Sustainable agriculture at the ESA Annual Meeting

Advances in ecology increasingly reveal that conventional agricultural practices have detrimental effects on the landscape ecology, creating problems for long-term sustainability of crops. In a series of sessions at the Ecological Society of America’s Annual Meeting, ecologists will present their ideas on how our agricultural practices can take lessons from natural environments.

The major crops used globally to feed people and livestock

Perennial systems, on the other hand, contain plants that live longer than one year despite being harvested annually. Many agricultural scientists, including Jerry Glover of The Land Institute, say that perennial crops are the key to creating more sustainable agricultural systems.

“Across agricultural history, we’ve fundamentally relied on annual grain crops,” Glover says. “But at the same time we rely on them, they’re degrading the ecosystems they’re in, which reduces their productivity.”

EurekAlert