Towards an ecology intensive agriculture

Date: 21 April 2015
Venue: Het Trippenhuis (KNAW), Kloveniersburgwal 29, Amsterdam
Language: English

How to feed 9 billion people without wrecking the planet

The world’s population will rise to 9 billion people over the next 35 years. That’s 9 billion mouths to feed! Conventional agricultural methods aren’t up to the challenge: we’re already seeing problems such as the degradation of soil fertility, the vulnerability of monocultures to pests and diseases and the depletion of fertilizer stocks. But help may be at hand from nature: natural (eco)systems offer sustainable solutions that could allow us to overcome all these problems.

On 21 April, leading scientists will discuss the potential of ecologically intensive methods to transform agriculture. The basic idea couldn’t be simpler: just work with nature and use natural processes to develop robust agricultural systems. Yields will be more stable as well as higher.

It’s important that agriculture and agricultural policy stop focusing only on maximizing crops. We should open our eyes to other aspects: the structure and fertility of the soil for instance, soil communities and biodiversity. These are things that can make agro-ecological methods more robust and healthy. If we apply the latest insights, the soil could even become self-sufficient to a high degree. There would be less need for working, conditioning and irrigating the soil and poisonous pesticides would become a thing of the past.

At the conference, scientists from around the globe will share their knowledge of ecological principles in agriculture and how to apply them in today’s world in different agricultural systems.

Organization

The conference is organised by the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

Contact

Dr. Ciska Veen or Jasper Wubs MSc 

Twitter

Twitter about the conference? Please use: #ecoagro

Titles and abstracts for the conference lectures.

Plant-microbial interactions and soil functioning: lessons for sustainable agriculture  Prof. Richard Bardgett - University of Manchester, UK

One of the biggest challenges facing mankind is the need to increase food production to feed a burgeoning world population in a sustainable way. Central to this challenge is a need for new ways that enable food production  to increase, but sustain, or even build, soil health and its capacity to deliver multiple ecosystem services, such as the carbon storage, prevention of erosion and nutrient retention. At the heart of this challenge is the need for new, understanding of the controls on soil microbial communities and their functioning in relation to soil processes that underpin soil health. In this talk, I will discuss how new understanding of the functional roles of plant-microbial interactions might be harnessed in farming systems to meet some of these goals, especially efficient nutrient cycling and carbon storage. 

Diversification and education as key to ecological intensive agriculture Dr. Gerlinde de Deyn - Associate Professor, Soil Quality, Wageningen University

The need for ecological intensification of agriculture is rooted in the idea that current agricultural systems do not optimize the multiple ecosystem services that can be delivered by agri-ecosystems. This sub-optimal, non-sustainable, performance is due to trade-offs in desired effects and unwanted side-effects of soil and plant management, such as pollution due to over-fertilization and pesticide use and the loss of pest-control and efficient nutrient cycling through ecological interactions. In this talk I will argue that the transition to sustainable agricultural practices can be greatly facilitated by learning from ecological principles that show how resources can be used more efficiently, for example through judicious diversification in space and time. Given that ecological interactions are complex in nature I advocate that we also have a role as scientists and participants to this symposium to improve ecological literacy and longer-term thinking to raise general support for the transition to ecological intensive agriculture.

Agroforestry, broadly defined as the interaction of agriculture and trees, has been increasingly recognized and practiced as an ecologically-based land management option that can simultaneously contribute to income, food security and the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services, as well as a climate change adaptation and mitigation tool.  Soil health is a key indicator of the state of natural capital and central to agricultural sustainability.  It reflects the capacity of soil to function as a vital living system and respond to agricultural management by sustaining the biological productivity that underpins the provision of food and fiber as well as other ecosystem services. Soil health is of great concern to farmers, particularly resource-poor smallholder farmers who rely to a large degree on the biological productivity of soil for their livelihoods. Desired features of agroecosystems that promote soil health are illustrated using agroforestry as a case study. 

The biological fixation of nitrogen through the legume/rhizobium symbiosis is key to ecological intensification of nutrient cycles for crop production. A large body of research has explored the diversity of grain, forage, green manure and tree legumes in tropical agriculture. Yields of both grain legumes and other non-legume crops can easily be doubled by enhancing nitrogen fixation. Whilst spectacular results are observed under experimental conditions at plot or field scale, uptake by smallholders is disappointing. Major constraints occur at farm and farming system scale: the need for import of other nutrients, especially P and K, the labour-demands of the technologies, and small farm sizes that constrain the development of systems based on recycling of nutrients. Most of the extra two billion people of the world’s population forecast by 2050 will be in tropics, and particularly in Africa. In this light I will discuss the boundaries of ecological intensification in smallholder farming.

Registration for this conference is closed. We have reached the maximum number of participants. 

Registration is free* and includes lunch and refreshments. * Cancelation is possible until one week before to the conference (i.e. 14 April 2015) free of charge, after that date you will have to pay a fee of € 50,-.