Sustainable Intensification Of Organic And Low Input Agriculture Through Integrated Bioenergy Production
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Sustainable Intensification of Organic and Low-Input Agriculture through Integrated Bioenergy Production
Author: Benjamin Blumenstein
language: en
Publisher: kassel university press GmbH
Release Date: 2017-01-01
Both global food and energy systems are increasingly faced with major challenges regarding food security and non-fossil energy provision, respectively. Organic or low-input agriculture as well as bioenergy production may contribute to securing rising food and energy needs. However, low-input agricultural systems are challenged for their lower productivity compared to high-input systems. Moreover, bioenergy systems are often criticized for their unsustainable high-input cropping systems. Consequently, innovative approaches are needed to optimize both sectors. A promising strategy may be the integration of organic or low-input agricultural systems with agricultural bioenergy production with the objective to increase both productivity and sustainability of land use systems. This dissertation examines the opportunities and risks of integrated bioenergy production in organic and low-input agricultural systems, based on the example of two bioenergy technologies, anaerobic digestion (AD) and integrated generation of solid fuel and biogas from biomass (IFBB), by assessment of their structural framework conditions, systematic implications, as well as economic and risk performance. In a final step, the role of integrated agricultural bioenergy production within the context of the so-called sustainable intensification is debated.
Sustainable Intensification
Continued population growth, rapidly changing consumption patterns and the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation are driving limited resources of food, energy, water and materials towards critical thresholds worldwide. These pressures are likely to be substantial across Africa, where countries will have to find innovative ways to boost crop and livestock production to avoid becoming more reliant on imports and food aid. Sustainable agricultural intensification - producing more output from the same area of land while reducing the negative environmental impacts - represents a solution for millions of African farmers. This volume presents the lessons learned from 40 sustainable agricultural intensification programmes in 20 countries across Africa, commissioned as part of the UK Government's Foresight project. Through detailed case studies, the authors of each chapter examine how to develop productive and sustainable agricultural systems and how to scale up these systems to reach many more millions of people in the future. Themes covered include crop improvements, agroforestry and soil conservation, conservation agriculture, integrated pest management, horticulture, livestock and fodder crops, aquaculture, and novel policies and partnerships.
Bioeconomy for Beginners
This book provides an interdisciplinary and comprehensible introduction to bioeconomy. It thus provides basic knowledge for understanding a transformation process that will shape the 21st century and requires the integration of many disciplines and industries that have had little to do with each other up to now. We are talking about the gradual and necessary transition from the age of fossil fuels, which began around 200 years ago, to a global economy based on renewable raw materials (and renewable energies). The success of this transition is key to coping with the challenge of climate change. This book conceives the realization of bioeconomy as a threefold task – a scientific, an economic and an ecological one. · Where does the biomass come from that we need primarily for feeding the growing world population but also for future energy and material use? How can it be processed in biorefineries and what role does biotechnology play in this regard? · Which aspects of innovation economics need to be considered, which economic aspects of value creation, competitiveness and customer acceptance are important? · What conditions must a bioeconomy fulfil in order to enable a sustainable development of life on earth? May it be regarded as a key to further economic growth or shouldn’t it rather orient itself towards the ideal of sufficiency? By dealing with these questions from the not necessarily consistent perspectives of proven experts, this book provides an interdisciplinary overview of a dynamic field of research and practice that raises more questions than answers and thus may nurture the motivation of many more people to seriously engage for the realization of a bioeconomy.