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Tropical grasslands: A pivotal place for a more multi-functional agriculture

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Abstract

Tropical grasslands represent a pivotal arena for the sustainable intensification of agriculture in the coming decades. The abundant ecosystem services provided by the grasslands, coupled with the aversion to further forest destruction, makes sustainable intensification of tropical grasslands a high policy priority. In this article, we provide an inventory of agricultural initiatives that would contribute to the sustainable intensification of the tropical grassland agro-ecosystem, and we recommend a shift in the scientific priorities of animal scientists that would contribute to realization of a more agro-ecological and multi-functional agriculture in the world’s tropical grasslands.

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Notes

  1. Hertel et al. (2014) point out how agricultural productivity increases have quite different effects on the extent of cultivated land depending on their proximity to the site of the yield increases. Sites close to the sites of a yield increase would experience increased pressures to deforest because the yield increase would make agriculture more attractive. Farmers far from the sites of the yield increase might be inclined to abandon agriculture because of the increased competition from the farmers in the site of the yield increase.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partly supported by the European Union (FSE), La Région Guadeloupe, the European project ‘Animal Change’, and Funds from the (U.S.) National Science Foundation Grant CNH10009499, which have facilitated this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UMR Modélisation Systémique Appliquée aux Ruminants, INRA, AgroParisTech, Université Paris-Saclay, 75005, Paris, France

    Maryline Boval

  2. INRA, UR143, Unité de Recherches Zootechniques, Petit-Bourg, 97170, Guadeloupe, France

    Valérie Angeon

  3. INRA, UR 767, Ecodéveloppement INRA Domaine Saint-Paul, Site Agroparc 228 route de l’Aérodrome, CS 40509, 84914, Avignon Cedex 9, France

    Valérie Angeon

  4. Department of Human Ecology, School of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Rutgers – the State University of New Jersey, 55 Dudley Road, New Brunswick, NJ, 08901, USA

    Tom Rudel

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Correspondence to Maryline Boval.

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Boval, M., Angeon, V. & Rudel, T. Tropical grasslands: A pivotal place for a more multi-functional agriculture. Ambio 46, 48–56 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-016-0806-5

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