Abstract
There is increasing global demand for food, bioenergy feedstocks and a wide variety of bio-based products. In response, agriculture has advanced production, but is increasingly depleting soil regulating and supporting ecosystem services. New production systems have emerged, such as no-tillage, that can enhance soil services but may limit yields. Moving forward, agricultural systems must reduce trade-offs between production and soil services. Soil functional zone management (SFZM) is a novel strategy for developing sustainable production systems that attempts to integrate the benefits of conventional, intensive agriculture, and no-tillage. SFZM creates distinct functional zones within crop row and inter-row spaces. By incorporating decimeter-scale spatial and temporal heterogeneity, SFZM attempts to foster greater soil biodiversity and integrate complementary soil processes at the sub-field level. Such integration maximizes soil services by creating zones of ‘active turnover’, optimized for crop growth and yield (provisioning services); and adjacent zones of ‘soil building’, that promote soil structure development, carbon storage, and moisture regulation (regulating and supporting services). These zones allow SFZM to secure existing agricultural productivity while avoiding or minimizing trade-offs with soil ecosystem services. Moreover, the specific properties of SFZM may enable sustainable increases in provisioning services via temporal intensification (expanding the portion of the year during which harvestable crops are grown). We present a conceptual model of ‘virtuous cycles’, illustrating how increases in crop yields within SFZM systems could create self-reinforcing feedback processes with desirable effects, including mitigation of trade-offs between yield maximization and soil ecosystem services. Through the creation of functionally distinct but interacting zones, SFZM may provide a vehicle for optimizing the delivery of multiple goods and services in agricultural systems, allowing sustainable temporal intensification while protecting and enhancing soil functioning.
Highlights
Intensification of agriculture has been vital for increasing global food supply and alleviating hunger for millions of people (Godfray et al, 2010)
We focus on the dynamic implications of ‘virtuous cycles’ that may occur in Soil functional zone management (SFZM)
We propose that SFZM, by expanding both habitat and resources relative to conventional soil management, can enhance both provisioning and soil regulating and supporting services by enhancing soil biodiversity
Summary
Intensification of agriculture has been vital for increasing global food supply and alleviating hunger for millions of people (Godfray et al, 2010). No-tillage often results in reduced yields (Giller et al, 2009; Pittelkow et al, 2015), highlighting trade-offs between soil and provisioning services Such trade-offs are highly problematic, given that global demand for food and other agricultural products is expected to rise considerably by 2050 (Godfray et al, 2010; Tilman et al, 2011). One option for securing the productivity of existing agricultural land while enhancing delivery of soil ecosystem services is by integrating the high productivity of intensive field crop production systems (including intensive tillage) with the improvements in soil quality associated with stringent limitations on tillage. We focus on the dynamic implications of ‘virtuous cycles’ (self-reinforcing feedback processes with desirable effects) that may occur in SFZM Such feedback processes may serve to reduce trade-offs between provisioning, supporting, and regulating services in temporal intensification
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