Agriculture Biogeography: An emerging discipline in search of a conceptual framework

KATINAS, LILIANA; CRISCI, J.V.

PROGRESS IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY

SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD

Lugar: London; Año: 2018 vol. 42 p. 513 - 529

0309-1333

The challenge of increasing food production to keep pace with demand, while retaining the essential ecologicalintegrity of production systems, requires coordinated action among science disciplines. Thus, 21stcenturyAgriculture should incorporate disciplines related to natural resources, environmental science, andlife sciences. Biogeography, as one of those disciplines, provides a unique contribution because it can generateresearch ideas and methods that can be used to ameliorate this challenge, with the concept of relative spaceproviding the conceptual and analytical framework within which data can be integrated, related, and structuredinto a whole. A new branch of Biogeography, Agriculture Biogeography, is proposed here and definedas the application of the principles, theories, and analyses of Biogeography to agricultural systems, including allhuman activities related to breeding or cultivation, mostly to provide goods and services. It not onlyencompasses the problem that land use seems scarcely to be compatible with biodiversity conservation, butalso a substantial body of theory and analysis involving subjects not strictly related to conservation. Our aim isto define the field and scope of Agriculture Biogeography, set the foundations of a conceptual framework ofthe discipline, and present some subjects related to Agriculture Biogeography.Wepresent, in summary form,a concept map which summarizes the relationship between agriculture systems and Biogeography, anddelineates the current engagement between Agriculture and Biogeography through the discussion of someperspectives from Biogeography and from the agriculture research.