Sustainable Agriculture Literature Review - Boulder County

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The authors identified three broad practices strongly associated with organic farming
that benefited farmland biodiversity: (1) the reduced use of chemical pesticides and
inorganic fertilizers, (2) management of non-crop habitats and field margins can enhance
diversity and abundance of arable plants, invertebrates, birds, and mammals, and (3) the
use of crop rotations and mixed farming positively impact farmland biodiversity through
the provision of greater habitat heterogeneity at a variety of temporal and spatial scales
within the landscape. 695 !
The identified practices are not necessarily unique to organic production. The authors
acknowledged that through the above practices it is possible for a conventional farm to
sustain equivalent levels of biodiversity as those found on organic farms, suggesting that
increases in biodiversity may potentially be a result of identifiable changes in
management. 696
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