SUSTAINABLE CROP PRODUCTION

LECTURER: ANDAL U. SALIBO, MS

SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

an integrated system of plant and animal production having site

specific applications that will, over the long term:
- satisfy human food and fiber needs,
- enhance environmental quality and natural resource base upon which the
agricultural economy depends.
- make the most efficient use of non-renewable resources and on-farm
'resources and integrate, where appropriate, natural biological cycles and
controls,
- sustain the economic viability of farm operations, and
- enhance the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole
Sustainability

 ability of a system to maintain 'productivity in spite of a major disturbance such as is

caused by intense or large perturbation
 Capacity of a system to maintain output at a level approximately equal to or greater
than its historical average, with the approximation determined by its historical
variability.
Characteristics of Sustainable Agriculture
1. SA is flexible
 No defined of practices, methods, techniques/technologies or policies
 recognizes local specificity

2. SA is experiential
 does not impose a simple model or package
 farmers and local communities must be able to adapt and allowed to change
3. SA is participatory
 farmers are active participants
 incorporates recent innovations originating from scientists, farmers or both
 relies on continuous innovation by farmers and local communities
4. SA is proactive
 forward-looking
 concern of short and long-term sustainability
 dynamic and innovative
Features/ attributes/ dimensions of SA
1. Continuously evolving
 non-permanent
 dynamic
2. Gender sensitive
3. Location specific
 appropriate/practical technology
4. Resource-based
 community-based management of resources
 control of resources
 enhanced/protect what is available or remaining
 use of indigenous technical knowledge
5. Holistic Approach
 holistic/integrated
 diversified farming
 location specific
 system with no leak
6. Enhances human values
What is sustainable agriculture?
An alternative agricultural development framework that has emerged in
response to the various problems associated with conventional agriculture.

A principle, method and/or practice that makes agriculture ecologically

sound, socially just, culturally appropriate or acceptable, and grounded
on holistic s
Ecologically sound and friendly
 environmentally/ecologically friendly farming
practices
 dynamic relationship between man and environment
 improved standard of living for farmers without
negative effects on the environment
 Farm practices that are based on principles of agro-
community, ecological principles, preserve the
integrity of the environment, maintain or enhance
the capability of resource base to support
production over prolonged period.
Social equity or socially just
 Means farming policies and practices that respect the dignity and rights of
individuals
 socially just and humane
 enhance community participation and harmony
 socially acceptable
Culturally appropriate
 Means the system must respect and promote the integrity and uniqueness of
culture, tradition, and values of the farmers and his community
Economically viable

 Means showing a net profit in the income statement of the farming enterprise
 Practice should provide food sufficient for the family
 Means minimal or no cost of externalities by the farming operation
 Minimize dependence on foreign loans for various agricultural practices
 economically viable system and practice
What is diversity or biodiversity?
Totality of genes, species, and ecosystems in a region

Levels of diversity
Genetic diversity within crop cultivars
Variation of genes within species or among crop cultivars
Crop species diversity
Variety of species within a region
Ecosystems diversity
All of the organisms in a given place in interaction,
Farm landscape with ecosystem diversity has ff sections:
 Perennial crops or fruit orchard section
 Livestock/feed section
 Intensive food or cash production area
What is productivity?

Yearly output of the physical product per unit area (e.i. crop yield) of the
cultivated land
Rate at which biomass (organic matter) is accumulated by a crop per unit
area of land per unit time
Biomass

Total weight of plant materials per unit of ground area at a given point in
time
 Indices of productivity

Weight of biological yield -All the biomass harvested from the crop
Weight of economic yield -Include grains or tubers
Other economically important parts of the plant
Monetary value -Net income of farmers
What does LER value mean?
 LER = 1, means the monocroping and intercropping are the same
 LER =<1, means, monocropping is better than intercropping
 LER =>1, means intercropping is better than monocropping
What is stability?
 Resistance of a landscape or system to disturbance and its recovery from
disturbance
 Environmental variability - Results in yield instability
 In multiple cropping system -The productivity is relatively stable due to the
presence of several crop species
 Resource conservation regeneration

Conservation of soil and water resources

 Soil is the upper thin layer of the earth’s surface derived from weathering
of rocks and minerals
 Soil formation is very slow process that takes place at the rate of about 1.5
cm per century
 Importance of surface soil
 Storage plant nutrients, soil and water
 Seat of biological and root activity
 Nutrients are subject to continues removal through leaching, volatilization,
or erosion
 Soil conservation and soil erosion control practices must be employed
 Soil erosion control

Principles of soil erosion control

 Reduction of the velocity
 Maintenance of high infiltration rate in the soil surface
 Reduce the force of raindrops by crop interception
 Strategies for soil erosion control
Cover cropping
 Cover crops are crops that are grown mainly to cover the soil
 Leguminous covercrops  Centrosema, Kudzi, Calopogonium
 Add organic matter and nitrogen to the soil
Crop rotation
 Systematic planting of different crops in succession
 Cereal-legume
 Shallow crop-deep rooted crop
 Improves the soil structure and promotes rapid infiltration of water
Contour strip cropping
 Used in sloping areas to control soil erosion
 Involves planting of two kinds of crops in regular alternates
 One strip is planted to a crop with close growing habit (sweet potato)
 Next strip is planted to row crops (corn)
Contouring

 Any tillage practice applied across the slope on the contour

 Contour is established by allocating all points on the ground with the same
elevation and staking them with sticks
 In areas of considerable runoff, the contour rows must be supported by
terraces or strip cropping
Terracing

 Construction water in ponds minimizes the potential runoff

 In sloping areas of high rainfall and for conservation of water in low rainfall
areas
Farm Ponds
 Impounding water in ponds minimizes runoff
 Depressions on the farm can be utilized as farm ponds
Reforestation

 Denuded mountains should be reforested with permanent vegetation

Control of evaporation losses
 Losses of water through evaporation are severe in drier areas
 Use of mulches is effective to reduce evaporation losses
Conservation tillage
 Reduce tillage or minimum tillage
 Practice reduces soil erosion by 50-90%
 Attributed to the quality of surface crop residue left behind after plowing
 Residues improve moisture retention and act as barrier against erosion from
runoff
Conservation irrigation
 Reduction in the amount of water supplied while sufficiently providing the
needs of the plant
 Trickle or drip irrigation
 Increase water efficiency use by 90%
 Supplies water slowly but frequently to the soil near plants which infiltrates
directly to the root zone
Focus for action in sustainable agricultural framework:
 long term sustainability rather than short tern benefits
 provide internal solutions to internal problems rather than external solutions to
internal problems
 emphasis on management solutions to problems rather than merely on
technological solutions to the problems
 responsive to feedback, belief in accountability and participatory, rather than
detachment
 low rather than high external input
 emphasis on systems approach rather than on individual commodities and
monoculture
 relies on available indigenous resources and self-reliance, rather than capital
intensive
 use of technologies that preserve ahd enrich the natural resource base rather
than the use 'of technologies that exploit and destroy the natural resource base
 recognize location specificity of technologies, use appropriate and indigenous
of technologies.
Biodynamic farming or biodynamicagriculture
- By spiritual insights of Dr. Rudolf Steiner that emphasizes on màny of the forces within living nature,
identifying many of these factors and describing specific practices and preparations that guide the
decomposition process in manure and compost
- Biodynamics is a holistic, ecological and ethical approach to farming, gardening, food and
nutrition. Biodynamics was first developed in the early 1920s based on the spiritual insights and
practical suggestions of the Austrian writer, educator and social activist Dr. Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925)
 Biological farming/ecological farming
- A system of crop production in which the producer tries to minimize the use of chemicals for the control
of crop pests
 Natural farming
- involves no tillage, no fertilizers, no pesticides, no weeding, no pruning and remarkably little labor by
careful timing of seeding and combination of crops (polyculture)
 Kyusei Nature Farming
- developed by Terou Higa of Japan which means saving the world, employs technology involving
beneficial micro- organisms 'and inoculants to increase the microbial diversity, health and yield of crop'
 Permaculture

- or permanent culture was coined by Bill Mollison in 1970 which is a unique design that produce efficient
low-maintenance integration of plants, animals, people and structure applied at the scale of a home
garden, all the way to a large farm
Organic Farming
was first used by Lord Northbourne, is a production system which avoids or largely exclude the
use of synthetically. compounded fertilizers, pesticides, growth regulators and livestock additives
 Organic agriculture
is a production system that sustains the health of soils, ecosystems and people.
It relies on ecological processes, biodiversity and cycles adapted to local conditions, rather
than the use of inputs with adverse effects.
 Organic agriculture combines tradition, innovation and science to benefit the shared environment
and promote fair relationships and a good quality of life for all involved.

Regenerative agriculture
a form of agriculture that aims to enhance regeneration of renewable resource to achieve a
sustainable form of agriculture
Precision farming/agriculture/ Prescription Farming /Site Specific Management
A management strategy that employs detailed site-specific information to precisely manage
production inputs; to know the soil and crop characteristics

 unique to each part of the field, and to optimize production within small portions of the field that
uses computers, telecoms and global positioning systems (GPS), etc.
Agroforestry

- is a land-use system in which agricultural crops/and or livestock and forest

trees are raised on the same land either sequentially through rotational
use or simultaneous.
 Agroforestry is the term used to describe the cultivation of both trees and
other farming crops on the same area of land. The practice aims to grow
trees and other agricultural products in a system that helps to preserve the
environment and its resources while providing a sustainable and diverse
economic model for the landowner
 Factors to Consider in Site SITE CHARACTERIZATION AND
EVALUATION
A. Establishing a crop production enterprise 
a) Finding a suitable site
b) Determining the suitable crop/s for that particular site
c) Evaluating the socio-economic, biological, and physical "conditions
existing in the site
B. Site selection - affects future decisions related to production costs, farm
operations, transportation, etc. 
C. Socio-Economic Factors:
a. Peace and order
b. Manpower availability
c. Market availability
d. Farmers' preference
e. Zoning and other regulations
f. Land tenure situation
D. Biological Factors:
a. Crops planted
b. Crop pests and diseases (see CROP PROTECTION manual)
E. Physical Factors:
a. Resources - water, tools and machines
b. Soil - soil type, soil pH, NPK amounts (see SOIL SCIENCE manual)
c. Topography - relief, elevation (see SOIL SCIENCE manual)
F. Climate:
 Rainfall - average in PH is 2553 mm; requires high relative humidity,
temperature below condensation point, condensation nuclei, and sufficiently low
pressure
 Temperature- range in PH at high elevations is 13.2- higher temperatures
24.6°C; range in PH at low elevations is 23.3-31.5 C; for every 100 m increase in
elevation, there is a corresponding 0.6 "C decrease in temperature; crops mature
faster in
 Cardinal temperatures:
 Minimum temperature-temperature below which reaction velocity becomes
zero due to deactivation of enzymes
 Optimum temperature- temperature at maximum reaction velocity
 Maximum temperature- temperature above which reaction velocity becomes
zero due to desaturation of enzymes
Types of plants based on temperature requirement:
 Cool season crops-cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower
 Warm season crops - rice, banana
 Tropical crops- coconut
 Sub-tropical crops- citrus
 Vernalization - exposure to low temperature as requirement for flowering
 wind speed- average in PH is 7.2 km/hr; leaf tearing in banana and abaca
at 30 km/hr
 Solar radiation or light

Aspects of light important to plants:

 Light intensity - expressed in foot-candle or lux
 Duration or daylength - expressed in hr/day
 Wavelength - expressed in Angstrom or nanometer or identified by' color;
red and blue wavelength in photosynthesis, far red and red wavelength. in
photoperiodism
Effect of light on plants:
 Photoenergetic effect - on photosynthesis
 Photocybernetic effect - on plant development
 Photoperiodic effect - plant response as conditioned by daylength
Types of plants based on light intensity requirements:
 Heliophytes - sun-loving; light saturated at 5000 lux; banana,
chrysanthemum, corn, cotton, cowpea, cucurbits, eggplant, papaya,
peanut, sugarcane
 Sciophytes - shade-loving; light saturated at 500 lux; begonia, black
pepper, coffee, ferns, ginger, philodendron
 Intermediate group

Types of plants based on photoperiodic response:

 Day neutral plant - flowers over a wide range of daylength; banana,
citrus, coconut, corn, tomato
 Short-day plant - requires a dark period exceeding a critical length to
induce flowering; coffee, rice, sesame, soybean, winged bean
 Long-day plant - inhibited from flowering when dark period exceeds
critical length; aster, castor oil, onion, radish
 Relative humidity- average in PH is 82%; increased incidence of pest and
disease with higher relative humidity; increased incidence of wilting with
lower relative humidity; high evapotranspiration due to low RH and high T",
low evapotranspiration due to high RH and high T°
CORONA CLASSIFICATION (Classification of Philippine Climate)
Type I. Pronounced wet and dry seasons - November to May, wet from June
to October; Ilocos, dry from Occidental Mindoro, Antique, Negros Occidental
Type II. No dry season with pronounced maximum rain period - maximum
rain period is from November to January; Bicol, Samar, Leyte, Surigao, Agusan,
Davao
Type III. No very pronounced maximum rain period with short dry season
lasting from one to three months dry from February to April; Cagayan, Nueva
Vizcaya, Capiz, Cebu, Negros Oriental, Masbate, Mt. Province
Type IV. No pronounced maximum rain period and no dry season - rainfall
is distributed throughout the year; Isabela, Bohol, Cotabato, Lanao,
Zamboanga, Bukidnon; most fruits are best grown in a Type IV climate where
rainfall is evenly distributed throughout the year.
NATURAL FARMING
To understand natural farming, we need to know the cycle of life and
matter. Natural farming as we envision is learning nature’s laws, and using
them with care. Take note: Natural Laws are the laws of God who created
Nature.
Natural farming is a culture where plants are grown in 100% natural
environment with the least human interference and no harmful chemicals or
synthetic products used. It is practically leaving the crops grow and produce
in their natural environment, and man comes enhances the natural conditions
to improve productivity.
  KOREAN TECHNOLOGY ON ORGANIC FARMING
IMO – Indigenous Microbial Organism
     (For composting inoculant)
OHN – Oriental Herbal Nutrient formulation using GARLIC
(For Foliar insect repellant and fungicide)
LABS – Lactic Acid Bacterial Serum formulation
(For Foliar Fertilizer or seedling drench)
FFJ    – Fermented Fruit Juice formulation
        (For foliar Fertilizer and drench fertilizer for seedlings)
FPJ - FERMENTED PLANT JUICE
(for foliar fertilizers plant growth promotant)
CPN   – Calcium for Plant Nutrient formulation
         (For Foliar Fertilizer)
FFAA – Fermented Fish Amino Acid formulation
         (For foliar fertilizer and growth activator
OC – Organic Compost formulation and making
      (For composting inoculant)
FOLIAR FERTIZER
(Growth hormone with insect and disease control properties
 Insecticides for insect pests.
 Fungicide for fungus or mold.
 Bactericide for bacteria.
 Nematocide for nematodes.
 Herbicide for weeds or herbs.
 Rodenticide for rodents or rats.
 Acaricide for trips and mites.

GREEN MANURING 
      Green manuring is the planting of seasonal crops usually legumes like beans and
plowing them under at their tender age during flowering and early fruiting when they are
rich in nutrients.
Bio-N is solid inoculants in powdered form that contains any of the two important strains
of bacteria isolated from the roots of talahib grass that can convert the nitrogen from the
air into ammonia. It can substitute 30-50% of the nitrogen requirement of rice and corn.  
Bio-N increases the yield of rice and corn by as much as 35% compared with
unfertilized treatments, maintains the natural soil properties and fertility, and makes
plants healthy and green even in drought and in the presence of pests.
       Mycogroe is
a soil-based bio-fertilizers tablet form that promotes
survival and growth of forest species like eucalyptus, pines, agoho and
dipterocarps. The tablet is inoculated into tree seedlings during their nursery
stage. Some 60-80% of the fertilizer requirements of the trees in the fields are
replaced by using this microb inoculant. 
      Mycovam on the other hand, is in powdered form, soil inoculant
effective for agricultural crops like rice, corn potatoes, eggplant, fruit trees and
forest trees.
We set the 5 principals to carry out Mokichi Okada’s Nature Farming.
1. Production of safe and nutritious food to enhance human health
2. Development of economic and spiritual benefits to both farmers and
consumers
3. Sustainability and ease of practice by every person
4. Production of sufficient food of high quality for the increasing populations
5. Conservation of the environments
Site selection for crop production
Location and Site
1. Location – the actual geographic position of an agricultural site.
2. Site – the localized area and microenvironment of an agriculture
enterprise.
Two (2) possible cases in starting a crop production enterprises:
Case 1. the crop enterprise is first decided upon then a location is
chosen.
Case 2. the area is an existing farm property or a chosen base of
operation, then the most suitable crops identified, matching the potentials
of the land with the suitability of certain crops
Case 1. For example, a farmer already decided to grow rice as his crop. Thus, will select
a location and site with the following conditions:
1. Temperature –rice requires temperature between 20 and 35 degree Celsius and a
minimum of 6 to 8 hours of exposure to sunlight per day.
2. Total rainfall - well distributed rainfall.
3. Soil type- ideal soil type for growing rice is clay loam
 clay loam have a goo water holding capacity.
4. Topography
5. Accessible to market or packinghouses.
Case 2. the site is already given and the suitable crop must still decided upon.
Factors to consider in site evaluation
6. Climate
a. Amount of rainfall (annual and monthly pattern)
b. Frequency of typhoons passing in the area
c. Wind velocity and direction
2. Physical factors

a. Depth of Surface Soil

b. Water Supply and Drainage
c. Soil Fertility Status
 1. Texture -Clay, Silt, loam, and Sand

2. pH- ideal is 5.5 to 7.0

3. Mineral and Nutrient Composition (more important N, P, and K)
4. Organic Matter Content- should be 1% to 5% (A soil that is blackish and loose
is often indicative of high organic matter).
 These are determined by collecting the soil samples and sending them for analysis in a
reliable soil laboratory (Bureau of Soils).
d. Topography

3. Biological Factors
a. Cropping pattern of the community (synchronized planting)-
pest and disease management.
b. Production practices in the area and facilities/amenities
adoption of existing practices in the area with best yields.
c. Pest and diseases problem in the area
neighborhood should be free from transmissible diseases/ epidemic.
4. Socioeconomic factors
a. Labor supply situation and level of skills
b. Accessibility of farm to transportation facilities
c. Nearness to population centers as markets
d. Local market situation and preferences of the populace
e. Political factors-peace and order situation
Shukran and assalamo alaykum