An Information Ecology for Sustainable Agriculture

Feeding 10 billion people by 2050 will require transformative changes to our food production systems1, 2. Climate change3-6, water scarcity and urban demand7, herbicide-resistant weeds8, and declining soil9 and water quality10,11 are increasing crop production risks, lowering yields, and negatively impacting the environment. The increased use of sustainable agricultural practices such as reduced-tillage12, diversified crop rotations13, and integrated weed management especially through incorporation of cover crops14, are necessary to achieve this goal. However, farmers repeatedly cite management complexity and a need for site- and system-specific information to overcome the barriers to adoption15, 16. Sustainable agriculture thus demands precision tools to account for genetic and environmental nuances in complex, adaptive, agricultural systems, while simultaneously responding to the social, technological, and economic contexts of farming. Precision Sustainable Agriculture17 uses a data-driven and human-centered approach to the research and development of on-farm monitoring tools, cloud-based, information management tools for large-scale agricultural research projects, decision support tools for agriculture data stakeholders, and modeling and analysis tools for use in sustainable agriculture. We are laying the foundation of an information ecology18 for sustainable agriculture: a system of tools, data, methods, and actors to maximize farm productivity, profitability, and sustainability. References: Liu J, Folberth C, Yang H, Röckström J, Abbaspour K, Zehnder AJB. A Global and Spatially Explicit Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Crop Production and Consumptive Water Use. PLOS ONE. 2013 Feb 27;8(2):e57750. Schmidhuber J, Tubiello FN. Global food security under climate change. PNAS. 2007 Dec 11;104(50):19703–8. Allan RP, Soden BJ. Atmospheric Warming and the Amplification of Precipitation Extremes. Science. 2008 Sep 12;321(5895):1481–4. Gornall J, Betts R, Burke E, Clark R, Camp J, Willett K, et al. Implications of climate change for agricultural productivity in the early twenty-first century. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 2010 Sep 27;365(1554):2973–89. Rosenzweig C, Elliott J, Deryng D, Ruane AC, Müller C, Arneth A, et al. Assessing agricultural risks of climate change in the 21st century in a global gridded crop model intercomparison. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2014 Mar 4;111(9):3268–73. Trenberth KE, Dai A, Schrier G van der, Jones PD, Barichivich J, Briffa KR, et al. Global warming and changes in drought. Nature Climate Change. 2014 Jan;4(1):17–22. Flörke M, Kynast E, Bärlund I, Eisner S, Wimmer F, Alcamo J. Domestic and industrial water uses of the past 60 years as a mirror of socio-economic development: A global simulation study. Global Environmental Change. 2013 Feb 1;23(1):144–56. Heap I. Global perspective of herbicide-resistant weeds. Pest Management Science. 2014 Sep 1;70(9):1306–15 Williams A, Hunter MC, Kammerer M, Kane DA, Jordan NR, Mortensen DA, et al. Soil Water Holding Capacity Mitigates Downside Risk and Volatility in US Rainfed Maize: Time to Invest in Soil Organic Matter? PLoS ONE. 2016;11(8):e0160974. Goolsby DA, Battaglin WA, Lawrence GB, Artz RS, Aulenbach BT, Hooper RP, et al. Flux and sources of nutrients in the Mississippi-Atchafalya river Basin topic 3 report. :156. Boyer EW, Goodale CL, Jaworski NA, Howarth RW. Anthropogenic nitrogen sources and relationships to riverine nitrogen export in the northeastern U.S.A. Biogeochemistry. 2002 Apr 1;57(1):137–69. Zibilske LM, Bradford JM. Soil Aggregation, Aggregate Carbon and Nitrogen, and Moisture Retention Induced by Conservation Tillage. Soil Science Society of America Journal. 2007 May 1;71(3):793–802. Cox HW, Kelly RM, Strong WM. Pulse crops in rotation with cereals can be a profitable alternative to nitrogen fertiliser in central Queensland. Crop Pasture Sci. 2010 Sep 30;61(9):752–62. Mortensen DA, Egan JF, Maxwell BD, Ryan MR, Smith RG. Navigating a Critical Juncture for Sustainable Weed Management. BioScience. 2012 Jan 1;62(1):75–84. Dunn M, Ulrich-Schad JD, Prokopy LS, Myers RL, Watts CR, Scanlon K. Perceptions and use of cover crops among early adopters: Findings from a national survey. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation. 2016 Jan 1;71(1):29–40. Myers R, Watts C. Progress and perspectives with cover crops: Interpreting three years of farmer surveys on cover crops. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation. 2015 Nov 1;70(6):125A-129A. Mirsky, S, Reberg-Horton, C, Raturi, A. Precision Sustainable Agriculture. Available: http://precisionsustainableag.org Nardi B, O’ Day V. Information ecologies: Using technology with heart. MIT Press; 1999.This material is based upon work supported by an interagency agreement between Natural Resources Conservation Service and Agricultural Research Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture