Sustainable Agriculture Reviews 14

Sustainable agriculture is a rapidly growing field aiming at producing food and energy in a sustainable way for humans and their children. Sustainable agriculture is a discipline that addresses current issues such as climate change, increasing food and fuel prices, poor-nation starvation, rich-nation obesity, water pollution, soil erosion, fertility loss, pest control, and biodiversity depletion. Novel, environmentally-friendly solutions are proposed based on integrated knowledge from sciences as diverse as agronomy, soil science, molecular biology, chemistry, toxicology, ecology, economy, and social sciences. Indeed, sustainable agriculture decipher mechanisms of processes that occur from the molecular level to the farming system to the global level at time scales ranging from seconds to centuries. For that, scientists use the system approach that involves studying components and interactions of a whole system to address scientific, economic and social issues. In that respect, sustainable agriculture is not a classical, narrow science. Instead of solving problems using the classical painkiller approach that treats only negative impacts, sustainable agriculture treats problem sources. Because most actual society issues are now intertwined, global, and fast-developing, sustainable agriculture will bring solutions to build a safer world.

The book (and series) is a state of the art on the latest research in sustainable agriculture This book series gathers review articles that analyze current agricultural issues and knowledge, then propose alternative solutions Covering multidisciplinary topics it will help all scientists, decision-makers, professors, farmers and politicians who wish to build a safe agriculture, energy and food system for future generations

Autorentext

Eric Lichtfouse: PhD in organic geochemistry, INRA researcher in Dijon, France since 1992, he teaches scientific writing. He is also editor in chief of the INRA journal Agronomy for Sustainable Development, and founder and editor of the Springer journal Environmental Chemistry Letters.

Inhalt

Preface.- Agroecology theory, controversy and governance.- Food and energy production from biomass in an integrated farming system.- Ecological intensification for crop protection.- Livestock farming systems and agro ecology in the tropics.- Cropping systems for soil biodiversity and ecosystem services; Cathy Clermont-Dauphin.- Agro ecology and grassland intensification and in the Caribbean.- Ecosystem services of multi specific and multi stratified cropping systems.- Agro ecological engineering to bio control soil pests for crop health.- Agro ecological resources for sustainable livestock farming in the humid tropics.- Agro ecology for farmers: the linguistic issue.- Soil quality and plant nutrition.- Soil science, plant nutrition and micro-farms.