Complex rice systems to improve rice yield and yield stability in the face of variable weather conditions.

Extreme weather events and pest outbreaks decrease rice yields and increase their variability, presenting challenges for the agricultural agenda to increase rice productivity and yield stability in Asia. The integration of azolla, fish and ducks has been shown to create robust systems that maintain high yields under heavy rainfall, but no clear evidence exists that rice yields in these systems are stable across locations and throughout time under divergent weather conditions. We show that the introduction of additional elements into the rice cropping system enhanced the adaptive capacity to extreme weather events across four locations and three cropping cycles.

Bedding additives reduce ammonia emission and improve crop N uptake after soil application of solid cattle manure.

This study examined the influences of three potential additives, i.e., lava meal, sandy soil top-layer and zeolite (used in animal bedding) amended solid cattle manures on (i) ammonia (NH), dinitrous oxide (NO), carbon dioxide (CO) and methane (CH) emissions and (ii) maize crop or grassland apparent N recovery (ANR).

Land use as a driver of soil fertility and biodiversity across an agricultural landscape in the Central Peruvian Andes.

Land use change and intensification in agricultural landscapes of the Andean highlands have resulted in widespread soil degradation and a loss in soil-based ecosystem services and biodiversity. This trend threatens the sustainability of farming communities in the Andes, with important implications for food security and biodiversity conservation throughout the region. Based on these challenges, we sought to understand the impact of current and future land use practices on soil fertility and biodiversity, so as to inform landscape planning and management decisions for sustainable agroecosystem management.

Simulation of Long-Term Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics in Grassland-Based Dairy Farming Systems to Evaluate Mitigation Strategies for Nutrient Losses.

Many measures have been proposed to mitigate gaseous emissions and other nutrient losses from agroecosystems, which can have large detrimental effects for the quality of soils, water and air, and contribute to eutrophication and global warming. Due to complexities in farm management, biological interactions and emission measurements, most experiments focus on analysis of short-term effects of isolated mitigation practices. Here we present a model that allows simulating long-term effects at the whole-farm level of combined measures related to grassland management, animal housing and manure handling after excretion, during storage and after field application.

Complex agro-ecosystems for food security in a changing climate.

Attempts to increase food crop yields by intensifying agricultural systems using high inputs of nonrenewable resources and chemicals frequently lead to de-gradation of natural resources, whereas most technological innovations are not accessible for smallholders that represent the majority of farmers world wide. Alternatively, cocultures consisting of assemblages of plant and animal species can support ecological processes of nutrient cycling and pest control, which may lead to increasing yields and declining susceptibility to extreme weather conditions with increasing complexity of the systems. Here we show that enhancing the complexity of a rice production system by adding combinations of compost, azolla, ducks, and fish resulted in strongly increased grain yields and revenues in a season with extremely adverse weather conditions on East Java, Indonesia.