Abstract
Cropping systems greatly impact the productivity and resilience of agricultural ecosystems. However, we often lack an understanding of the quantitative interactions among social, economic and ecological components in each of the systems, especially with regard to crop rotation. Current production systems cannot guarantee both high profits in the short term and social and ecological benefits in the long term. This study combined statistic and economic models to evaluate the comprehensive effects of cropping systems on rice production using data collected from experimental fields between 2017 and 2018. The results showed that increasing agricultural diversity through rotations, particularly potato–rice rotation (PR), significantly increased the social, economic and ecological benefits of rice production. Yields, profits, profit margins, weighted dimensionless values of soil chemical and physical (SCP) and heavy metal (SHM) traits, benefits and externalities generated by PR and other rotations were generally higher than successive rice cropping. This suggests that agricultural diversity through rotations, particularly PR rotation, is worth implementing due to its overall benefits generated in rice production. However, due to various nutrient residues from preceding crops, fertilizer application should be rationalized to improve the resource and investment efficiency. Furthermore, we internalized the externalities (hidden ecological and social benefits/costs) generated by each of the rotation systems and proposed ways of incenting farmers to adopt crop rotation approaches for sustainable rice production.
Highlights
The human population is expected to exceed 9.7 billion by 2050, requiring a substantial increase in agricultural production capacity to secure global food supplies [1] which, on the other hand, are threatened by climate change, environmental pollution and drained natural resources such as water and fossil energy [2,3]
rice cropping (RR) = successive cropping of rice; FR = fallow followed by rice; potato–rice rotation (PR) = potato rice rotation; watermelon and rice rotation (WR) = watermelon rice rotation
The cropping system significantly impacts the economic and ecological benefits of rice production (Table 1), and all of the paddy-upland rotations we studied generated better social returns including higher yield, higher profits, higher soil fertility and ameliorated soil contamination than those generated by successive rice cropping (Tables 2–5)
Summary
The human population is expected to exceed 9.7 billion by 2050, requiring a substantial increase in agricultural production capacity to secure global food supplies [1] which, on the other hand, are threatened by climate change, environmental pollution and drained natural resources such as water and fossil energy [2,3]. When yield is the primary goal of farmers, which is always the case for cereal productions, little attention will be paid to the direct and indirect effects of the production process on society and ecology such as sustainability of food safety, soil quality and ecological resilience generated by high chemical residues which pollute soils and rivers, demolish biodiversity and poison humans and other animals, etc. Recent concern for the sustainability of agriculture and associated natural environments has led to renewed interest in practices that seek to increase production while improving soil health and ecological resilience [10,11,12,13] through crop diversification and comprehensive evaluation of the social, economic and ecological impacts of producing systems [14] by internalizing the externalities, i.e., the hidden benefits and costs are not reflected in marketing prices, associated with primary production systems. The benefits associated with crop rotation are rarely evaluated by a comprehensive evaluation of social, economic and ecological impacts of crop rotation generated from field data
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