Conventional agriculture versus agroecological systems: models, impacts, quality assessment and prospects

Abstract

The agriculture world is very representative concerning to the use of the planet areas. This review aimed at to evaluate the main negative impacts of conventional agriculture and the relation to the most ecological models of production, highlighting the forms of assessment and the replacement of a traditional system by an agroecological system. The traditional conventional agriculture model currently used requires large amounts of external inputs, such as inorganic fertilizers and pesticides, although these inputs are used improperly in many cases, causing potential risks to the environment. This environmental impact caused by the conventional agriculture, besides the increased use of non-renewable resources, favors the emergence of other alternatives, like the agroecological model and the organic farming. There are several indicators that evaluate the quality of different soil management in agriculture today, becoming important elements for the validation, or not, of new methods to be employed in agricultural cultivation. There is a great debate about the changes in production systems, the economic factor on the one hand, and the environmental issues on the other. Hence, the need of the system changing aiming at more sustainable forms of agriculture, especially to the environmental costs caused by the intensive and conventional farming, is highlighted in the current agriculture.