Lecture 14 - components of agricultural sustainability

Question 1

what are the 9 components of agricultural sustainability?

Answer 1

1. Soil and land
2. Nutrients
3. Water use
4. Organic matter
5. Biota
6. Energy and agrochemicals
7. Crop productivity- food supply
8. People
9. Climate and ecosystems

Question 2

describe the effect of climate change on crop production

Answer 2

• rising sea levels are damaging soils from salinization
• when crops are stressed they are more vulnerable to disease and pests
• Estimated 200-400 million more at risk of hunger by 2080 due to climate change

Question 3

how is climate change affecting soil?

Answer 3

• extreme weather- drought / high rainfall erosion events
• Warming – increased decomposition of soil organic matter.
• Sea level rise - thermal expansion and melting ice caps and glaciers - flooding- Hundreds of millions of people live on fertile land just above sea level and these are areas important for food production
• risk of salinization of soil groundwaters as the sea levels rise

Question 4

what are soil conservation technologies?

Answer 4

No-till cultivation, strip-cropping, contour planting, terracing, mulches, cover crops, leys, agro-forestry, and wind-breaks. Water management- to store water in soil (mulches, organic matter, terracing)
- Many techniques try to mimic natural ecosystems: complete vegetation cover gives very low soil losses - protect from wind and erosion

Question 5

what are techniques used to enhance the nutrients in the soil?

Answer 5

• Legumes and green-manures in rotations to build and retain fertility.
  Agro-forestry especially with legume trees
• Phosphorus mobilizing plants, mycorrhizas and bacteria- use of cultivation techniques and inoculants to achieve these goals.
• Use of rock-dust fertilization from abundant rock sources like basalt- especially using rock dust waste as a by-product of mining for other uses such as roadstone.
• Waste recycling, composting and manures
• organic matter nutrient storage, and ion exchange capacity

Question 6

example of how you can change the availability of nutrients already in the soil

Answer 6

rich Phosphorus sources already In our soils – In some environments adding silicate rock dusts can change the availability of P - by changing the soil chemistry

Question 7

what are added cobenefits of adding silicate rock dusts?

Answer 7

additional environmental benefits such as getting more calcium/ base cations and alkalinity into oceans e.g. great barrier reef to counteract ocean acidification

Question 8

what is a global key constraint on crop production?

Answer 8

water availability

Question 9

describe how increased water irrigation of wheat (during critical growth stages) in the UK could affect yield?

Answer 9

Under irrigation UK wheat growing can yield 11.5-14.8 Tonnes per hectareAt 13 tonnes per hectare we can produce enough wheat to feed over 150 people per hectare at current consumption.
At 13 tonnes per ha UK land allocated to wheat could support 346 million people at current UK consumption.

Question 10

what is the issue with increased irrigation?

Answer 10

needs infrastructure - e.g. capture of rainwater in the west and move it to the east
- Irrigation often requires pumping- frequently using groundwater resources at rates that are unsustainable- energy and water supply implications

Question 11

what is an issue with using groundwater?

Answer 11

it usually contains salt and when the water evaporates it leaves salt behind in the soil - Salt accumulation in soils where irrigation practices are poor- destroys soil

Question 12

describe a process to remove the salt from water?

Answer 12

DESALINATION - carry out using reverse osmosis, and solar power to replace fossil fuels - could also then use sea water for crop irrigation - can use this technology in areas which are currently deserts! However costs are high and you would have to pay more for food

Question 13

what are the advantages of increased organic matter in the soil? (5)

Answer 13

• reduces erosion,
• increases water and nutrient storage,
• helps reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations,
• increases soil aggregate size and stability,
• increases crop yields

Question 14

what is the productivity of land largely determined by?

Answer 14

to a large extent determined by the fertility of the soil, which is turn is mostly determined by its organic matter content and stored nutrients

Question 15

What are the optimal strategies to rapidly accumulate soil organic carbon?

Answer 15

• Agroforestry
• Leys
• Legumes

Question 16

describe the issue with pests and disease on agriculture

Answer 16

Resistance to chemicals and banning of use of some chemicals presents increasing problems for crop production

Question 17

what are techniques used to battle pests and diseases?

Answer 17

Diverse cropping systems and rotations to reduce build-up of diseases and pests.
Inducible defences (e.g. by mycorrhiza-induced systemic resistance).

Question 18

what was the issue with the neonicotinoid insecticide?

Answer 18

seed coating with a neonicotinoid insecticide negatively affects wild bees
- underground these neonicotinoids were also toxic to earthworms - didn’t break down as quickly in soils - so accumulated in high concentrations - especially in field margins where the organic matter is high

Question 19

describe the use of biological control agents and its efficiency

Answer 19

Facilitating or adding natural enemies of pests - not always a solution in simplified agricultural systems - relevant to the ‘land sparing land sharing’ debate - suggests that actually converting whole areas uniformly to agriculture is probably a bad thing in terms of building up natural organisms – pushes you more down the chemical pathway which has lots of problems

Question 20

what can help to improve Soil structure, aggegation, drainage and C sequestration?

Answer 20

Earthworms
Mycorrhizas
Leys and legumes, cover crops, agro-forestry.

Question 21

what it intercropping?

Answer 21

• Growing crops for protection and enhancing nutrients via legumes etc

Question 22

describe the findings of Liu et al for dual cropping

Answer 22

found the optimal planting for dual cropping was maize row distance of 0.4 m, soybean row distance 0.4 m, and distance between maize and soybean rows of 0.6m

Question 23

in terms of energy what does our economy and food supply depend on?

Answer 23

cheap oil

Question 24

If we are going to have sustainable agriculture we most have sustainable energy systems - what is a possible solution to this?

Answer 24

• Possible use of non-edible plant oils as new sources for biodiesel production

Question 25

what factors do crop productivity- food supply depend on? (7)

Answer 25

Soil
Nutrients
Organic matter
Biota – beneficial and harmful
Water use
Energy
People

Question 26

describe how food supply is also dependent on how we use production

Answer 26

whether we use cereals as human food, feed for animals for meat, or to produce biofuel to add to petrol or diesel. Total grain production currently is more than double human consumption- more is fed to animals than humans. Increasing use for industrial products like biofuels.

Question 27

farmers are our vital stewards of the land - describe the current issues around farmers

Answer 27

• Only 1% of people in the UK are farmers
• One of the problems we aren’t getting new farmers into families is the value of lands and businesses are so high - people aren’t passing them down in family because divorce rate is so high - farmers are holding on to their estates
• UK farmers are overworked, undervalued and underpaid

Question 28

describe the issues surrounding education of agriculture

Answer 28

we are failing to attract young people into studying the underpinning science or entering farming as a career:
How can we expect 59 year old farmers to suddenly abandon the unsustainable cropping systems and approaches that they have spent their lives developing to maximise short-term yield?
Plant Science has almost disappeared from British universities
-There are now no departments of soil science or undergraduate degrees in soil science

Question 29

describe farm subside systems and the debate over them

Answer 29

• Farm subside systems to protect the environment- farmers paid to protect ecosystem services - however lots of arguments over them - argue its just transferring cash to the rich - the more environment/land to protect the bigger the pay out
• However don’t forget- most farms in the UK are family businesses and on average are receiving low incomes and need subsidy to survive.

Question 30

why does sustainable agriculture require sustainable incomes for farmers?

Answer 30

so that they can afford to invest in long-term protection of soil and ecosystems. Unless farmers are paid directly for ecosystem services and sustainability or properly rewarded for the food they produce they will not be able to chose environmental sustainability over short-term economic survival

Question 31

describe the issue of food waste

Answer 31

In the UK alone food worth over £10,000,000,000 is wasted each year
It accounts for 5% of UK’s greenhouse gas emissionsThere are nearly a billion people malnourished in the world but all of them could be lifted out of hunger with less than a quarter of the food wasted in Europe and North America

Question 32

describe wastes effect on prices

Answer 32

• Food waste is a major loss of efficiency and resources. Ultimately the consumer pays for waste and so it is in their interest to minimize it- but it is in the supermarket / suppliers interest to sell us even more.
• If we stop wasting food we could afford to pay farmers a fairer price