Some considerations on energy transfer in agroecosystems

Dear readers, in agricultural ecosystems there is a great diversity of organisms which perform various tasks to maintain its proper functioning, for example, plants need to take water and nutrients from the soil, for the fulfillment of these activities and maintain subsistence need to acquire energy, is then where you can see the great thing about nature, since living beings use in a direct or indirect way solar energy, becoming a fundamental element for some natural processes that allow food production.

Plants are the most efficient capturers of solar energy, transforming it into chemical energy, in this process, Garcia and collaborators (2000), mention that the raw material used is carbon dioxide and water that transports the nutrients from the soil for the formation of sugars, that is to say that plants such as grasses accumulate energy (biomass) which is available for the animals, which will use it in the case of cows for milk production and maintenance, and the rest will remain accumulated in tissues.

But it doesn't end there, the meat or milk produced by the animals is used for human consumption, as well as for other predators that consume fruits and/or vegetables from the plants, depending on the crop grown in the production unit. On the other hand, there are a large number of efficient microorganisms that are responsible for the decomposition of biomass (organic matter: plant leaves, cattle manure, dead animals) to transform it through a process of mineralization and humification into inorganic components that can be used again by the plants.

Therefore, it can be inferred that the transfer of energy and nutrients by different organisms such as producers (plants), consumers (animals and humans) and decomposers (edaphic microbiota), is a kind of food chain, since, in short, plants capture energy and transform it into biomass and then it is transferred from one organism to another, animals consume them and microorganisms help to recycle nutrients through the decomposition of organic matter.

Dear readers, you can see how complex an agricultural system is and above all the natural processes that must be respected and not altered with the excessive introduction of synthetic elements to the system unless it is necessary, the ideal is that we allow certain natural processes to run with the use of agroecological management, In agriculture there are no recipes, all management will depend on the edaphoclimatic conditions of the region where we are. I hope that this information will allow us to understand how essential it is to understand ecological agriculture and how energy is captured and transformed in the ecosystems that are responsible for producing food. In conclusion, it can be observed that energy can change from one form to another (from light to food) but it is never created or destroyed as established by the first law of thermodynamics.