Definition of the Subject
Cropping system (CS) is a general term that describes how a producer or farmer might grow a crop [2]. Pragmatically, CSs effectively address the what to grow, when to grow it, and how to grow it considerations of crop production in the context of optimizing multiple goals [3]. A CS must bring together the biological, technical, economic, and sociological aspects of the land area farmed [4]. Therefore, a CS is a set of agronomic or agricultural practices used in a crop under specific conditions. The CS generates an agroecosystem, agri-environment, or agricultural system. Common synonyms of CS include crop management system, crop production system, farming system , crop production practices, etc. For example, a farming system is defined as a population of individual farm systems that have broadly similar resource bases, enterprise patterns, household livelihoods, and constraints, and for which similar development...
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Abbreviations
- Agriculture:
-
Agriculture and farming are often considered to be the same concept. However, both concepts can vary in their territorial scope of application. Agriculture is the production of food and goods through farming and forestry. Agriculture encompasses a wide variety of specialties and techniques. For this reason, its definition has developed to become: The science, art, and business of cultivating soil, producing crops, and raising livestock. The major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods, fibers, and raw materials. As of late, agriculture also uses plants to produce biofuels, biopharmaceuticals, and bioplastics.
- Agricultural practices:
-
Agricultural practices are a set of techniques applied to on-farm production and postproduction processes, resulting in food and nonfood agricultural products.
- Agronomic crops:
-
Agronomic crops typically involve a crop that is grown for grain, feed, or for processing into oil, starch, protein, or flour. Major agronomic crops include corn (grown for feed, ethanol, or processing), soybeans, wheat, hay (alfalfa and legume and grass mixtures), rice, peanuts, and cotton. Hay is also considered forage [1].
- Agroecosystem:
-
An agricultural system or agricultural ecosystem is the basic unit of study for an agroecologist. This term is somewhat arbitrarily defined as a spatially and functionally coherent unit of agricultural activity, and includes the living and nonliving components involved in the unit as well as their interactions. An agroecosystem can be viewed as a subset of a conventional ecosystem. As the name implies, at the core of an agroecosystem lies the human activity of agriculture. However, an agroecosystem is not restricted to the immediate site of agricultural activity (e.g., the farm), but rather includes the region that is impacted by this activity, usually by changes to the complexity of species assemblages and energy flows, as well as to the net nutrient balance.
- Agronomy:
-
The science which establishes the theory and practice of crop production and soil management [1].
- Ecosystem:
-
A functioning community of nature that includes fauna and flora together with the chemical and physical environment with which they interact. Ecosystems vary greatly in size and characteristics, and can be a mud puddle, a field, or orchard, or a forest. An ecosystem provides a unit of biological study and can be a unit of management [2].
- Environment:
-
The totality of the surrounding external conditions (biological, chemical, and physical) within which an organism, community, or object exists. The environment can be defined at any scale. The term is not exclusive in that organisms can be and usually are part of another organism’s environment. Thus, one can speak of the environment as that within which humankind lives (i.e., separate and external) or, of humankind as a component of the environment [2].
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López-Bellido, R.J., López-Bellido, L. (2012). Cropping Systems : Shaping Nature . In: Meyers, R.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainability Science and Technology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0851-3_219
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