This publication draws on data and results collated during an IAEA coordinated research project (CRP) on optimizing soil, water and nutrient use efficiency in integrated cropping-livestock production systems. The main objective of the project was to enhance food security, improve soil fertility, and mitigate greenhouse gases from agriculture using integrated cropping-livestock systems in changing climate conditions. In addition, the CRP participants developed a package of technology for farmers to increase crop production and improve their livelihoods using nuclear and related techniques.
For nearly a century, scientific advances have fueled progress in U.S. agriculture to enable American producers to deliver safe and abundant food domestically and provide a trade surplus in bulk and high-value agricultural commodities and foods. Today, the U.S. food and agricultural enterprise faces formidable challenges that will test its long-term sustainability, competitiveness, and resilience. On its current path, future productivity in the U.S. agricultural system is likely to come with trade-offs. The success of agriculture is tied to natural systems, and these systems are showing signs of stress, even more so with the change in climate. More than a third of the food produced is unconsumed, an unacceptable loss of food and nutrients at a time of heightened global food demand. Increased food animal production to meet greater demand will generate more greenhouse gas emissions and excess animal waste. The U.S. food supply is generally secure, but is not immune to the costly and deadly shocks of continuing outbreaks of food-borne illness or to the constant threat of pests and pathogens to crops, livestock, and poultry. U.S. farmers and producers are at the front lines and will need more tools to manage the pressures they face. Science Breakthroughs to Advance Food and Agricultural Research by 2030 identifies innovative, emerging scientific advances for making the U.S. food and agricultural system more efficient, resilient, and sustainable. This report explores the availability of relatively new scientific developments across all disciplines that could accelerate progress toward these goals. It identifies the most promising scientific breakthroughs that could have the greatest positive impact on food and agriculture, and that are possible to achieve in the next decade (by 2030).
Integrated farming in Asia is either considered an eco-friendly good that should be preserved for environmental reasons or a poor practice that will soon be superseded by industrial aquaculture. This report finds that most livestock-fish integration is sound business conducted by entrepreneurs accessing urban markets where the price of fish is relatively low. It can be used as part of a strategy to reduce environmental impacts of intensive livestock production and to produce low-cost food. Farmers have proved adept at both developing their systems to meet their own needs and diversifying the role of ponds, fish and livestock within their complex livelihoods.
The Technical Advisory Group (TAG) for Water Use Assessment, composed by 30 international experts, has developed guidelines on water footprinting for livestock supply chains. The mandate of the Water TAG was to provide recommendations to monitor the environmental performance of feed and livestock supply chains over time so that progress towards improvement targets can be measured; apply the guidelines for feed and water demand of small ruminants, poultry, large ruminants and pig supply chains; build on and go beyond the existing FAO LEAP guidelines; and pursue alignment with relevant International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards, specifically ISO 14040, ISO 14044 (ISO, 2006b and 2006a) and ISO 14046 (ISO, 2014). The guidelines on water use assessment include the impact assessment: the assessment of the environmental performance related to water use of a livestock-related system by assessing potential environmental impacts of blue water consumption following the water scarcity footprint according to the framework provided by ISO 14046 (ISO, 2014); and the assessment of the system’s productivity of green and blue water. The guidelines are thus intended to support the optimization of use of water resources and the identification of opportunities to decrease the potential impacts of water use in livestock production. The Water TAG guidance is relevant for livestock production systems, including feed production from croplands and grasslands, and production and processing of livestock products (cradle-to-gate). It addresses all livestock production systems and livestock species considered in existing LEAP animal guidelines: poultry, pig, small ruminant and large ruminant supply chains.
Explore new concepts for maximizing crop yields! Intensive Cropping: Efficient Use of Water, Nutrients, and Tillage is a compilation of current information on the interdependence of and synergies among water, nutrients, and energy in regard to increasing crop performance. This book explains the need for intensive cropping and explores the technologies and practices necessary for proper management of water, nutrients, and energy. With Intensive Cropping you will learn how to improve the quantity of the world's most important crops using methods that will minimize harm to the environment. This essential guide is a state-of-the-art account of the concepts and practices concerning the integrated use of water, nutrients, and energy in intensive cropping. Intensive Cropping combines basic and applied aspects of soil-water, nutrients, and energy management to help you optimize your crop yields and maximize the efficiency of intensively farmed regions. In Intensive Cropping, you will explore the need for extreme farming and related concerns and concepts, including: reducing runoff, deep seepage, and evaporation losses supplementing irrigation with surface and ground water understanding the process of water uptake and its effects on root dynamics and water use reducing leaching, erosion, and gasseus losses in your fields using combinations of organic manures, crop residues, chemical fertilizers, and biofertilizers for soil maintenance implementing conventional and emerging tillage systems, such as conservation tillage for improving soil quality examining case studies of contrasting edaphic requirements of rice-wheat systems Intensive Cropping brings you up-to-date on recent advances in the field, supported by relevant experimental observations on environmentally safe and effective ways to increase crop performance. By examining this new research on increasing crop production, you will be able to successfully increase crop yields in various climates and support the growing global demand for such resources.
Integrated Agriculture - An Approach for Sustainable Agriculture offers a comprehensive examination of a transformative agricultural paradigm aimed at revolutionizing farming practices worldwide. This book explores the core principles and practical applications of integrated agriculture, presenting a holistic perspective that merges traditional wisdom with modern scientific advancements. The book is an indispensable resource that bridges theory and practice, offering readers a roadmap to embracing a holistic and forward-thinking approach to farming on a global scale. Through its comprehensive exploration of integrated agricultural practices, this book advocates for a sustainable and prosperous future for agriculture worldwide.With a focus on enhancing agricultural productivity, profitability, sustainability, and environmental health, this book serves as a guiding beacon for practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and students invested in the future of global agriculture.
Agro-Ecosystem Diversity: Impact on Food Security and Environmental Quality presents cutting-edge exploration of developing novel farming systems and introduces landscape ecology to agronomy. It encompasses the broad range of links between agricultural development and ecological impact and how to limit the potential negative results. Presented in seven sections, each focusing on a specific challenge to sustaining diversity, the book provides insights toward the argument that by re-introducing diversity, it should be possible to maintain a high level of productivity of agro-ecosystems while also maintaining and/or restoring a satisfactory level of environment quality and biodiversity. Demonstrates that diversified agro-ecosystems can be intensified with environmental quality preserved, restored and enhanced Includes analysis of economic constraints leading to specialization of farms and regions and the social locking forces resisting to diversification of agro-ecosystems Presents a global vision of world agriculture and the tradeoff between a necessary increase in food production and restoring environment quality
Learn the fundamentals as well as in-depth details of agricultural cropping systems from around the globe! Cropping Systems: Trends and Advances is a comprehensive review of past and present research efforts in North America and other parts of the world. It brings together biological, economic, sociological, and technical aspects of cropping systems in a single source to provide a reference unlike any other on the subject that is available today. This valuable book also points to future directions that cropping systems research needs to take in order to increase sustainable agriculture and feed the growing world population. Charts, tables, and illustrations make the information easy to access and understand. An ideal textbook for graduate and undergraduate courses in agronomy as well as a comprehensive reference for professionals involved in cropping systems research, Cropping Systems: Trends and Advances is a book you’ll refer to again and again. Topics covered in this well-referenced and thoughtfully indexed book include: emerging trends in cropping systems research designing resource-efficient cropping systems soil quality and fertility tillage root dynamics water quality concerns nitrogen use efficiency precision agriculture agricultural biotechnology weed biology and management integrated pest management the important role that cover crops can play key indicators for assessing nitrogen use efficiency in cereal-based agroecosystems the implications of elevated carbon dioxide-induced changes in agroecosystem productivity and a great deal more!
Informed livestock sector policy development and priority setting is heavily dependent on a good understanding of livestock production systems. In a collaborative effort between the Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Livestock Research Institute, stock has been taken of where we have come from in agricultural systems classification and mapping; the current state of the art; and the directions in which research and data collection efforts need to take in the future. The book also addresses issues relating to the intensity and scale of production, moving from what is done to how it is done. The intensification of production is an area of particular importance, for it is in the intensive systems that changes are occurring most rapidly and where most information is needed on the implications that intensification of production may have for livelihoods, poverty alleviation, animal diseases, public health and environmental outcomes. A series of case studies is provided, linking livestock production systems to rural livelihoods and poverty and examples of the application of livestock production system maps are drawn from livestock production, now and in the future; livestock's impact on the global environment; animal and public health; and livestock and livelihoods. This book provides a formal reference to Version 5 of the global livestock production systems map, and to revised estimates of the numbers of rural poor livestock keepers, by country and livestock production system.
