
SPEPôle GESTAD
Show more [+] Less [-]English. Ecological intensification has been proposed as a paradigm for ensuring global food security while preserving biodiversity and ecosystem integrity. Ecological intensification was originally coined to promote precise site-specific farming practices aimed at reducing yield gaps, while avoiding negative environmental impacts (techno-simplicity). Recently, it has been extended to stress the importance of landscape complexity to preserve biodiversity and ecosystem services (eco-complexity). While these perspectives on ecological intensification may seem distinct, they are not incompatible and should be interwoven to create more comprehensive and practical solutions. Here, we argue that designing cropping systems to be more diverse, across space and time would be an effective route to accomplish environmentally-friendly intensification of crop production. Such a novel approach will require better integration of knowledge at the landscape level for increasing agro-biodiversity (focused on interventions outside fields) with strategies diversifying cropping systems to manage weeds and pests (focused on interventions inside fields).
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