Biodiversity, Biofuels, Agroforestry and Conservation Agriculture (Sustainable Agriculture Reviews Book 5)

Sustainable agriculture is a rapidly growing field aiming at producing food and energy in a sustainable way for humans and their children. Sustainable agriculture is a discipline that addresses current issues such as climate change, increasing food and fuel prices, poor-nation starvation, rich-nation obesity, water pollution, soil erosion, fertility loss, pest control, and biodiversity depletion. Novel, environmentally-friendly solutions are proposed based on integrated knowledge from sciences as diverse as agronomy, soil science, molecular biology, chemistry, toxicology, ecology, economy, and social sciences. Indeed, sustainable agriculture decipher mechanisms of processes that occur from the molecular level to the farming system to the global level at time scales ranging from seconds to centuries. For that, scientists use the system approach that involves studying components and interactions of a whole system to address scientific, economic and social issues. In that respect, sustainable agriculture is not a classical, narrow science. Instead of solving problems using the classical painkiller approach that treats only negative impacts, sustainable agriculture treats problem sources. Because most actual society issues are now intertwined, global, and fast-developing, sustainable agriculture will bring solutions to build a safer world. This book series gathers review articles that analyze current agricultural issues and knowledge, then propose alternative solutions. It will therefore help all scientists, decision-makers, professors, farmers and politicians who wish to build a safe agriculture, energy and food system for future generations. Front Matter....Pages i-vi Agroecology as a Transdisciplinary Science for a Sustainable Agriculture....Pages 1-71 Measuring Agricultural Sustainability....Pages 73-100 Sustainable Bioenergy Production, Land and Nitrogen Use....Pages 101-122 Biofuels, the Role of Biotechnology to Improve Their Sustainability and Profitability....Pages 123-148 Challenges and Opportunities of Soil Organic Carbon Sequestration in Croplands....Pages 149-174 Conservation Agriculture Under Mediterranean Conditions in Spain....Pages 175-193 Conservation Tillage and Sustainable Agriculture in Semi-arid Dryland Farming....Pages 195-238 Synergism Among Crops to Improve Dryland Crop Production....Pages 239-251 Sustainable Irrigation to Balance Supply of Soil Water, Oxygen, Nutrients and Agro-Chemicals....Pages 253-286 Agricultural Practices in Northeast India and Options for Sustainable Management....Pages 287-315 Microbial Community Structure and Diversity as Indicators for Evaluating Soil Quality....Pages 317-358 Integrating Silvopastoralism and Biodiversity Conservation....Pages 359-373 Back Matter....Pages 375-391 Annotation Sustainable agriculture is a rapidly growing field aiming at producing food and energy in a sustainable way for our children. This discipline addresses current issues such as climate change, increasing food and fuel prices, starvation, obesity, water pollution, soil erosion, fertility loss, pest control and biodiversity depletion. Novel solutions are proposed based on integrated knowledge from agronomy, soil science, molecular biology, chemistry, toxicology, ecology, economy, philosophy and social sciences. As actual society issues are now intertwined, sustainable agriculture will bring solutions to build a safer world. This book series analyzes current agricultural issues, and proposes alternative solutions, consequently helping all scientists, decision-makers, professors, farmers and politicians wishing to build safe agriculture, energy and food systems for future generations