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Author: National Research Council Publisher: National Academies Press ISBN: 0309148960 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 598
Book Description
In the last 20 years, there has been a remarkable emergence of innovations and technological advances that are generating promising changes and opportunities for sustainable agriculture, yet at the same time the agricultural sector worldwide faces numerous daunting challenges. Not only is the agricultural sector expected to produce adequate food, fiber, and feed, and contribute to biofuels to meet the needs of a rising global population, it is expected to do so under increasingly scarce natural resources and climate change. Growing awareness of the unintended impacts associated with some agricultural production practices has led to heightened societal expectations for improved environmental, community, labor, and animal welfare standards in agriculture. Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century assesses the scientific evidence for the strengths and weaknesses of different production, marketing, and policy approaches for improving and reducing the costs and unintended consequences of agricultural production. It discusses the principles underlying farming systems and practices that could improve the sustainability. It also explores how those lessons learned could be applied to agriculture in different regional and international settings, with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. By focusing on a systems approach to improving the sustainability of U.S. agriculture, this book can have a profound impact on the development and implementation of sustainable farming systems. Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century serves as a valuable resource for policy makers, farmers, experts in food production and agribusiness, and federal regulatory agencies.
Author: National Research Council Publisher: National Academies Press ISBN: 0309148960 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 598
Book Description
In the last 20 years, there has been a remarkable emergence of innovations and technological advances that are generating promising changes and opportunities for sustainable agriculture, yet at the same time the agricultural sector worldwide faces numerous daunting challenges. Not only is the agricultural sector expected to produce adequate food, fiber, and feed, and contribute to biofuels to meet the needs of a rising global population, it is expected to do so under increasingly scarce natural resources and climate change. Growing awareness of the unintended impacts associated with some agricultural production practices has led to heightened societal expectations for improved environmental, community, labor, and animal welfare standards in agriculture. Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century assesses the scientific evidence for the strengths and weaknesses of different production, marketing, and policy approaches for improving and reducing the costs and unintended consequences of agricultural production. It discusses the principles underlying farming systems and practices that could improve the sustainability. It also explores how those lessons learned could be applied to agriculture in different regional and international settings, with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. By focusing on a systems approach to improving the sustainability of U.S. agriculture, this book can have a profound impact on the development and implementation of sustainable farming systems. Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century serves as a valuable resource for policy makers, farmers, experts in food production and agribusiness, and federal regulatory agencies.
Author: Charles H. Antholt Publisher: World Bank Publications ISBN: 9780821325100 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 64
Book Description
The productivity growth of farming in Asian countries over the past few decades highlights the high returns on investments in agricultural research and extension made in the region. This publication examines the performance of agricultural research and extension programmes in Asia, including the World Bank's training and visit (TandV) system, the challenges they face, and ways of improving their relevance, responsiveness, and cost- effectiveness. Conclusions reached include the importance of raising agricultural productivity through new technology in order to promote long- term growth and poverty reduction, and the need for less intensive and more environmentally sound agricultural practices.
Author: Manjit S. Kang Publisher: CRC Press ISBN: 1040283810 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 408
Book Description
Learn to integrate molecular genetic techniques with traditional plant breeding methods!This comprehensive book provides the latest authoritative scientific information on improvement of both temperate and tropical crops. Crop Improvement: Challenges in the Twenty-First Century brings together expert plant breeders and geneticists to address issues related to crop adaptability and stability across environments for important food and fiber crops. It emphasizes the need to integrate molecular genetic techniques with traditional plant breeding methods to develop hardier, more productive crops. Crop Improvement includes the latest research on physiological and biochemical responses of plants to drought and heat stress, which should help breeders develop effective strategies for improving resistance to abiotic stresses. In addition, this helpful book elucidates the use of mixed models and best linear unbiased prediction. To make the book comprehensive, chapters discuss stability analysis in crop performance trials and genotype-by-environment interactions.Crop Improvement includes detailed information on breeding specific crops, including: rice tropical maize sorghum common bean sugar beet bananas and plantain cotton Crop Improvement offers both practical information and up-to-date research. It also suggests a vision of new directions and partnerships that are expected to evolve in this century. This book is an essential resource for practicing plant breeders and geneticists at universities, government agencies, and industry. It should also be of use to teachers and students engaged in crop breeding.
Author: Petra Moser Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 022677905X Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 270
Book Description
"The challenges facing agriculture are plenty. Along with the world's growing population and diminishing amounts of water and arable land, the gradual increase in severe weather presents new challenges and imperatives for producing new, more resilient crops to feed a more crowded planet in the twenty-first century. Innovation has historically helped agriculture keep pace with earth's social, population, and ecological changes. In the last 50 years, mechanical, biological, and chemical innovations have more than doubled agricultural output while barely changing input quantities. The ample investment behind these innovations was available because of a high rate of return: a 2007 paper found that the median ROI in agriculture was 45 percent between 1965 and 2005. This landscape has changed. Today many of the world's wealthier countries have scaled back their share of GDP devoted to agricultural R&D amid evidence of diminishing returns. Universities, which have historically been a major source of agricultural innovation, increasingly depend on funding from industry rather than government to fund their research. As Upton Sinclair wrote of the effects industry influences, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." In this volume of the NBER Conference Report series, editor Petra Moser offers an empirical, applied-economic framework to the different elements of agricultural R&D, particularly as they relate to the shift from public to private funding. Individual chapters examine the sources of agricultural knowledge and investigate challenges for measuring the returns to the adoption of new agricultural technologies, examine knowledge spillovers from universities to agricultural innovation, and explore interactions between university engagement and scientific productivity. Additional analysis of agricultural venture capital point to it as an emerging and future source of resource in this essential domain"--
Author: Vaclav Smil Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 9780262692717 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 396
Book Description
A realistic yet encouraging look at how society can change in ways that will allow us to feed an expanding global population. This book addresses the question of how we can best feed the ten billion or so people who will likely inhabit the Earth by the middle of the twenty-first century. He asks whether human ingenuity can produce enough food to support healthy and vigorous lives for all these people without irreparably damaging the integrity of the biosphere. What makes this book different from other books on the world food situation is its consideration of the complete food cycle, from agriculture to post-harvest losses and processing to eating and discarding. Taking a scientific approach, Smil espouses neither the catastrophic view that widespread starvation is imminent nor the cornucopian view that welcomes large population increases as the source of endless human inventiveness. He shows how we can make more effective use of current resources and suggests that if we increase farming efficiency, reduce waste, and transform our diets, future needs may not be as great as we anticipate. Smil's message is that the prospects may not be as bright as we would like, but the outlook is hardly disheartening. Although inaction, late action, or misplaced emphasis may bring future troubles, we have the tools to steer a more efficient course. There are no insurmountable biophysical reasons we cannot feed humanity in the decades to come while easing the burden that modern agriculture puts on the biosphere.
Author: Ika Darnhofer Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 9400745036 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 488
Book Description
Farming Systems Research has three core characteristics: it builds on systems thinking, it depends on the close collaboration between social and biophysical sciences, and it relies on participation to build co-learning processes. Farming Systems Research posits that to contribute towards sustainable rural development, both interdisciplinary collaborations and local actor engagement are needed. Together, they allow for changes in understanding and changes in practices. This book gives an overview of the insights generated in 20 years of Farming Systems Research. It retraces the emergence and development of Farming Systems Research in Europe, summarises the state-of-the-art for key areas, and provides an outlook on new explorations, especially those tackling the dynamic nature of farming systems and their interaction with the natural environment and the context of action.
Author: Gudrun Kochendörfer-Lucius Publisher: World Bank Publications ISBN: 0821371282 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 245
Book Description
The book highlights proceedings from the Berlin 2008: Agriculture and Development conference held in preparation for the World Development Report 2008.
Author: Rachid Serraj Publisher: World Scientific ISBN: 9813278366 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 680
Book Description
This book features a comprehensive foresight assessment, exploring the pressures — threats as well as opportunities — on the global agriculture & food systems between now and 2050. The overarching aim is to help readers understand the context, by analyzing global trends and anticipating change for better planning and constructing pathways from the present to the future by focusing on the right questions and problems. The book contextualizes the role of international agricultural research in addressing the complex challenges posed by UN 2030 Agenda and beyond, and identifies the decisions that scientific leaders, donors and policy makers need to take today, and in the years ahead, to ensure that a global population rising to nine billion or more combined with rising incomes and changing diets can be fed sustainably and equitably, in the face of the growing climate threats.
Author: National Research Council
Author: National Research Council
Author: Charles H. Antholt
Author: Manjit S. Kang
Author: Chelston W. D. Brathwaite
Author: 
Author: Petra Moser
Author: Vaclav Smil
Author: Ika Darnhofer
Author: Gudrun Kochendörfer-Lucius
Author: Rachid Serraj