我们面临着一项紧迫而复杂的挑战,即到2050年为估计100亿人口生产大量健康的动植物食品,同时保持基本的生态系统服务。为了增加这个挑战,我们必须这样做,同时不要进一步降解我们的环境和保存铜等必需营养素,镁,磷,硒,和施肥短缺的锌。已经做了很多很好的研究,但是为了迎接这个挑战,我们需要大幅增加农场和分水岭规模的研究,包括农场评估和演示多年来在现实世界中假定的最佳管理技术组合,有营养投入的数据支持,土壤,空气,和水化学(通量)和水排放。我们还需要与农民合作,专家,和具有高度创造力的跨学科团队的通才,他们抵制形成孤岛,并将与农业生态学和工业生态学相关的技术与最先进的工程相结合。其中一些研究和示范农场需要在容易被氮污染的水生和陆地生态系统的集水区,磷,和其他营养素。一些有前途的方法包括混合作物-牲畜系统,尽管如果没有更新以满足2050年估计的100亿人的饮食需求,这些产品可能不足以产生足够的生产力。其他方法可能是最先进的多营养生产系统,其中包括几种与脊椎动物结合在生产中的植物(例如,反刍动物,猪,家禽),无脊椎动物(例如,昆虫,蚯蚓)和鱼,虾,或者小龙虾利用浪费的饲料和排泄物,并将营养物质回收回系统中的动物(通过植物或无脊椎动物)。为了削减成本和增加理想的产出,我们必须在我们的食品生产系统中更好地回收营养,并随着营养在系统中循环而更有效地生产动植物食品。
We face an urgent and complex challenge to produce large amounts of healthful animal and plant foods for an estimated 10 billion people by 2050 while maintaining essential ecosystem services. To compound this challenge, we must do so while not further degrading our environment and conserving essential nutrients such as copper, magnesium, phosphorus, selenium, and zinc that are in short supply for fertilization. Much good research has been done, but to meet this challenge, we need to greatly increase on-farm and watershed-scale research including on-farm evaluations and demonstrations of the putative best combinations of stewardship techniques over multiple years in real-world settings, which are backed by data on nutrient inputs, soil, air, and water chemistry (fluxes) and water discharge. We also need to work with farmers, specialists, and generalists in highly creative interdisciplinary teams that resist forming silos and that use combinations of techniques linked to agroecology and industrial ecology in combination with state-of-the-art engineering. Some of these research and demonstration farms need to be in catchments prone to pollution of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems with nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrients. Some promising approaches include mixed crop-livestock systems, although these alone may not be productive enough without updating to meet the dietary needs of an estimated 10 billion people by 2050. Other approaches could be state-of-the-art multi-trophic production systems, which include several species of plants integrated into production with vertebrates (e.g., ruminants, pigs, poultry), invertebrates (e.g., insects, earthworms) and fish, shrimp, or crayfish to utilize wasted feed and excreta, and
recycle nutrients back to the animals (via plants or invertebrates) in the systems. To cut costs and increase desirable outputs, we must
recycle nutrients much better within our food production systems and produce both animal and plant foods more efficiently as nutrients cycle through systems.