Open AccessDarwinian Agriculture: how understanding evolution can improve agriculture
Author(s) -
Thrall Peter H.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
evolutionary applications
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.776
H-Index - 68
ISSN - 1752-4571
DOI - 10.1111/eva.12029
Subject(s) - agriculture , food security , sustainability , context (archaeology) , population , agricultural productivity , sustainable agriculture , ecology , environmental ethics , biology , environmental resource management , sociology , economics , philosophy , paleontology , demography
Agroecosystems not only comprise a significant proportion of land-use, but also involve conflicting imperatives to expand or intensify production while simultaneously reducing environmental impacts. These imperatives are underpinned by food security concerns, climate predictability and global connectivity, reinforcing the likelihood of further major changes in agricultural landscapes and associated production systems in coming decades. These changes are likely to include adoption of novel genetic technologies and agronomic practices, shifts in patterns of land-use and perhaps even new crop species. Ford Denison's new book, Darwinian Agriculture: how understanding evolution can improve agriculture, makes a strong and very personal case for the application of evolutionary principles to addressing the twin challenges of feeding an expanding human population while working to reduce agriculture's environmental footprint. Of course, the use of eco-evolutionary principles is not new in agriculture (e.g. crop breeding and management of selection for pest resistance), but given land-use trends and other transformative processes in production landscapes, ecological and evolutionary research in agroecosystems must consider such issues in a broader systems' context (Thrall et al. 2011). I fully agree with Denison that evolutionary concepts have potential to help us deal more effectively with these complex problems and that multidisciplinary approaches are needed to improve both productivity and sustainability.