Ecology and the agricultural sciences: a false dichotomy?

Abstract

Analysis of the relationship between ecology and agriculture requires an understanding of how the two areas see themselves and each other. Both disciplines have common roots in botany, chemistry, physics, and geology, and in the interactions among both biotic and abiotic factors. Agriculture has long been recognized as an applied science with interdisciplinary traditions that involve the recognition that some of its management techniques are as much an art as a science. The opportunity for the ecologist in modern agriculture, then, is to provide concepts and principles that can be used as tools to design resource-efficient agricultural systems. The development of these principles will depend on basic research aimed at understanding organism-level interactions in the agronomic environment. Agronomists have for too long ignored ecology and the benefits to be derived from integrated research approaches. Ecologists have for too long considered agronomic systems inherently uninteresting. It's time to close the gap.