An Assessment of the Impacts of Agro-Ecological Practices towards the Improvement of Crop Health and Yield Capacity: A Case of Mopani District, Limpopo, South Africa

Abstract

Agro-ecology has emerged as a front runner in food security and sovereignty, with the UNFCCC and FAO advocating its global adoption. Agro-ecological implementation is theorised to increase crop health and yield by 3 – 10 % in a space of 3 – 10 years. This study aimed to assess the practicality and validity of these assumptions using mainly GIS and remote sensing. Adopting a mixture of Ex-post-facto and Experimental designs necessitated the presence of a control element. Each agro-ecological farm was thus assessed and compared with a conventional farm in the same geographical conditions. Crop health was assessed using satellite images analysed through ArcGIS to produce NDVI and Re-classified outputs whereas yield was calculated from production records. The shift in NDVI-crop ranges indicates changes in crop health over time. Crop health and yield both showed a decrease over 80% of the conventional farms and an increase over 80% of the organic farms. Keywords—Agro-ecology, Agro-ecosystem, Anthropogenic,