Sustainable farming systems and their impact on soil biological fertility-some case studies

Abstract

The term 'sustainable agriculture' is used widely and has embraced a diverse range of issues and objectives, including animal welfare, greater protection of the environment, and the need for farming to support other sectors of the economy such as tourism. Where the principles of sustainable development are applied to agriculture, then farming systems are judged to make a major input to a sustainable economy and society when they concurrently meet the following objectives: Produce safe food and non-food products in response to market demands. Enable viable livelihoods to be made from land management. Operate within biophysical constraints and enable a diverse wildlife. Provide environmental and other benefits to the public such as recreation and access. Achieve the highest standards of animal health and welfare. Support the vitality of rural economies and the diversity of rural culture. Sustain the resource available for growing food and supplying other public benefits over time. Every farming system is an agglomeration of structures and practices placed within local environmental constraints (climate and soil). Farming systems are inherently adapted to their location. Farmers combine management of soils with the management of a combination of crops, livestock, wildlife habitats, labour, marketing, storage and processing of products. Recent emphasis on the development of sustainable farming systems has focussed on the application of skills and knowledge in managing biological cycles and their interactions in the farming system within the local institutional and environmental framework (NRC 1993). It is not possible to define a single blueprint approach to sustainable agriculture. No single set of structures and practices can simultaneously achieve all the ecological and socio-economic goals and fit the diverse social and environmental conditions in any region, let alone at a global scale. In this chapter we first describe some farming systems commonly described as 'sustainable' and then examine a series of case studies that have quantified the impact of these farming systems on soil biological fertility. © 2007 Springer.