Dryland Farming Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Dryland farming is rainfed agriculture in arid or semi-arid areas, and growing crops and raising livestock without irrigation in semiarid and dry subhumid areas with minimal rainfall. Because dryland farming systems depend on rain and snow for their necessary moisture, they differ from arid zone systems, where irrigation is necessary, and from humid zone systems, where moisture is adequate or surplus for crops. Due to the limited and seasonal precipitation that shows considerable temporal and spatial variations and high evapotranspiration, agricultural systems in drylands have to adapt to the resulting low soil moisture and the patchiness of the ecosystem created by these conditions. This leads to a high riskiness of agricultural production, which is generally compensated by other diversified forms of income or seasonal migration in different forms of seminomadism.

Croplands cover 25 percent of the world’s dryland areas, and the bulk of the world’s food (60-70 percent of the world’s staple crops) is provided from rainfed agriculture. Nevertheless, agriculture in drylands is considered in general as less favored, since it faces a variety of either biophysical or socioeconomic constraints. In areas of low productivity, yields are generally are less than 50 percent of irrigated systems on comparable land. The vast majority of dryland inhabitants, about 90 percent, live in developing countries. In many cases, they are the poorest of the poor, and display the lowest levels of human well-being.

Increasing degradation due to poor management of soils prone to erosion, steep slopes, saline soils, or low rainfall quantities are some of the limitations for agricultural production, frequently exacerbated by uncertain land tenure systems, growing population numbers, limited infrastructure, and market access and neglect of policy makers in previous decades. Degradation of rangeland is mainly caused by overgrazing, leading to bush encroachment.

Four categories of farming systems can be used to distinguish different development pathways of dryland farming. Traditional subsistence farming, which is based on traditional staple crops as sorghum, maize or manioc, with low opportunity costs for land and labor, have remained almost unchanged in previous decades. Economic growth and trade triggers a movement toward commercial farming in areas of low population density and higher opportunity costs for labor, leading to mechanized, large scale production systems as are observed in cereal production areas in the Argentina, Australia, or United States drylands, and exstensive pastoral livestock systems. Where labor is abundant and land is the constraining factor, intensive cereal systems develop that rely more on the use of high-yielding varieties and fertilizers to increase productivity, for instance in the intensively managed rice-wheat production systems in the Indian Punjab or the intensive rice production systems in Southeast Asia, where intensive livestock production associated with stall feeding is common. Where both land and labor are scarce, dryland farming becomes highly intensified, like the fruit and vegetable areas around the Mediterrenean.

Key factors for improved dryland farming are the increase of plant nutrient and water uptake, increase of organic matter in the systems, and exploring the possibilities for small-scale supplementary irrigation.

Within new economic frameworks, options are proposed to include land management strategies in drylands for the provision of ecosystem services. For instance, agroforestry systems could be created in drylands for carbon sequestration or other markets for the provision of ecosystem services.

Bibliography:

Lynne Chatterton and Brian Chatterton, Sustainable Dryland Farming: Combining Farmer Innovation and Medic Pasture in a Mediterranean Climate (Cambridge University Press, 1996);
John Dixon, Farming Systems and Poverty: Improving Farmers’ Livelihoods in a Changing World (FAO, 2001);
E. Hall, G.H. Cannell, and H.W. Lawton, Agriculture in Semi-Arid Environments: Ecological Studies (Springer, 1979).