Plants and Environmental Factors - Agroecology: The Ecology of Sustainable Food Systems - page 33

Section II
Plants and Environmental Factors
Even in the simplest of agroecosystems, there are complex relationships among crop plants, non-crop plants, animals,
and soil microorganisms, and between each of these types of organisms and the physical environment. Before attempting
to understand all these relationships and interactions at their full level of complexity, it is helpful to study agroecosystems
from a more focused perspective — that of the individual crop plant in relation to its environment. Such a perspective
is termed autecological . We restrict our attention to plants because they, as producers, make up the foundation of all
agroecosystems, even those incorporating animals.
Autecological study of agroecosystems begins by breaking down the environment into individual factors and
exploring how each factor affects the crop plant. Consistent with this approach, the core chapters in this section are
each devoted to a single environmental factor of importance in agroecosystems. Each chapter describes how its factor
functions in time and space, and then gives examples of how farmers have learned to either accommodate their crops
to this factor, or take advantage of it to improve the sustainability of the agroecosystem.
These chapters are preceded by a chapter that reviews the basic structure and function of the plant itself, providing
a basis for understanding its responses. The section concludes with a chapter explaining how the separate factors must
be viewed as parts of a whole dynamic system.