Conservation agriculture (CA) is promoted worldwide to enhance soil quality, improve farmers’ incomes and increase the resilience of rainfed agro-ecosystems under climate change. A major constraint to the adoption of CA is crop residue management in mixed crop–livestock systems. Farmers have...

A lot of attention in the debate on the 2014–2020 programming period of the EU CAP and rural development policy revolves around the policy's contribution to enhancing resource use efficiency, decreasing environmental impact, restoring ecosystems and how to ensure more efficient and effective...

The paper has two main objectives: (i) to assess the eco-efficiency of spring barley cultivation for malting in Denmark in a future changed climate (700 ppm [CO2] and +5 °C) through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and (ii) to compare alternative future cultivation scenarios, both excluding and...

Crop residues (CR) have become a limited resource in mixed crop-livestock farms. As a result of the increasing demand and low availability of alternative resources, CR became an essential resource for household activities, especially for livestock keeping; a major livelihood element of...

In complex mixed crop-livestock systems with limited resources and biomass scarcity, crop residues play an important but increasingly contested role. This paper focuses on farming systems in the semi-arid areas of Zimbabwe, where biomass production is limited and farmers integrate crop and...

Leucaena leucocephala (leucaena) is a perennial legume shrub of subtropical regions that has forage characteristics favourable for livestock production, often delivering ruminant liveweight gains that are superior to most other forage systems. Recent work suggests that leucaena mitigates...

Cereal residues represent a major resource for livestock feeding during the dry season in southern Africa. When kept on the soil surface instead of feeding them to livestock, crop residues can contribute to increasing soil fertility and maintaining crop productivity in the short- and the...

Western Kenya is one of Africa’s most densely populated rural areas, characterised by intensive smallholder crop–livestock systems on degraded lands managed with small inputs of mineral fertiliser and animal manure. Competing uses for crop residues and other organic resources often results...

Crop residues have several uses in smallholder mixed crop-livestock systems. This paper examines determinants of households’ maize stover use as livestock feed, fuel and soil amendment in maize-based systems in Ethiopia. In these systems maize stover is primarily used as feed (56% of biomass)...