Extensive Farming

5 Key excerpts on "Extensive Farming"

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  eBook - PDF

  Organic Agriculture Towards Sustainability

  • Vytautas Pilipavicius(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • IntechOpen

    (Publisher)

  High external energy-material inputs strongly reduce the systems energy efficiency. The ratio of energy input to energy gained from the crop is up to 3:1 while with non-intensive systems, it is 1:20 and more. Within highly intensive mechanized livestock production system, the energy balance is even less effective. However, these systems are very effective in the short term in terms of labour productivity and land utilization. On the contrary, extensive (low input) farming systems have almost the opposite characteris‐ tics. Their main feature is the external input reduction. Extensive agroecosystems are charac‐ terized by lower energy and material flows per a unit of area and usually higher diversity, less need for external intervention and greater stability and self-regulatory abilities. They signifi‐ cantly contribute to the conservation of natural resources. Lower inputs can be compensated by a quality management. Reducing inputs usually brings an agroecosystem production capacity reduction. Lower yields can be realized at a lower cost without a significant profit reduction. In the world, there are Extensive Farming systems on 80% of the area and on 20%, there are intensive farming systems. The general trend is the increasing agricultural production intensification in many developing countries (China, Brazil, Russia,...) and chemical inputs reduction, respectively their substitution by biological or rational means in developed countries, especially in the EU. Due to the growing human population and its demands on sufficient of varied and quality food, a certain degree of agroecosystems intensification is necessary. However, it is crucial that agroecosystems have a sustainable character. According to the simple OECD definition, for sustainable agroecosystems, there can be considered those that meet the needs of these days and do not limit the future generation.

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  eBook - ePub

  Geographies of Agriculture

  Globalisation, Restructuring and Sustainability

  • Guy Robinson(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  This modification produces the agri-ecosystem in which an ecological system is overlain by socio-economic elements and processes. This forms ‘an ecological and socio-economic system, comprising domesticated plants and/or animals and the people who husband them, intended for the purpose of producing food, fibre or other agricultural products’ (Conway, 1997, p. 166). Agricultural geographers have viewed this agri-ecosystem as part of a nested hierarchy that extends from an individual plant or animal and its cultivator, tender or manager, through crop or animal populations, fields and ranges, farms, villages, watersheds, regions, countries and the world as a whole.

  Agricultural geography includes work that spans a wide range of issues pertaining to the nature of this hierarchy, including the spatial distribution of crops and livestock, the systems of management employed, the nature of linkages to the broader economic, social, cultural, political and ecological systems, and the broad spectrum of food production, processing, marketing and consumption. The principal focus for research by agricultural geographers in the last four decades has been the economic, social and political characteristics of agriculture and its linkages to both the suppliers of inputs to the agri-ecosystem and to the processing, sale and consumption of food products (Munton, 1992). However, it should not be forgotten that at the heart of farming activity, underlying the chain of food supply from farmers to consumers, is a set of activities directly dependent upon the physical conditions within which farming takes place. Hence, before concentrating upon the principal foci of contemporary agricultural geography in the rest of the book, this chapter outlines the key physical aspects of agriculture that form the foundations to which the multi-faceted human dimensions of farming activity are applied.

  Six key factors can be recognised as influencing the distribution of farming types: biological, physical, economic, political, socio-cultural and marketing (the food trade) (Ganderton, 2000, p. 161). These factors are part of the simple conceptualisation of a farming system shown in Figure 1.1

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  eBook - ePub

  Agricultural Ecology

  • Joy Tivy(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 14 Intensive agriculture Modern intensive agriculture is characterized above all by the use of the most sophisticated technological methods of farming. It involves high levels of capital expenditure or inputs in order to achieve as high an output per unit ofland area and/ or of livestock with the maximum efficiency possible. As well as fixed capital, and investment in land, buildings, livestock and machinery, intensive farming incurs large annual production costs. These include, on the one hand, those of supplying direct energy – in the form of human and/or animal labour, fossil fuels and electricity-necessary to undertake farm work; and, on the other, those of supplying indirect energy, represented by fertilizers, water, herbicides, pesticides, seeds and a wide range of other chemical products necessary to obtain high levels of crop and/or livestock production. Slesser (1975) has used energy density or the input of total energy (direct and indirect) equivalents ‘at the farm gate’ per hectare of farmland as a means of expressing relative intensity of agriculture (see Table 14.1). The expenditure on the individual inputs varies with the type of farming (Fig. 14.1). Temperate soft fruits (raspberries, strawberries etc.) are still very labour-intensive and these costs together with those for pesticides dominate the inputs in this case

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  eBook - PDF

  European Landscapes in Transition

  Implications for Policy and Practice

  • Teresa Pinto-Correia, Jørgen Primdahl, Bas Pedroli(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  eu ropea n la n dsca pes in tr a nsition 128 Much large-scale grain production has developed in areas with poor soils and low rainfall in relation to areas of mixed farming and, thus, until some dec- ades ago, large-scale grain production had low yields compared to those from mixed farming. However, yields have increased due to the rationalisation of farm structures, but mainly because of the increased use of inputs including heavy mechanisation. This characterisation of farm systems, developed for the global scale, is very general. Since the middle of the twentieth century, farming systems have changed significantly in Europe, perhaps more than elsewhere in the world due to the extreme diversity and relatively small-scale organisation of European farmland. The main trends have been intensification, often combined with exten- sification and even abandonment, and concentration and specialisation. Intensification means the pursuit of higher productivity through the capital- isation of agriculture, including investments in machinery and farm infra- structure and the increased use of biotechnology. Intensification has occurred all over Europe as much in the Mediterranean and the mixed systems as in large-scale grain and dairy production (Terwan et al. 2004). In contrast, exten- sification involves the opposite, i.e. a declining investment in production fac- tors and an acceptance of lower productivity. While intensification takes place due to the pursuit of higher productivity, extensification often occurs without the specific aim to decrease productivity. Rather, it transpires due to, e.g. age- ing farmers, difficulties in competing on more global markets, marginal loca- tion.

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  eBook - PDF

  Farm Managerial Economics

  • Kumar, K Nirmal Ravi(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Daya Publishing House

    (Publisher)

  In the context of globalization and trade liberalization, the small farmers cannot compete in the international market, because of higher subsidies and stringent restrictions imposed by the importing countries, especially developed countries. In small farms, intensive farming is adopted and the tillage operations the farmers practice may cause accelerated soil erosion. Especially, when population pressure on land increases, the small farmers expand their cropland areas into unsuitable environmental situations such as steep slopes thereby, causing damage to the environment. Ways of Increasing Size of Farm Business Having understood the relative advantages and disadvantages of large farms and small farms, it is important to find the ways of increasing the size of farm business. They include: Bringing leased-in land for cultivation. Reclamation of lands (say, saline land) and make it fit for cultivation. By employing modern technology in the business so that, the operation of LDR can be delayed. By increasing cropping intensity. When cropping intensity is increased, it ensures cost-advantage to the farmer, as the fixed costs in the business are spread over larger output produced from 3 to 4 crops produced in the same year. This ebook is exclusively for this university only. Cannot be resold/distributed. With the use of HYVs, the farmer can generate more income with little capital. By following INM, IPM, IWRM etc. , the farmer can generate more income through cost-effectiveness. By crop diversification, the farmer can sustain the annual net income. The farmer can go for mixed farming so that, by-products can be effectively utilized. F. Measuring the Size of Farm There are different ways of measuring the size of the farm as listed here under. In terms of area i.e., Acres or Hectares: In this measure, size of the farm is measured in terms of physical area i.e.

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