Management and classification Flashcards
Name some type of agriculture system
Traditional agriculture
Conventional agriculture
Sustainable agriculture
Integrated agriculture
Organic agriculture
What is traditional agriculture
Farming methods practiced before the introduction of agro-chemicals, high-yielding varieties and machines
What is conventional agriculture?
Crop production in monocultures using high yielding varieties, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, factory farming of livestock
- High degree of mechanization
- Use of mineral fertilizers
- Use of synthetic insecticides
- Use of uniform high-yield hybrid crops, including GM crops
- Mainly monocultures
- Mainly factory farming of livestock
=> Focuses on technology and chemical input rather than on systems management
What is sustainable agriculture?
Approach of integrating environmental soundness, economic profit-ability and social equity
What is integrated agriculture?
Minimizing negative impacts of conventional agriculture by combining biological, technical and chemical measures.
What is organic agriculture?
No use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, crop and livestock production designed in ways to create nutrient cycles
What are some examples of conventional intensification in Germany?
- Decreasing number of farms
- Higher yields
- Lot less farm workers
- Much more milk produced per cow (productivity)
What is the Green Revolution, and what has it brought?
in the 60s, as reaction to the increasing threats of hunger (e.g. 1961 India on the brink of mass famine)
- Implied breeding of new high yielding varieties of rice, maize and wheat at international research centres
The dark sides
- Increased demand of fertilizers and pesticides
- Extreme loss in diversity of crop varieties
What is a GM crop?
Have been genetically modified by introduction of DNA from another species, in order to obtain one or more beneficial new traits
What is the purpose of GM crops?
Insect-resistant GM-crops : resistant agains insect pest (ex: BT corn => toxin from bacteria Bacillus Thuringiensis )
Herbicide-resistant GM-crops : designed to tolerate specific broad-spectrum herbicides, which kill the surrounding weeds, but leave the cultivated crop intact
=> these plants are part of weed control system in conventional agriculture. Mainly soybean, maize, rapeseed, cotton
Currently the most common system in practice (80%) is Roundup Ready by Monsanto => active ingredient = glyphosate
Nutrient-altered GM crops: crops engineered to provide increased levels of vitamins or minerals, or with altered oil content
=> Ex: Golden Rice => produce beta carotene => precursor of Vit A
Disease-resistant GM crops resistant agains fungus and virus pathogens
Drought and salt tolerant GM crops: engineered to grow in dry or salty env
What are some environmental contraints to agriculture?
Climate
Soils
Terrain
What are 3 types of characteristics for classification of agroecosystems?
- Life form of the crop plant
- Annual (one vegetation period to complete their development)
- Perennial (lifespan of several years) - Management intensity
- Extensive (natural stand conditions, manual labor)
- Intensive (modern technological innovation, large farm units, high chemical inputs, mechanical inputs) - Cropping period
- Rotation system
- Permanent system
Define rotation system
Crop prod of a given species on the same area for only a limited amount of time
- Necessary for the regeneration of soil fertility avoidance of pest problems, for allelopathy etc.
What are some important rotation systems?
Shifting cultivation
Ley farming (animals on fallow cropland)
Crop rotation
What is shifting cultivation?
A rotation system.
- Also called slash and burn, swidden agriculture
- Relatively short cultivation periods are followed by longe regeneration periods of fallow (important in the tropics)
- Cropping often only possible for 1-3 years (nutrient poor soils, no compensation of extracted nutrients
If the fallow is to short, no forest regeneration, and elevated risk of erosion and total land loss
