Cover crop treatments and nitrogen (N) fertilization rates were investigated for their impact on sorghum grain quality attributes. Sorghum was planted in field plots treated with differing cover cropping systems and fertilization rates. The size (weight and diameter) and hardness of the kernels were influenced by both the cover crop and N rates. The protein content increased as the N rate incre...

A review of organic growers' concerns about weeds is presented and several issues that may ease those concerns are highlighted. The underlying principles of organic weed management (OWM) are briefly discussed and results from organic grower surveys regarding weed management practices in organic horticultural cropping are presented. The most common weeds encountered by organic growers, often tho...

Low-input cropping systems were introduced in Western Europe to reduce the environmental impacts of intensive farming, but some of their benefits are offset by lower yields. In this paper, we review studies that used Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to investigate the effects of reducing external inputs on the eco-efficiency of cropping systems, measured as the ratio of production to environmental i...

Contemporary crop production faces dual challenges of increasing crop yield while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emission. An integrated evaluation of the mitigation potential of yield-scaled nitrous oxide (N2O) emission by adjusting cropping practices can benefit the innovation of climate smart cropping. This study conducted a meta-analysis to assess the impact of cropping systems and ...

Almost all intensive row-crop ecosystems depend on external chemical inputs such as nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides for their high yields. This dependency has had important consequences for the environment and for ecosystem services (MEA 2005; Swinton et al. 2015a, Chapter 3 in this volume) that underpin these systems’ long-term sustainability (Robertson and Swinton 2005). Well-known conseq...

Vegetable production constitutes an important sub-sector of the agricultural economy of KwaZulu-Natal. Most vegetables are cultivated in mixed-cropping types of farming systems. The technical efficiency of vegetable based cropping systems was estimated in order to identify the potential increase in production without incurring additional costs. The factors affecting technical efficiency and con...

Ground beetle assemblages were compared in organic, no-till, and chisel-till cropping systems of the USDA Farming Systems Project in Maryland. The cropping systems consisted of 3-yr rotations of corn (Zea mays L.), soybean (Glycine max L. Merr.), and wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) thatwereplanted to cornand soybeanduring the2yrofÞeld sampling (2001Ð2002).Eachyear, ground beetles were sampled usin...

Bioenergy cropping systems have been proposed as a way to enhance United States energy security. However, research on soil physical properties, soil-surface CO2 effluxes, and soil drainage dynamics in such systems is needed to ensure environmental sustainability in the field. The objective of our research was to evaluate soil physical properties and conditions as well as soil-surface CO2 efflux...