IBPS = agriculture
Wednesday, 17 July 2013
Agriculture is an integrated biological production system, in which several crops are grown in combination (variously called polyculture, intercropping, or associated cropping), in succession (crop rotation), or in a combination of both approaches.*
That phrase, “integrated biological production system,” caught my eye. What if it’s just a few plants, like I have? Is that agriculture or some version of horticultural dilettantism?
The first sentence of a 2009 article by M. Kwak, J.A. Kami, and P. Gepts, titled “The Putative Mesoamerican Domestication Center of Phaseolus vulgaris Is Located in the Lerma–Santiago Basin of Mexico”, and published in the journal Crop Science (49:554–563). And, yeah, I realize that Phaseolus vulgaris is the bean, and the photo is maize—you work with what you have….