Components Of An Adaptive Landscape Farming System

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

All those who wish to master adaptive landscape agriculture (abbreviated as ALZ), need to develop the following main stages:

1. Collect baseline information to optimize land use areas. As a result of the work, the information collected should give a specific answer: what soil fertility exists at the moment, not in general, but specifically on each bed; what measures should be taken, if it is low, for its reproduction; what amount of agricultural products a given summer cottage or farm plot can produce.

2. Draw up a production program for the planned crop production

Consistently, from the determination of the maximums limited by nature (soil, climate, plants, animals), with a gradual transition to the realities associated with the current state of affairs and the forecast of its material, technical, financial and personnel support in the future, the yield and production volumes of vegetables are determined, berries and fruits at a specific farm or summer cottage.

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3. Conduct the design of an adaptive landscape farming system

Crops and their varieties are selected, crop rotations are compiled, specific technologies for plant cultivation are developed that ensure the selected level of productivity, the required indicators of product quality are set in conditions of ensuring the sustainability of agricultural landscapes and agroecosystems. The design is carried out in the following sequence.

3.1. Design of adaptive landscape land management of the territory.

Currently, in our region, the land is used in many ways traditionally, by intuition or according to the previously established way. But with traditional land use, it is impossible to make the transition to an adaptive landscape intensification of agricultural production. If there are lands in agricultural circulation that, due to their genetic characteristics and agrochemical state, should not be used in intensive farming, then it is useless to invest new funds in them, since the corresponding return may not be obtained.

Ideally, the soil of a summer cottage should be assessed in two categories:

1. by ecological capacity and permissible anthropogenic load;
2. by the degree of suitability for the cultivation of agricultural crops and, most importantly, by the size of the yield.

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3.2. Designing the structure of sown areas and crop rotations.

The basis for the design of crop rotations should be based on the assessment of lands according to the two noted categories, taking into account the program of crop production.

3.3. Compilation of a fertilizer application subsystem.

The use of fertilizers requires not only the cost of decent funds, but also literally a jewelry approach to each soil contour on the site. The times when fertilizers were poured quite generously are a thing of the past, now the moment has come for their economical and differentiated use. At the same time, the principle of advanced fertilization should be strictly implemented: they should be applied as little as possible, but as much as the plants need, and not at the request of the owner or not because of the owner's love for fertilizers. The subsystem is compiled on the basis of the received input detailed information about soil fertility and its supply with the necessary nutrients.

3.4. Plant protection subsystem. Plant protection is an integral part of ALZ. The situation in our time is difficult, because in most horticultures the plant protection system is violated, which led to a strong infection with pests and diseases of the seed, soil and the environment, strong weeds in the fields. We cannot exclude the use of chemical plant protection products, since without them we cannot get a decent harvest without them.

Of course, you need to follow agricultural techniques, apply biological methods of plant protection. However, these methods alone cannot improve the phytosanitary situation, so the need for herbicides, pesticides and insecticides will always persist. Another thing is that they should be applied more carefully.

3.5. Soil processing subsystem. Tillage, being the main technological process in agriculture, is a system of techniques for optimizing the physical and biological conditions in the arable soil layer for physiologically normal growth and development of crops. When processing the soil, the ability of the soil to disintegrate into a lumpy structure is realized, which provides effective fertility, water resistance, porosity, mechanical strength, density, biological activity and biological stability, the optimal ratio between porosity and density, water retention capacity, thermal regime and gas exchange of the root system of plants with the atmosphere.

In addition to improving the physical, physicochemical, chemical and biological properties, the soil cultivation subsystem ensures the cleansing of fields from weeds, pests and pathogens, and is also an element of soil protection systems for protecting soil from wind and water erosion.

3.6. Subsystem for the purchase of seeds, selection of varieties. Seeds and crop varieties are the most important condition for obtaining sustainable yields in ALZ. Sowing should be done only with seeds of excellent and good quality, corresponding to GOSTs, grown in optimal soil-climatic and agrotechnical conditions, dry, not affected by pests and diseases, with high germination energy.

Seed quality assessment has always been both difficult and relevant. Difficult because all information about this quality is hidden in the molecular and anatomical structures of seeds, and any methods are able to reveal it only partially, and it can fully manifest itself only at the end of the growing season of the plant that has grown from it.

3.7. Designing agrotechnical technologies. The central core of the projected ALZ is the choice of optimal technologies for the cultivation of agricultural crops.

Thus, as a result of the solution of this program in the technological design, all elements of the ALZ are finally concretized, including the soil cultivation system taking into account crop rotation, the fertilizer use system, the weed, pest and disease control system, the land reclamation systems, the systems of hydraulic engineering and irrigation and drainage measures are substantiated.

4. Conducting landscape farming in kind. The maintenance of ALZ means the observance of the developed complex of land management, cultural, technical, technological and information activities in real conditions and in real time.

Conventional farming systems have been shaped most by common sense. Common sense is good, but not enough to master a new system. To conduct adaptive landscape agriculture, it is necessary to have modern technical means of measuring in local agroecosystems of spatio-temporal inhomogeneities of the plant habitat. For this, fundamentally new methods of forecasting and managing the regime parameters of agricultural landscapes, which affect the production process in agricultural fields, should be applied.

Landscape agriculture requires the use of unmanned aerial and space methods of sensing the earth's surface, determining the soil fertility not only of the upper arable layer, but also of the land in deeper horizons. While little experience has been gained in using such means, reliable instrument meters and the corresponding algorithmic and software for them have not been fully developed. We hope that in the future they will all come to dacha farming.

Until then. We believe that the reader did not find this material very difficult, but do not despair, this is just the beginning. We hope that the main provisions outlined in the article are remembered, and later we will analyze everything once again in detail in relation to dacha farming in subsequent articles on the pages of the journal.

Read all parts of the article about adaptive landscape farming:

• What is adaptive landscape farming

• Components of an adaptive landscape farming system

• Devices and methods in an adaptive landscape farming system

• Summer cottage farming: mapping fields, observing crop rotation

• Determining the structure of crops and crop rotations

• Fertilizer system as a basic element of summer cottage farming

• What fertilizers are needed for various vegetable crops

• Tillage systems

• Technologies of adaptive landscape farming system

• Black and pure fallow