Diversifying Steep Slope Viticulture—Towards a Sustainable Intensive Agriculture?

Diversifying Agriculture with Alternative Crops

Cropland diversity has diminished with the advent of mechanized agriculture. In some cases, a single crop is grown year after year in the same field. The lack of diversity in crops rotated in a field has allowed pests to build up, reduced yields, and in some cases increased soil erosion and reduced soil quality. Recognizing these problems, efforts are underway in many farming regions to add mor...

Sustainable Intensive Agriculture: High Technology and Environmental Benefits

Variation of Surface Soil Quality Parameters by Intensive Donkey-Drawn Tillage on Steep Slope

2000). Although these data are useful for soil erosion modeling, soil conservation planning, and the developFew direct measurements are made to quantify the erosion from ment of soil conservation practices on cultivated land upslope to lower field boundaries by intensive tillage. We conducted 50 plowing operations over a 5-d period using a donkey-drawn moldwith complex topography, it does not a...

A steep-slope transistor based on abrupt electronic phase transition

Collective interactions in functional materials can enable novel macroscopic properties like insulator-to-metal transitions. While implementing such materials into field-effect-transistor technology can potentially augment current state-of-the-art devices by providing unique routes to overcome their conventional limits, attempts to harness the insulator-to-metal transition for high-performance ...

Agrometeorology and sustainable agriculture

Current concerns with the sustainability of agroecosystems in different parts of the world have hightened the awareness for careful use of the natural resource base on which agriculture depends. For proper and efficient use of soils and plant/animal genetic material, knowledge of the role of climate is an essential precondition. Several elements of the chapters in Agenda 21, a global plan of ac...