Thanks Emmanuel, Deborah, for your comments. I concur: the landscape is the entry point for ecological intensification of agriculture, and the right scale at which both tradeoff and synergies around climate smart agriculture can be explored. One of such trade-offs is, typically, the ability to capture and store carbon in agricultural landscapes for both resource use efficiency and mitigation purposes (from a plant nutrition standpoint, carbon is most useful she it decomposes).
For further thoughts and evidence on this please take a look at these presentations from parallel section 8 during the global conference on climate smart agriculture (Davis, 2013): https://climatesmart.ucdavis.edu/videos.html
In exploring such questions, classical agronomy falls short of methods. We need to assess tradeoffs and synergies by considering ecosystem services and productivity at larger scales, beyond the field plot or the single farm. It is at large scale where synergies are often possible (e.g. Barraquand and Martinet, 2011, Ecol Econ 70, 910-920; Polasky et al., 2008. Biol. Conserv. 141). When moving in scales from farm to landscapes we move from individual to collective decision making, which needs also other tools (e.g. Speelman et al, 2013 AgSys).
Thanks Emmanuel, Deborah, for your comments. I concur: the landscape is the entry point for ecological intensification of agriculture, and the right scale at which both tradeoff and synergies around climate smart agriculture can be explored. One of such trade-offs is, typically, the ability to capture and store carbon in agricultural landscapes for both resource use efficiency and mitigation purposes (from a plant nutrition standpoint, carbon is most useful she it decomposes).
For further thoughts and evidence on this please take a look at these presentations from parallel section 8 during the global conference on climate smart agriculture (Davis, 2013):
https://climatesmart.ucdavis.edu/videos.html
In exploring such questions, classical agronomy falls short of methods. We need to assess tradeoffs and synergies by considering ecosystem services and productivity at larger scales, beyond the field plot or the single farm. It is at large scale where synergies are often possible (e.g. Barraquand and Martinet, 2011, Ecol Econ 70, 910-920; Polasky et al., 2008. Biol. Conserv. 141). When moving in scales from farm to landscapes we move from individual to collective decision making, which needs also other tools (e.g. Speelman et al, 2013 AgSys).