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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Ames, Iowa » National Laboratory for Agriculture and The Environment » Agroecosystems Management Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #410798
Research Project: Sustainable Intensification in Agricultural Watersheds through Optimized Management and Technology

Location: Agroecosystems Management Research

Title: Cover crop intercropping and integrated crop-livestock system: a sustainable, mixed-enterprise approach to farming

Author
item BASNET, KESHAV - Orise Fellow
item Papanicolaou, Athanasios
item Malone, Robert
item Archer, David
item O'Brien, Peter
item Wacha, Kenneth
item Vadas, Peter
item Tsegaye, Teferi
item Sassenrath, Gretchen

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/22/2024
Publication Date: 6/25/2024
Citation: Basnet, K., Papanicolaou, A.N., Malone, R.W., Archer, D.W., O'Brien, P.L., Wacha, K.M., Vadas, P.A., Tsegaye, T.D., Sassenrath, G.F. 2024. Cover crop intercropping and integrated crop-livestock system: a sustainable, mixed-enterprise approach to farming [abstract]. Meeting Abstract. Vol. 65 and p. 84-95.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Balancing competing pressures in agroecosystems for increasing food production while reducing their environmental footprint, especially as climate extremes become pronounced and erratic, is essential. Alternate agricultural production systems like the integrated crop-livestock system (ICLS) are believed to offer a sustainable intensification with a “mixed-enterprise approach to farming” through the combination of crop and livestock inputs and outputs that balances production with the environment. However, a systematic assessment of the ICLS performance remains open, especially, in the monoculture production systems of the U.S. Midwest, which is the focus of this study. We hypothesized that adoption of cover crop (CC) may further improve system production by providing increased forage area potential. We investigated how the adoption of ICLS, CC, and their combination support sustainable agricultural production in Iowa, as a case study, and how these practices respond with future climates. A decision support tool is developed using the system-of-systems modeling approach, through the Vensim platform, to evaluate integrated performance of an agroecosystem and examine interactions and feedback of five systems: crop production, livestock production, economics, environmental quality, and social quality. We conducted three-dimensional (i.e., economic, environmental, and social) sustainability assessment among the four production systems: cropping only (CO), cropping with CC (CwCC), ICLS, ICLS with CC (ICLSwCC). Two forage area conditions are modeled for Iowa: first with current forage area (4.2% of farmland) and second with optimal forage area that is found to be 28% from preliminary simulations based on tradeoffs between economy and environment. Total of 18 scenarios are simulated for 100 years under three future climate conditions (no climate change; moderate, RCP4.5; and extreme, RCP8.5). ICLS and ICLSwCC are modeled as ASP (aspirational) scenarios, where CO and CwCC are modeled as BAU (business-as-usual) scenarios. Performance of the ASP scenarios are compared with the performance of BAU scenarios through the six different tests for sustainability assessment. Current forage area cannot satisfy the criterion of minimum grazing area (>1 ac/head) for any of the three climate scenarios w/ or w/o CC. On the other hand, it is confirmed with the optimized forage area that the criterion of minimum grazing area is satisfied for each of the three climate scenarios, both w/ and w/o CC. Sustainability assessment results from the 6 tests suggest that, in general, social quality decreases in the order of CO>CwCC>ICLS>ICLSwCC as it is dominated more by the availability of leisure time than the produced protein. However, economic return increases in the order of CwCC