Rotatins in Southern Wheat Farming System The Platform for sustained Yield Improvement

摘要

This paper discusses the development of wheat farming systems in southern Australia, from early exploitative monocultures to a more sustainable system based on crop and pasture rotationa and contemporary moves to re-establish perennial species. Throughout the evolution of these systems, crop rotations have been shown to improve productivity and sustainability through disease control, increased efficiency of water and nitrogen use, and maintenance of the soil resource. In attempting to overcome the problems of yield declien in the sugar industry, it is worth considering the limitations that are common to most monocultures, and to consider how the principles which led to solutions to these within the wheat farming system may be applied to the sugar industry. Although environmental and socio-economic realities are unlikely to permit as diverse a usage of sugarcane land, modified production technology, basedo n the lessons from former monocultures such as wheat, may produce a mroe productive and sustainable sugarcane industry.