The Impact of Agricultural Practices on Soil Organisms: Lessons Learnt from Market-gardens

Coraline Moulin,Fred Burner,Gladys Loranger-Merciris,Jean-Louis Diman,Valérie Angeon,Victor Vaillant

doi:10.9734/ajaees/2019/v34i130188

Abstract

Intensive agriculture practices have an important impact on soil biota, which can affect dramatically soil quality. In order to limit this impact, alternative agricultural practices are more and more applied. However, these practices are still in progress and thus, it is necessary to investigate their impact on soil activity. In this context, we studied the impact of agricultural practices (intensive and agroecological) in vegetable cropping systems in Guadeloupe. The first aim of this study was to identify practices developed in vegetable cropping systems and explain their level of eco-agriculture. We conducted a survey on the whole territory which gave us a better understanding of vegetable cropping systems in Guadeloupe. We selected a representative subset of 18 farms located on vertisols. The second aim of the study was to establish a typology of cropping practices in these vegetable cropping systems in vertisol. We performed a PCA and a HCA on the 18 farms. These methods allowed us to build a typology in which farms were distributed between two types. In type A, farmers are using intensive agricultural practices while in type B, farmers are using alternative agroecological farming practices. Then, we collected soil fauna, during the rainy season in type A and type B farms in order to demonstrate the relationship between cropping systems and the quality of soils proxied by biological indicators. We hypothesized that the use of synthetic fertilizers and herbicides in intensive agriculture affected soil fauna activity. The results showed no significant difference between soil fauna abundance in both types. However, the taxonomic richness and the abundance of litter transformers were higher in type B. Taxonomic richness and soil fauna functional diversity thus strongly depend on agricultural practices in vegetables cropping systems in Guadeloupe.

Highlights

Intensive agriculture relied heavily on the use of synthetic inputs and low genetic diversity [1,2,3]
We conducted a survey that showed the diversity of agricultural practices in vegetable cropping systems in Guadeloupe
We wanted to know what kind of alternative agroecological practices are used in vegetable cropping systems in Guadeloupe, and whether such methods had positive impacts on soil biota

Summary

Introduction

Intensive agriculture relied heavily on the use of synthetic inputs and low genetic diversity [1,2,3]. It is well known that conventional intensive agriculture had negative impacts on natural resources such as soil (soil pollution, erosion), water quality (pollution of rivers, lakes and streams), biodiversity loss and human health (inadequate use of pesticides) [4,5,6,7,8,9] Such unsustainable models need to be modified to agroecosystems that can optimize ecological functions while maintaining high productivity [9]. Since the 1990s, there has been a growing interest in developing alternative sustainable farming strategies All of these strategies share the same objective in terms of minimizing the use of synthetic inputs (or even promoting non-use at all), enhancing organic matter recycling and improving the health of agroecosystems while maintaining a high production level [10,11,12]. According to Pretty [13], sustainable agriculture jointly produces food and goods for farmers and the environment

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Conclusion