Institution/Organization: University of Buenos Aires
Miguel Ángel Taboada, Ph.D.
Professor Edaphology, University of Buenos Aires, School of Agriculture, Argentina.
Country: Argentina
Title: “Climate-Smart Production of Crop and Livestock in Argentina“
Abstract: Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an approach for transforming and reorienting agricultural systems to support food security under the new realities of climate change. Threats are reduced by increasing resilience and resource use efficiency in agricultural production systems. For a long time, Argentine agriculture and livestock did not have CSA as objective, but this began to change in recent years, when about 20% of farmers have adopted knowledge-based systems, such as precision agriculture and agriculture by environments, greater diversification and intensification of rotations, with double crops, late corn, enhanced efficiency fertilizers (EEF) and cover crops along with no-till, in replacement of other systems based on inputs. In the same way, livestock farmers began to pay more attention to grazing management in pasture-based systems, with at most supplementation with grain at the end of the cycle. Based on a study done for FAO by Peralta and Di Paolo (Modeling and mapping Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) sequestration potential (GSOCseq, 2022), the application of these nature-based solutions (NBS) has a potential to sequester carbon between +10% and +30% for cropped soils, and between +25% and +70% for livestock systems. This shows that climate change mitigation by NBS may be the missing link to attain effective CSA in cropping and livestock systems in Argentina.
Biography: Miguel Ángel Taboada is an Agricultural Engineer. He has a Master in Soil Sciences from the School of Agriculture, University of Buenos Aires, and as a Ph.D. in Eco- and Agro-systems from the Higher National Institute of Toulouse, France. He is a Professor of Edaphology at the University of Buenos Aires and Faculty of Agronomy UBA and Director of Carbon Group Agroclimatic Solutions (Taboada continued) SRL. He has author 75 journal publications, 45 book chapters and five books, on topics related to soil fertility, saline-sodium soils, and adaptation and mitigation of climate change in the agricultural sector. He is a member of the National Academy of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine since December 2021 Full Professor in Edaphology. He has been a member of the National Research Council of Argentina (CONICET) since 1992.