An agricultural diversity study in farms from Havana
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Abstract
and preserving biodiversity, either in natural areas or
anthropized agricultural systems. After the Green Revolution
had appeared, a high-input monoculture was established in
large areas, which caused ecosystem biodiversity erosion,
particularly farmers´ managed agrodiversity, besides increasing
greenhouse gas emissions (GEI), as a result of using
technological packages and farm misuse. Our country was not
free from this process and when the socialist field had fallen
down, Cuba was immersed into a general food crisis facing the
challenge of looking for low-input solutions. Since 2001, the
participatory plant breeding staff has delivered the farmers
some crop varieties kept in germplasm banks from the national
institutions. This study was carried out in 14 farms from Havana
province, where Shannon Weaver and Margalef´s diversity
indexes were calculated for producers´ agricultural species,
either linked or not to the project. Also, through IPCC-2001
methodology, methane and nitrous oxide emissions from these
productive systems were estimated, in order to know their
relationship to agrodiversity. Results proved that diversity
indexes are highly correlated in every farm studied, depending
on the number of species preserved by farmers. Nitrous oxide
emissions are strongly correlated with the amount of
nitrogenous fertilizers applied to the farm and, in case of
methane, as there were different sources of emission, besides
not being present in every farm, it did not show any correlation
with agrodiversity or with another aspect measured in the farms.
Those farms with more diversity had low greenhouse gas
emissions, which indicates that an adequate agrodiversity
management in the farms reduces emissions by agricultural
practices.
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