An Integrated Sustainable Vegetable Production System
TLDR
Sustainable agriculture is defined as a philosophy and system of farming based on a set of values that involve benign designs and management procedures that work with natural processes to conserve all resources, minimize waste and environmental impact, prevent problems, and promote agroecosystem resilience, self-regulation, evolution, and sustained production for the nourishment and fulfillment of all.Abstract:
Sustainable agriculture means many things to many people. To environmentalists the term may mean protection and/or renewal of agricultural-natural resources. To growers and consumers of organic food products, the term means producing foodstuffs without chemical inputs. Other terms-regenerative, low-input, alternative, renewable, organic-have been used synonymously for sustainable. This illustrates existing confusion. Whether conventional or sustainable, profit remains an integral part of the picture for agricultural industry to survive. Opinions vary greatly in defining what sustainable agriculture is, as each division of agriculture has its own definition. It has been called organic farming, which is a system of production that largely avoids the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and plant growth regulators (U.S. Dept. Agriculture, 1980). Whenever feasible, sustainable agriculture relies upon crop rotations, crop residues, animal manures, offfarm organic wastes, mechanical cultivation, mineral-bearing rocks, and aspects of biological pest control to maintain the soil and its tillage, to supply plant nutrients, and to control insects and weeds (Oelhaf, 1978; U.S. Dept. Agriculture, 1980). MacRae et al. (1989) defined sustainable agriculture as a philosophy and system of farming based on a set of values that involve benign designs and management procedures that work with natural processes to conserve all resources, minimize waste and environmental impact, prevent problems, and promote agroecosystem resilience, self-regulation, evolution, and sustained production for the nourishment and fulfillment of all.read more
Citations
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Cover crops in sustainable food production
TL;DR: A review of the agronomic and economic literature on using cover crops in sustainable food production and reports on past and present research on cover crops and sustainable agriculture at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, Maryland is presented in this paper.
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Agroecosystem management and biotic interactions: a review
Safia Mediene,Muriel Valantin-Morison,Jean-Pierre Sarthou,Stephane de Tourdonnet,Marie Gosme,Michel Bertrand,Jean Roger-Estrade,Jean Noël Aubertot,Adrien Rusch,Natacha Motisi,Céline Pelosi,Thierry Doré +11 more
TL;DR: Options to increase beneficial biotic interactions in agroecosystems and to improve pest management and crop nutrition whilst decreasing petrochemical use are reviewed.
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Clover as a cover crop for weed suppression in an intercropping design: II. Competitive ability of several clover species
TL;DR: It was concluded that for optimization of systems that introduce clover species as a weed suppressing cover crop species selection is important element, though additional management to restrict the competitive effect on the main crop remains a requirement.
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Clover as a cover crop for weed suppression in an intercropping design: I. Characteristics of several clover species
TL;DR: The large variability among clover species indicates that species selection is a very important aspect of the development of cropping systems that include clover as a cover crop.
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The Role of Cover Crops towards Sustainable Soil Health and Agriculture—A Review Paper
Parmodh Sharma,Atinderpal Singh,Charanjit S. Kahlon,Amandeep Singh Brar,Kulbhushan Grover,Mahendra Dia,Robert L. Steiner +6 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors summarized the effect of several cover crops in soil properties such as soil moisture content, soil microbial activities, soil carbon sequestration, nitrate leaching, soil water, and soil health.
References
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