What is the Ecological Agricultural System?

The ecological agricultural system is that, based on ecology theory, an agricultural production system built in a certain region. The ecological agricultural system is composed of biocoenosises lived in the region and ambient environment, which is the fundamental unit of the development and research of the ecological agriculture.

In essence, the ecological agricultural system is an artificial ecological system which people make use of biological measures and engineering actions to continuously improve the fixed rate and the utilization factor of the solar energy and the conversion rate of the biological energy source in order to obtain the living goods necessary for the society and the capital goods. As same as the natural ecosystem, the ecological agricultural system exchange the energy and material with the environment continuously, also circulate and convert internally, sequentially keep the function and structure of the ecological agricultural system, simultaneously form complicated feedback relationship internally. While during the process of the flow of energy and circulation of materials of the ecological agricultural system, the human being are at the centre of the ecological agricultural system, because the human being have highly conscious activities. Under the circumstances without prejudice to the objective laws of the ecological system, the human being can make use of the ecological system and transform the ecological system initiative.

Being a high-efficiency artificial ecosystem, the ecological agricultural systems, are composed of living beings (such as plants, animals and microorganisms) and environmental conditions (such as light, heat, water, air and soil), in addition to these also include the practice of human being activities and the social and economic situations, are a unity consisted of these complexity factors. In other words, the ecological agricultural systems not only include a region (the region may be as large as a Country, and the region may be as small as a village or a unincorporated villages, all of the agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishing industry are included in the ecological agricultural systems), but also combine with the socioeconomic system, which is a synthetic ecological system.

Because the main objects of study in the ecological agricultural systems are plants (such as crops and trees) and animals (domestic animals and poultries) under the limit of certain natural environment (such as climates and soil), therefore there is a close link and many correspondences between the ecological agricultural systems and the natural ecological systems. But the ecological agricultural systems have their own characteristics which are as followings:

1. Regard to the community structure, the community structure of the ecological agricultural systems is simpler than the natural ecological systems

2. Regard to the time and space forms of the ecological agricultural systems, the time and space forms of the ecological agricultural systems is discontinuous compared to the natural ecological systems.