Ecological Bulletins : Wiley?Blackwell : 9788716102270 : 8716102274 : 01 Jan 1988 : Agronomists and ecologists need each other and can learn from each other: agriculture cannot ignore ecological facts, neither can ecology study and conserve ecosystems without understanding contemporary agriculture. With this intention a symposium was organized on "the ecological implications of contemporary agriculture". Five major groups of problems were discussed, related to major elements of the system, each corresponding to a session of the symposium: - the soil and its life; - the plants, especially the unwanted ones; - the fauna, with emphasis on the control of pests; - the nutrient cycles and nutrient budgets (the driving force); - the connecting elements in the rural landscape, related as they are with lotting out. For each subject (session) two invited papers were presented in combination with a varying number of posters. All these papers were encompassed by the opening and closing lectures,