Summary
Sustainable cropping systems should be both stable and resilient to erratic and extreme climate, while remaining profitable and providing critical ecosystem services. Stable cropping systems exhibit minimal interannual variability while resilient systems remain productive under disturbances. It is unclear however which cropping system charataristics (e.g., perenniality, diversity, management) contribute the most to stability or resilience. Using a 26-year experiment we calculated food-energy output from five cropping systems typical of the North Central U.S.: continuous maize, maize-soybean under minimum tillage, organic maize-soybean-wheat system, and two forage rotations including maize and alfalfa. We found that output was greatest for non-organic maize rotations, followed by the forage
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