Agroecology and herbivore farming systems – principles and practices
2014
Wezel, A | Peeters, A
To achieve the sustainability goals of future agriculture, agroecology was often mentioned and dis- cussed in the last decade. Surprisingly, the very large majority of publications on agroecology are related to cropping systems and different issues of plant production, whereas only rare publications are related so far to livestock systems and animal production. In this paper we analyse this relation between agroecology and herbivore farming systems by defining six groups of principles and seven categories of agroecological prac- tices. The principles we propose for agroecological herbivore farming systems can be classified into (i) knowl- edge, culture and socio-economics, (ii) biodiversity conservation and management, (iii) resource manage- ment, (iv) system management, (v) food and health, and (vi) social relations. The agroecological practices which could or should be implemented to establish sustainable herbivore farming systems can be grouped in to (i) diversification of land use, land cover and productions, (ii) resource management in mixed crop-live- stock systems, (iii) biodiversity conservation, (iv) grassland management, (v) livestock management, (vi) food and food system, (vii) diversification of income sources. These underlying groups of principles and categories of practices should be considered for the development of sustainable agricultural herbivore farming systems. Keywords.
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