Intensification for redesigned and sustainable agricultural systems

INVITED REVIEW Sustainable intensification in agricultural systems

†Background Agricultural systems are amended ecosystems with a variety of properties. Modern agroecosystems have tended towards high through-flow systems, with energy supplied by fossil fuels directed out of the system (either deliberately for harvests or accidentally through side effects). In the coming decades, resource constraints over water, soil, biodiversity and land will affect agricultu...

Exploitation of endophytes for sustainable agricultural intensification

Intensive agriculture, which depends on unsustainable levels of agrochemical inputs, is environmentally harmful, and the expansion of these practices to meet future needs is not economically feasible. Other options should be considered to meet the global food security challenge. The plant microbiome has been linked to improved plant productivity and, in this microreview, we consider the endosph...

GMOs: A Good but Battered Means for Sustainable Production Intensification

FAO promotes Sustainable Production Intensification (SPI), which consists of a technology menu for optimizing crop production per unit area, taking into consideration the range of sustainability aspects including potential and/or real social, political, economic and environmental impacts. The author suggests that Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) cropping is not only well aligned to SPI but a...

Agricultural intensification and ecosystem properties.

Expansion and intensification of cultivation are among the predominant global changes of this century. Intensification of agriculture by use of high-yielding crop varieties, fertilization,irrigation, and pesticides has contributed substantially to the tremendous increases in food production over the past 50 years. Land conversion and intensification,however, also alter the biotic interactions a...

Sustainable process synthesis-intensification