Search results for "Sustainable Agriculture"
showing 10 items of 86 documents
In the context of sustainable agriculture how, with plant high throughput phenotyping, can we address the various challenges?
2018
International audience; In a context of climate change and soil and water resource degradation, it becomes increasingly important to reduce the need for high nutrient, water, or pesticides inputs, leading to more sustainable agricultural practices. In this context, our aim is to select the best performing crops in various deleterious abiotic environments, having both a higher yield and a better quality, a better environmental « efficiency ». Because plants interact with numerous and diverse microorganisms, especially in the soil volume surrounding roots, called rhizosphere, plant-microorganism relationships in the rhizosphere is also of great agronomical and ecological importance. To addres…
Progress towards sustainable agriculture – Drivers of change
2021
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 calls for global action to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture”. Meeting this challenge requires global partnerships to support more productive, nutritious and equitable food systems, while helping to conserve environmental resources and reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions responsible for global climate change. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) offers a global vision for a more sustainable agriculture that encompasses economic, social and environmental dimensions of food and agriculture systems. This technical study examines the key factors driving changes in…
Sustainable agriculture: Recognizing the potential of conflict as a positive driver for transformative change
2020
International audience; Transformative changes in agriculture at multiple scales are needed to ensure sustainability, i.e. achieving food security while fostering social justice and environmental integrity. These transformations go beyond technological fixes and require fundamental changes in cognitive, relational, structural and functional aspects of agricultural systems. However, research on agricultural transformations fails to engage deeply with underlying social aspects such as differing perceptions of sustainability, uncertainties and ambiguities, politics of knowledge, power imbalances and deficits in democracy. In this paper, we suggest that conflict is one manifestation of such und…
CA-SYS: A long term experimental platform on agroecology at various scales
2018
National audience; The French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) has established an ambitious, multiscale, agricultural experimental infrastructure (the CA-SYS platform) as a collaboration between the Research Unit, Agroécologie (Dijon, eastern France), and the Experimental Research Unit, Domaine d’Epoisses (20 km next to Dijon). CA-SYS covers an area of 120 ha, and is divided into 47 fields, each of which has drainage and can be irrigated, and will be initiated in autumn 2018. The aims of CA-SYS are to: i) design and evaluate new agroecological systems; ii) study the transition from current farming systems towards these new agroecological systems, with goals that include a…
Willingness to Adopt Biochar in Agriculture: The Producer’s Perspective
2017
Most research on biochar has focused either on the mechanistic or the biophysical aspects, and there has been relatively little research into the social applicability and acceptance of biochar as a soil enhancer in agriculture. However, whether to adopt biochar in their practice is ultimately the farmers’ decision, and their willingness to do so is crucial. Here, we show the producer’s perspective on adopting biochar, using Polish farmers as a case study. Poland is an interesting case study because biochar has only recently attracted the attention of researchers, entrepreneurs, and other stakeholders there. We performed standardized, semi-structured interviews with 161 Polish farmers to eva…
Reversing agriculture from intensive to sustainable improves soil quality in a semiarid South Italian soil
2010
Intensive agriculture (IA) is widespread in South Italy, although it requires frequent tillage, large amounts of fertilizers and irrigation water. We have assessed the efficacy of reversing IA to sustainable agriculture (SA) in recovering quality of a typical South Italy soil (Lithic Haploxeralf). This reversion, lasting from 2000 to 2007, replaced 75% of nutrients formerly supplied inorganically by farmyard manuring and reduced the tillage frequency. Several chemical and biochemical properties, functionally related to C and N mineralisation–immobilisation processes and to P and S nutrient cycles, were monitored annually from 2005 to 2007 in the spring. Reversing IA to SA decreased soil bul…
Toward Comprehensive Plant Microbiome Research
2020
Microbes have driven eco-evolutionary adaptations organizing biodiversity from the origin of life. They are ubiquitous and abundant, facilitating the biochemical processes that make Earth habitable and shape ecosystem structures, functions, and services. Recent studies reveal that commensalistic and beneficial microbes associated with wild and domesticated plants may aid in establishing sustainable agriculture for a changing climate. However, developing microbe-based biotechnologies and ecosystem services requires a thorough understanding of the diversity and complexity of microbial interactions with each other and with higher organisms. We discuss the hot and blind spots in contemporary re…
Biocontrol of the Major Plant Pathogen
2019
Three new lytic bacteriophages were found to effectively control the pathogen Ralstonia solanacearum, a quarantine bacterium in many countries, and causative agent of bacterial wilt, one of the most important vascular plant diseases. Bacterial wilt management has been carried out with fluctuating effects, suggesting the need to find alternative treatments. In this work, three lytic phages were isolated from environmental water from geographically distant regions in Spain. They proved to specifically infect a collection of R. solanacearum strains, and some of the closely related pathogenic species Ralstonia pseudosolanacearum, without affecting non-target environmental bacteria, and were abl…
Agri-Food Markets towards Sustainable Patterns
2020
In recent decades, the confluence of different global and domestic drivers has led to progressive and unpredictable changes in the functioning and structure of agri-food markets worldwide. Given the unsustainability of the current agri-food production, processing, distribution and consumption patterns, and the inadequate governance of the whole food system, the transition to sustainable agriculture and food systems has become crucial to effectively manage a global agri-food market able in supporting expected population growth and ensuring universal access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food for all. Based on a critical review of the existing international literature, the paper seeks to…
Qualitative Evaluation of the STOEMP Network in Ghent: An Intersectoral Approach to Make Healthy and Sustainable Food Available to All
2020
The STOEMP network is, to our knowledge, one of the first initiatives to bring different sectors together in a municipality so as to increase accessibility to healthy and sustainable foods for all, with particular attention for the disadvantaged population. This qualitative study aimed to gain an in-depth insight into how the STOEMP network aims to reach its goal of making healthy, sustainable food available to everyone, through an intersectoral, collaborative process, exploring the facilitators and challenges of taking a systems-oriented approach to achieving this. Interviews were conducted among 15 stakeholders of the STOEMP network between March&ndash