Biodiversity, Biofuels, Agroforestry and Conservation Agriculture

Sustainable agriculture is a rapidly growing field aiming at producing food and energy in a sustainable way for our children. This discipline addresses current issues such as climate change, increasing food and fuel prices, starvation, obesity, water pollution, soil erosion, fertility loss, pest control and biodiversity depletion. Novel solutions are proposed based on integrated knowledge from agronomy, soil science, molecular biology, chemistry, toxicology, ecology, economy, philosophy and social sciences. As actual society issues are now intertwined, sustainable agriculture will bring solutions to build a safer world. This book series analyzes current agricultural issues, and proposes alternative solutions, consequently helping all scientists, decision-makers, professors, farmers and politicians wishing to build safe agriculture, energy and food systems for future generations.

Presents a list of advanced biofuels to counter climate change Gives a list of farming practices that favour carbon sequestration Describes several methods of conservation tillage to improve dryland soils Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Inhalt

1. Agroecology as a transdisciplinary science for a sustainable agriculture; Fabio Caporali. 2. Measuring agricultural sustainability; Dariush Hayati 3. Sustainable bioenergy production, land and nitrogen use; Enrico Ceotto 4. Biofuels, the role of biotechnology to improve their sustainability and profitability; Meenu Saraf 5. Challenges and opportunities of soil organic carbon sequestration in croplands; Ilan Stavi 6. Conservation agriculture under mediterranean conditions in Spain; Felix Moreno 7. Conservation tillage and sustainable agriculture in semi-arid dryland farming; Mohammad Zarea 8. Synergism among crops to improve dryland crop production; Randy Anderson 9. Sustainable irrigation to balance supply of soil water, oxygen, nutrients and agro-chemicals; Surya Bhattarai 10. Agricultural practices in northeast India and options for sustainable management; Awadhesh Kumar Shukla 11. Microbial community structure and diversity as indicators for evaluating soil quality; Sushil K. Sharma 12. Integrating silvopastoralism and biodiversity conservation; Rosa Mosquera