Agricultural news.

7, 1908

Agricultural news.

17, 1918

Tropical agriculturist and magazine of the Ceylon Agricultural Society.

v.3 (1883-1884)

Agricultural news.

12, 1913

Agricultural news.

14, 1915

Co-operative and Alternative Finance for Agricultural/Food Communities : European Developments

Publisher PDF

GHG mitigation of agricultural peatlands requires coherent policies

Acknowledgements The authors thank the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases for facilitating this work. The contribution of P.S. contributed to the EU-funded GHG Europe project.

Induced intensification: Agricultural change in Bangladesh with implications for Malthus and Boserup

Bangladesh is dominated by a small-holder agrarian economy under extreme stress. Production shortfalls, increasing economic polarization, and chronic malnutrition are persistent, but major famine has been diverted in part by significant growth in agriculture. This recent history is open to both Malthusian and Boserupian interpretations—a history we explore here through a test of the induced intensification thesis of agricultural change. This thesis, framed by variations in the behavior of small-holders, has grown from a simple demand-production relationship to a consideration of the mediating influences on that relationship. The induced intensification thesis is reviewed and tested for 265 households in 6 villages in Bangladesh from 1950–1986. A time-series analysis of an induced intensification model provides relatively high levels of explained variance in cropping intensity (frequency and land productivity) and also indicates the relative impacts of household class, environment, and cropping strategies. On average, the small-holders in question kept pace with the demands on production, although important class and village variations were evident and the proportion of landless households increased. These results, coupled with evidence that agricultural growth involved intensification thresholds, provide clues about Malthusian and Boserupian interpretations of Bangladesh, and suggest that small-holder agriculture there is likely to continue on a “muted” path of growth.

The transition to agricultural sustainability

The transition to sustainable growth in agricultural production during the 21st century will take place within the context of a transition to a stable population and a possible transition to a stable level of material consumption. If the world fails to successfully navigate a transition to sustainable growth in agricultural production, the failure will be due more to a failure in the area of institutional innovation than to resource and environmental constraints.

Global environmental impacts of agricultural expansion: The need for sustainable and efficient practices

The recent intensification of agriculture, and the prospects of future intensification, will have major detrimental impacts on the nonagricultural terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems of the world. The doubling of agricultural food production during the past 35 years was associated with a 6.87-fold increase in nitrogen fertilization, a 3.48-fold increase in phosphorus fertilization, a 1.68-fold increase in the amount of irrigated cropland, and a 1.1-fold increase in land in cultivation. Based on a simple linear extension of past trends, the anticipated next doubling of global food production would be associated with approximately 3-fold increases in nitrogen and phosphorus fertilization rates, a doubling of the irrigated land area, and an 18% increase in cropland. These projected changes would have dramatic impacts on the diversity, composition, and functioning of the remaining natural ecosystems of the world, and on their ability to provide society with a variety of essential ecosystem services. The largest impacts would be on freshwater and marine ecosystems, which would be greatly eutrophied by high rates of nitrogen and phosphorus release from agricultural fields. Aquatic nutrient eutrophication can lead to loss of biodiversity, outbreaks of nuisance species, shifts in the structure of food chains, and impairment of fisheries. Because of aerial redistribution of various forms of nitrogen, agricultural intensification also would eutrophy many natural terrestrial ecosystems and contribute to atmospheric accumulation of greenhouse gases. These detrimental environmental impacts of agriculture can be minimized only if there is much more efficient use and recycling of nitrogen and phosphorus in agroecosystems.

Save the Planet - Buy Organic: The Role of Consumers in the Sustainable Agricultural Movement

The severity of the environmental situation in agriculture is described. Progress made so far is then listed and critiqued. Misconceptions that sustainable agriculture cannot produce as much food as industrial agriculture, as well as the false impression that sustainably-produced foods must cost more are discussed. In conclusion, the only force strong enough to convince farmers to switch to sustainable practices is the consumer. Advertisements and educational campaigns will inform consumers about industrial agriculture. The shift in demand for sustainable goods will eventually cause prices to fall, allowing more consumers to purchase these formally expensive goods. This process will make a sustainable agricultural revolution possible and profitable.

Anaerobic Digestion Project Working Guide: A Case Study Analysis and Procedural Summary of Anaerobic Digester Projects for the United States Agricultural Sector

Renewable energy such as biomass has given markets, including dairy farms, an effective approach to reducing the costs of sustaining a profitable business. Anaerobic digestion systems offer dairy farms a very effective way to reduce manure odor, comply with soil and water pollution regulations, manufacture compost for general market sales, produce irrigation capacity and generate on-site electricity as well as the ability to sell excess electricity back to the local utilities. This project defines anaerobic digestion technologies and practices, analyzes case studies and presents a step-by-step anaerobic digestion project startup checklist. The result is an anaerobic digestion project working guide that acts as a tool to aid dairy farmers in their own potential anaerobic digestion project.

Natural additives and agricultural wastes in biopolymer formulations for food packaging

The main directions in food packaging research are targeted toward improvements in food quality and food safety. For this purpose, food packaging providing longer product shelf-life, as well as the monitoring of safety and quality based upon international standards, is desirable. New active packaging strategies represent a key area of development in new multifunctional materials where the use of natural additives and/or agricultural wastes is getting increasing interest. The development of new materials, and particularly innovative biopolymer formulations, can help to address these requirements and also with other packaging functions such as: food protection and preservation, marketing and smart communication to consumers. The use of biocomposites for active food packaging is one of the most studied approaches in the last years on materials in contact with food. Applications of these innovative biocomposites could help to provide new food packaging materials with improved mechanical, barrier, antioxidant, and antimicrobial properties. From the food industry standpoint, concerns such as the safety and risk associated with these new additives, migration properties and possible human ingestion and regulations need to be considered. The latest innovations in the use of these innovative formulations to obtain biocomposites are reported in this review. Legislative issues related to the use of natural additives and agricultural wastes in food packaging systems are also discussed.

The Iron Age landscape of Alcoi Valley, eastern Iberia: Agricultural intensification and sociopolitical dynamics

New archaeological survey data are combined with previous evidence to examine the rural landscape during the Iberian Iron Age in the Valencia region of eastern Spain. One goal was to understand the settlement pattern and agricultural intensification through manuring. The second objective was to address the socioeconomic aspects of changes in the landscape. It is possible to trace the emergence of a hierarchical settlement pattern in the Iberian Iron Age in which large fortified settlements carried out the most important functions of control and exploitation of the territory, extending their authority over small rural villages and farmsteads. This pattern is associated with the complex socioeconomic structures and political organization of early Iberian states.

First molar size and wear within and among modern hunter-gatherers and agricultural populations

Apart from reflecting modern human dental variation, differences in dental size among populations provide a means for studying continuous evolutionary processes and their mechanisms. Dental wear, on the other hand, has been widely used to infer dietary adaptations and variability among or within diverse ancient human populations. Few such studies have focused on modern foragers and farmers, however, and diverse methods have been used. This research aimed to apply a single, standardized, and systematic quantitative procedure to measure dental size and dentin exposure in order to analyze differences among several hunter-gatherer and agricultural populations from various environments and geographic origins. In particular, we focused on sexual dimorphism and intergroup differences in the upper and lower first molars. Results indicated no sexual dimorphism in molar size and wear within the studied populations. Despite the great ethnographic variation in subsistence strategies among these populations, our findings suggest that differences in sexual division of labor do not affect dietary wear patterns.