Weeds are a significant problem in crop production and their management inmodern agriculture is crucial to avoid yield losses and ensure foodsecurity. Intensive agricultural practices, changing climate, and naturaldisasters affect weed dynamics and that requires a change in weed managementprotocols. The existing manual control options are no longer viable becauseof labor shortages; chemical control options are limited by ecodegradation,health hazards, and development of herbicide resistance in weeds. We aretherefore reviewing some potential nonconventional weed managementstrategies for modern agriculture that are viable, feasible, and efficient.Improvement in tillage regimes has long been identified as an impressiveweed-control measure. Harvest weed seed control and seed predation have beenshown as potential tools for reducing weed emergence and seed bank reserves.Development in the field of allelopathy for weed management has led to newtechniques for weed control. The remarkable role of biotechnologicaladvancements in developing herbicide-resistant crops, bioherbicides, andharnessing the allelopathic potential of crops is also worth mentioning in amodern weed management program. Thermal weed management has also beenobserved as a useful technique, especially under conservation agriculturesystems. Last, precision weed management has been elaborated with sufficientdetails. The role of remote sensing, modeling, and robotics as an integralpart of precision weed management has been highlighted in a realisticmanner. All these strategies are viable for today's agriculture; however,site-specific selection and the use of right combinations will be the key tosuccess. No single strategy is perfect, and therefore an integrated approachmay provide better results. Future research is needed to explore thepotential of these strategies and to optimize them on technological andcultural bases. The adoption of such methods may improve the efficiency ofcropping systems under sustainable and conservation practices.

Farming systems in the Costa Chica region in Mexico face limitations linked to low yields and soil fertility degradation. Several alternative maize-based cropping systems have been proposed to improve current limitations. These field-level options need to be evaluated at farm level in order to assess their feasibility, taking into account input requirements, contributions to self-sufficiency in food and long-term soil fertility, and the availability of labor. In this study, we defined four scenarios to explore consequences of changes in current farming systems for eight typical farms in the region; the first two scenarios comprised redressing current imbalances in crop nutrition and organic matter (OM) supply, respectively, and the last two scenarios explored high fertilizer input and animal husbandry. Farms responded in different ways to the various options depending on available land, current soil quality, current cropping systems and presence of livestock. Improvements in crop nutrition based on mineral fertilizers increased family income but only had substantial effects on soil OM (SOM) balances when fertilizer rates were double the amount currently subsidized. Addition of organic fertilizers resulted in positive effects on SOM balance, but with often strong trade-offs with family income due to costs of acquisition, transport and application. Animals played an important role in increasing SOM balances, but had relatively little effect on improving family income. The results demonstrated that improvements in family income and SOM balance at farm scale were feasible but that without more fundamental system changes trade-offs between short-term yield increases and longer-term soil fertility increases should be expected. The results highlight the need for policies that take into account farm-specific differences in crop and livestock intensification opportunities.