Facing up to the paradigm of ecological intensification in agronomy: Revisiting methods, concepts and knowledge

By T. Doré, David Makowski, É. Malézieux, N. Munier-Jolain, Marc Tchamitchian, P. Tittonell. 2011

503 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Agriculture is facing up to an increasing number of challenges, including the need to ensure various ecosystem services and to resolve apparent conflicts between them. One of the ways forward for agriculture currently being debated is a set of principles grouped together under the umbrella term “ecological intensification”. In published studies, ecological intensification has generally been considered to be based essentially on the use of biological regulation to manage agroecosystems, at field, farm and landscape scales. We propose here five additional avenues that agronomic research could follow to strengthen the ecological intensification of current farming systems. We begin by assuming that progress in plant sciences over the last two decades provides new insight of potential use to agronomists. Potentially useful new developments in plant science include advances in the fields of energy conversion by plants, nitrogen use efficiency and defence mechanisms against pests. We then suggest that natural ecosystems may also provide sources of inspiration for cropping system design, in terms of their structure and function on the one hand, and farmers’ knowledge on the other. Natural ecosystems display a number of interesting properties that could be incorporated into agroecosystems. We discuss the value and limitations of attempting to ‘mimic’ their structure and function, while considering the differences in objectives and constraints between these two types of system. Farmers develop extensive knowledge of the systems they manage. We discuss ways in which this knowledge could be combined with, or fed into scientific knowledge and innovation, and the extent to which this is likely to be possible. The two remaining avenues concern methods. We suggest that agronomists make more use of meta-analysis and comparative system studies, these two types of methods being commonly used in other disciplines but barely used in agronomy. Meta-analysis would make it possible to quantify variations of cropping system performances in interaction with soil and climate conditions more accurately across environments and socio-economic contexts. Comparative analysis would help to identify the structural characteristics of cropping and farming systems underlying properties of interest. Such analysis can be performed with sets of performance indicators and methods borrowed from ecology for analyses of the structure and organisation of these systems. These five approaches should make it possible to deepen our knowledge of agroecosystems for action.

Subfields: Agronomy and Crop Science, Plant Science, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/03ae56a2e94f08e63d250966bd406d29a5668ed7

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Citations in the corpus

Ecological intensification of agriculture — sustainable by nature (2014, background): “[2 ] around ecological intensification, which imply producing more but producing differently, and producing new things (i.”
When yield gaps are poverty traps: The paradigm of ecological intensification in African smallholder agriculture (2013, background): “These observations have prompted Doré et al. (2011) to propose new sources of knowledge and methods in agronomy to strengthen the ecological intensification of current agriculture.”
Beyond the agroecological and sustainable agricultural intensification debate: Is blended sustainability the way forward? (2018, background): “It involves ‘the use of biological regulation to manage agroecosystems, at field, farm and landscape scales’ (Doré et al., 2011, p. 197).”
Maize-grain legume intercropping is an attractive option for ecological intensification that reduces climatic risk for smallholder farmers in central Mozambique (2012, background): “Thus cereal legume intercropping appears to be a useful component of ecological intensification (Doré et al., 2011), an approach to produce more food per unit resource to achieve positive social outcomes without negative effects on the environment (Cassman, 1999; Hochman et al.”
Climate-smart agriculture global research agenda: scientific basis for action (2014, background): “Ecological intensification builds resilience by leveraging ecological processes to increase outputs from agricultural lands to promote (provisioning supporting, and regulatory ecosystem services) and decrease dependence on external inputs [93].”
Sustainable intensification in agriculture: the richer shade of green. A review (2017, methodology): “…intensification changed its meaning (Kuyper and Struik 2014), from a way to increase food production while meeting acceptable standards of environmental quality (Cassman 1999) to intensification making use of agricultural practices that are inspired by (or even mimic) nature (Doré et al. 2011).”
Optimizing agri-environment schemes for biodiversity, ecosystem services or both? (2014, background): “We provide a conceptual framework for the spatial allocation of different AES based on a few fundamental ecological principles, given an increased pressure to increase agricultural production, and to achieve this with ecological intensification (Bommarco et al., 2013; Doré et al., 2011; Fahrig et al”