Caminábamos con Borges por un barrio de quintas, en Mar del Plata, y de pronto sentí un olor que me conmovió. Borges me dijo que los recuerdos que más nos emocionan son los de olores y gustos, porque suelen estar rodeados de abismos de olvido: hay que oler el mismo olor para recordar un olor, hay que sentir el mismo gusto para recordar un gusto (no ocurre así con imágenes y sonidos). ¡Con qué emoción volvemos a oler el mismo olor que por última vez olimos en tiempos lejanos, en lugares a los que nunca volveremos! 

Sábado, 23 de julio, 1949.     

Adolfo Bioy Casares (2006) Borges. Ediciones Destino

The land use, trade, and global food security impacts of an agroecological transition in the EU  

Schiavo et al., 2023.

The need for an agroecological transition is regularly advocated by many actors and policymakers on the European scene, but many questions arise regarding the potential consequences that this transition may have on the rest of the world. Using a world biomass balance model, in this paper we show that a deep agroecological transition in the EU, if accompanied by a shift of EU food regimes towards more plant-based diets, is not detrimental to global food security. Without increasing its cropland areas, the EU can maintain the same level of exported calories as in a business-as-usual scenario while reducing its import needs. This result holds true also in an alternative scenario in which the other world regions adopt agroecological production methods and healthier diets. In contrast, an agricultural transition taking place in the EU without a change of EU food regimes, would drastically increase EU food dependence on global markets and contribute to the expansion of agricultural land in the rest of the world.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2023.1189952/full

Soil microbiomes must be explicitly included in One Health policy 

Singh et al., 2023.

This paper highlights critical role of soil health& microbiome in One Health where human, animal& environmental health is linked by a microbial loop that mediates exchange of resources, chemicals, beneficial microbes & pathogens.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-023-01386-y

May's Paradox 

Thilo Gross

Long-term increased grain yield and soil fertility from intercropping  

Li et al., 2023.

Population and income growth are increasing global food demand at a time when a third of the world’s agricultural soils are degraded and climate variability threatens the sustainability of food production. Intercropping, the practice of growing two or more spatially intermingled crops, often increases yields, but whether such yield increases, their stability and soil fertility can be sustained over time remains unclear. Using four long-term (10–16 years) experiments on soils of differing fertility, we found that grain yields in intercropped systems were on average 22% greater than in matched monocultures and had greater year-to-year stability. Moreover, relative to monocultures, yield benefits of intercropping increased through time, suggesting that intercropping may increase soil fertility via observed increases in soil organic matter, total nitrogen and macro-aggregates when comparing intercropped with monoculture soils. Our results suggest that wider adoption of intercropping could increase both crop production and its long-term sustainability.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-021-00767-7

Can We Feed Ourselves without Devouring the Planet? 

George Monbiot 

 

 

 Permaculture The Documentary: How it started

Conservation agriculture affects multitrophic interactions driving the efficacy of weed biological control

Carbonne et al., 2023

1. Biological control is a key ecosystem service in arable lands, but its effectiveness varies according to environmental and biotic contexts. Cascading interactions between several trophic levels can affect natural enemies and their efficacy.
2. Here, we analysed how multitrophic interactions drive weed seed control under contrasting farming systems and landscapes. In particular, we analyse how the presence of higher-order predators and alternative prey affects the weed seed consumption by seed predators. We monitored 30 cereal fields organised into 15 pairs, each comprising one conventional and one conservation agriculture field, sampled along a gradient of proportion of conservation agriculture in the landscape.
3. We found that local and landscape management under conservation agriculture favours the presence of seed predators like carabids and rodents, higher-order predators like shrews and alternative animal prey. Weed seed predation is promoted by conservation agriculture through an increase in the number of seed predators. However, alternative animal prey reduces the efficacy of carabids to consume seeds, probably due to a prey-switching behaviour. Similarly, shrews negatively affect the activity-density of carabids, resulting in an indirect negative effect on seed predation.
4. Synthesis and applications: Our study highlights that the implementation of conservation agriculture can improve the provision of biological control but the resulting effect may be partially limited by the increased complexity of trophic interactions. The different trophic levels respond to local management and/or the surrounding landscape with cascading effects on the delivery of weed control. Our study highlights the importance of considering not only the direct effects of seed predators, but also the indirect effects of higher-order predators and alternative prey when predicting the level of weed biological control.

https://lc.cx/1ypf2Y