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Cropping Systems: Shaping Nature

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Glossary

Agricultural practices:

Agricultural practices are a set of techniques applied to on-farm production and postproduction processes, resulting in food and nonfood agricultural products.

Agriculture:

Agriculture and farming are often considered to be the same concept. However, both concepts can vary in their territorial scope of application. Agriculture is the production of food and goods through farming and forestry. Agriculture encompasses a wide variety of specialties and techniques. For this reason, its definition has developed to become the science, art, and business of cultivating soil, producing crops, and raising livestock. The major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods, fibers, and raw materials. As of late, agriculture also uses plants to produce biofuels, biopharmaceuticals, and bioplastics.

Agroecosystem:

An agricultural system or agricultural ecosystem is the basic unit of study for an agroecologist. This term is somewhat arbitrarily defined as a...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Eco-efficient Cropping Systems Lab, University of Cordoba, Cordoba, Spain

    Rafael J. Lopez-Bellido & Luis Lopez-Bellido

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  1. Rafael J. Lopez-Bellido
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  2. Luis Lopez-Bellido
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Correspondence to Rafael J. Lopez-Bellido .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ramtech Ltd., Larkspur, California, USA

    Robert A. Meyers

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Crop and Forest Sciences and AGROTECNIO, (Center for Research in Agrotechnology), University of Lleida, Lleida, Spain

    Roxana Savin

  2. Department of Crop and Forest Sciences, University of Lleida, Lleida, Spain

    Gustavo Slafer

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Lopez-Bellido, R.J., Lopez-Bellido, L. (2018). Cropping Systems: Shaping Nature. In: Meyers, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainability Science and Technology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2493-6_219-3

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