There is a need for research by agronomists and environmental scientists to optimize such solutions.įor many millennia, humans have been cultivating land for food production. Extensive use of wetlands without drastic reclamation measures and without fertilizer and pesticides might result in combinations of food production with other wetland services, with biodiversity remaining more or less intact. The development and use of crop cultivars with an even stronger flood tolerance could form part of the sustainable use of such floodplain systems. The opportunities for agriculture in naturally functioning floodplains should be further investigated. From a sustainability perspective, reclamation of peatlands for agriculture should be strongly discouraged. Although more flood-tolerant cultivars of commercial crop species are being developed, these are certainly not suitable for cultivation in wetlands with prolonged flooding periods, but rather will survive relatively short periods of waterlogging in normally improved agricultural soils. Developments in South-East Asia, where vast areas of tropical peatlands are being converted into oil palm plantations, are of great concern in this respect. This does not only lead to severe carbon dioxide emissions, but also results in low-lying land which needs to be protected against flooding. However, intensive agricultural use of drained/reclaimed peatlands has been shown to lead to major problems because of the oxidation and subsidence of the peat soil. Agriculture has been carried out in several types of (former) wetlands for millennia, with crop fields on river floodplain soils and rice fields as major examples.
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