Economists have described the upcountry Georgia poultry industry as the quintessential agribusiness. Following a trajectory from Reconstruction through the Great Depression to the present day, Monica R. Gisolfi shows how the poultry farming model of semivertical integration perfected a number of practices that had first underpinned the cotton-growing crop-lien system, ultimately transforming the poultry industry in ways that drove tens of thousands of farmers off the land and rendered those who remained dependent on large agribusiness firms. Gisolfi argues that the inequalities inherent in the structure of modern poultry farming have led to steep human and environmental costs. Agribusiness firms-many of them descended from the cotton-era South's furnishing merchants-brought farmers into a system of feed-conversion contracts that placed all production decisions in the hands of the poultry corporations but at least half of the capital risks on the farmers. Along the way, the federal government aided and abetted-sometimes unwittingly-the consolidation of power by poultry firms through direct and indirect subsidies and favorable policies. Drawing on USDA files, oral history, congressional records, and poultry publications, Gisolfi puts a local face on one of the twentieth century's silent agribusiness revolutions.

The provision of food is undergoing radical transformations throughout the global community. Peter Oosterveer argues that, as a consequence, conventional national governmental regulations can no longer adequately respond to existing and emerging food risks and to environmental concerns. This book examines these challenges. Translating recent innovative thinking in the social sciences - as seen in the work of Manuel Castells and John Urry amongst others - to the world of food, this book reviews the challenges facing global food governance and the innovative regulatory arrangements that are being introduced by different governments, NGOs and private companies. The analysis includes case-studies on the European BSE crisis, GM-food regulation, salmon and shrimp farming and food labelling. The author highlights how contemporary governance arrangements also have to acknowledge increasing consumer demand for food produced with care for the environment, animal welfare and social justice. Developing and implementing adequate global food governance arrangements therefore demands the active involvement of private firms, consumers, and civil society organisations with national governments. Peter Oosterveer's book will appeal to scholars - postgraduate and above - involved in industrial organization, agricultural studies and environmental sciences as well as those with an interest in the globalisation and governance of this important and topical area.

In this book, Turner explains that livestock illness is a result of bad farming practices and that real livestock health begins with true natural farming disciplines. He covers topics such as composting, sub-soiling, and fostering biodiverse pastures with deep-rooted forages and herbs. He also advocates the avoidance of supposed panaceas that ignore or marginalize these fundamentals such as vaccines, pesticides, antibiotics and artificial fertilizers. He teaches that the cornerstones of profitability are rooted in: soil fertility and animal nutrition, cattle breeding for better feed efficiency, and cattle breeding for longevity. Longevity, he holds, is the most critical factor for success in livestock breeding and production. Featuring a new foreword by Jerry Brunetti.

This book discusses machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) for agricultural economics. It is written with a view towards bringing the benefits of advanced analytics and prognostics capabilities to small scale farmers worldwide. This volume provides data science and software engineering teams with the skills and tools to fully utilize economic models to develop the software capabilities necessary for creating lifesaving applications. The book introduces essential agricultural economic concepts from the perspective of full-scale software development with the emphasis on creating niche blue ocean products. Chapters detail several agricultural economic and AI reference architectures with a focus on data integration, algorithm development, regression, prognostics model development and mathematical optimization. Upgrading traditional AI software development paradigms to function in dynamic agricultural and economic markets, this volume will be of great use to researchers and students in agricultural economics, data science, engineering, and machine learning as well as engineers and industry professionals in the public and private sectors.

This book argues that the viability of many observed market and non-market interventions in agricultural products worldwide depends considerably on the underlying behaviour of the relevant commodity markets. Many of these policies have had distortive impacts, resulting in much discussion and controversy in the context of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Round of trade negotiations. Despite the long history of studies of commodity market behaviour, a number of issues remain unresolved. The authors review a wide range of these issues and provide a survey of current methodological and empirical research to increase our understanding of the nature of commodity markets. Price behaviour and the reliability of different prediction methods are examined and the particular implications for commodity dependent developing countries are also highlighted. This state-of-the-art survey of agricultural commodity market behaviour will prove to be of immense interest to researchers, students and academics in the fields of agricultural market analysis, development studies and economics. The book will also strongly appeal to policymakers in both agricultural trading countries and international agencies and to private commodity market analysts.

Agricultural extension is undergoing rapid change in many countries of the world, with a shift in funding and management from the public to the private sector. This is especially true in Africa, where donors from industrial countries, and more recently from middle-income developing countries such as Chile, have historically promoted and financed those extension models. Currently, African nations are being encouraged to import the Farmer Field school extension model that is meeting with some success in Asia. Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony, became independent in 1975 but was wracked by civil war in the 1980s. Consequently, Mozambique was not able to establish its public extension service until 1987. Gemo, Eicher, and Teclemariam analyze the growth and evolution of extension provided by public, private, and NGO (local and international) sources in Mozambique during the seventeen years from 1987 to 2004. This work highlights the Mozambique's Ministry of Agriculture's drive to develop and test both local and imported extension models and to share its experience with other countries in Africa. Mozambique's Experience in Building a National Extension System will be of interest to African Ministries of Agriculture, agricultural extension managers, donors, NGOs, and teachers of extension courses in industrial and developing countries throughout the world.

Apart from food and raw materials, agriculture can also provide ancillary benefits such as landscapes, biodiversity, cultural heritage and thriving rural communities. This book offers a state-of-the-art overview of strategies for sustainable management practices and their implementation through the adoption of suitable instruments. Such practices aim to sustain and support the multiple functions provided by agriculture and natural resources in the rural countryside.The authors explore the value of alternative governance structures and examine the design of policy models and institutional mechanisms for a range of different countries and agricultural methods. The empirical results allow them to identify successful examples as well as recognize practices which have failed. They can then transfer positive policies to geographical areas or production systems where effective and efficient strategies for the sustainable management of natural resources are urgently needed. In doing so, the authors hope to improve the design, identification and implementation of appropriate policy instruments to help sustain the rural economy in the future. They also aim to strengthen the establishment of markets for nature which overcome institutional constraints. This timely new book explores emerging perspectives on multifunctionality in agriculture and the rural environment. It will be widely read by academics, researchers and policymakers with an interest in agricultural and resource economics, environmental governance and sustainable development.

In this groundbreaking book Andrew Sluyter demonstrates for the first time that Africans played significant creative roles in establishing open-range cattle ranching in the Americas. In so doing, he provides a new way of looking at and studying the history of land, labor, property, and commerce in the Atlantic world. Sluyter shows that Africans' ideas and creativity helped to establish a production system so fundamental to the environmental and social relations of the American colonies that the consequences persist to the present. He examines various methods of cattle production, compares these methods to those used in Europe and the Americas, and traces the networks of actors that linked that Atlantic world. The use of archival documents, material culture items, and ecological relationships between landscape elements make this book a methodologically and substantively original contribution to Atlantic, African-American, and agricultural history.

Agricultural Policy Reform and the WTO provides insights into the effects of the Uruguay Round WTO agreement on agricultural policy and global markets, and considers what is at stake in the Doha Development Agenda Round. The contributors to the book deal with a broad range of topics, including the evolution of domestic and trade policies in the last ten years across developed and developing countries and proposals made in the agricultural negotiation regarding market access, export subsidies and domestic support; new issues emergent in agricultural trade negotiations are also explored, including: * interaction between national regulatory systems and the deepening integration of the international trade regime * intellectual property rights protection * food safety * quality regulations * antidumping trade protection. Finally, the future of international trade relations is discussed, in particular the implications of enforcing domestic regulations to comply with international rules. This rich collection of research and analysis will be invaluable to researchers, academics and policymakers with an interest in agricultural policy analysis and international economics.

Agriculture in the New Global Economy examines the extent to which the political economy of agriculture and the food chain is being transformed by globalisation. This book highlights the important changes that have taken place in the agriculture and food system with the spread of globalisation to this traditionally local sector. Structural change and emerging technologies have contributed to this transformation, which has extended to the political environment in which agriculture operates. The authors identify four paradigms that have characterised the governance of agriculture: a traditional dependent-agriculture paradigm; a neo-liberal competitive paradigm; a multifunctional paradigm; and an emergent globalised-production paradigm. The tensions among these paradigms are developed with reference to evidence from the United States and Canada, the EU, Australia, Japan and the Global South. The book analyses the controversy over genetic modification of foodcrops, developments in agricultural trade policy at the multilateral and regional levels, changing national food policy systems, and emerging global governance arrangements for the sector. Illustrating contemporary policy debates using both theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence, this book will appeal to academics, researchers and students specialising in political science, environmental studies, agricultural economics, management and food policy. The book will also be of interest to government practitioners in agriculture and environment departments as well as international organisations such as the EU, FAO and WTO.

In A Theory of Environmental Leadership, Mark Manolopoulos draws on his original model of leading outlined in his cutting-edge book Following Reason to derive and develop the first properly systematic model of eco-leadership. Suppose humanity's relation with the Earth may be described in terms of leadership "stages" or modalities: once upon a time, the Earth led or ruled humanity, and now we humans rule or lead the Earth. When the Earth led, the Earth flourished; now that humankind leads, the Earth flounders - ecological crises multiply and intensify. However, there might be a third stage or modality of leadership: humanity leading for the Earth, leading in a way that allows the world, including humans, to re-flourish. What would be the nature of this truly environmental form of leadership? A Theory of Environmental Leadership identifies and critically analyzes the two basic and incompatible positions associated with the way we construe and interact with the non-human: anthropocentrism (human supremacism) and ecocentrism (ecological egalitarianism). By rigorously analyzing and leveraging this polarity, this book outlines an innovative theory of eco-leadership together with some of its confronting-but-necessary measures. Expansive and incredibly timely, A Theory of Environmental Leadership is ideal for a range of audiences, from scholars and students of environmental leadership studies to activists and policymakers. The book's remarkable clarity and engaging character also makes it suitable for the general public.

America's broken food system has provoked an outcry from consumer advocates seeking to align food policies with public health objectives. This book examines both sides of the conflict for solutions. Many believe that America's food system is in dire need of reform, with concerns ranging from the obesity epidemic to exploitative labor practices and negative environmental impact. This eye-opening book answers provocative questions about what changes are needed, who is advocating the changes, what parties are opposing these changes (and why), and what a new food system would look like. Organized into three sections, the work identifies the problems with the current system, reviews the changing landscape of food policy, and suggests workable solutions for progress. Washington insider Steve Clapp takes a comprehensive look at the struggle over the future of food. He examines the vision for a reformed national food policy that includes calculating the true cost of food, providing universal access to healthful food, adopting farm policies supporting public health and environmental objectives, improving food safety, paying fair wages to food employees, treating food animals with compassion, and reducing the food system's carbon footprint. The book explores the ways in which these issues can be resolved, drawing upon lessons learned from the early food advocates of the 1960s and 1970s. Traces the development of a national food policy proposed by food movement leaders Reveals the true cost of food and its toll on consumers and taxpayers Discusses the opposition against a national food policy from the agricultural-industrial complex Shows the effects of changing the current food system Analyzes efforts to fix the food system and the efforts to oppose them Introduces early food advocates who changed the food policy landscape

In this new book, Clem Tisdell considers combined economic and ecological influences on levels of agricultural and marine production, their variations and sustainability. The book consists mainly of previously published articles gathered together for the first time, while also including new chapters written especially for this collection. The book begins with an overview of the field, followed by an examination of the choice of variety of species for variable environments, new crops and diversification, production and impacts of economic and ecological factors on agricultural production generally. It goes on to consider specific aspects of pest and disease control in agriculture. The final part is devoted to bio-economic aspects of marine production. Interesting and often controversial topics include consequences and economic causes of genetic selection in agriculture, transgenic crops (GMOs), and effects of aquaculture on levels of wild fish stocks. Interdisciplinary in nature, Economics and Ecology in Agriculture and Marine Production covers a broad range of subjects and will attract a wide readership. It will therefore appeal to ecological, agricultural, environmental and natural resource economists, while also being of interest to those involved in land and food science, fisheries and marine studies.

The acclaimed and award-winning book about what a rare mushroom can teach us about sustaining life on a fragile planet.

Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world—and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: what manages to live in the ruins we have made?

A tale of diversity within our damaged landscapes, The Mushroom at the End of the World follows one of the strangest commodity chains of our times to explore the unexpected corners of capitalism. Here, we witness the varied and peculiar worlds of matsutake commerce: the worlds of Japanese gourmets, capitalist traders, Hmong jungle fighters, industrial forests, Yi Chinese goat herders, Finnish nature guides, and more. These companions also lead us into fungal ecologies and forest histories to better understand the promise of cohabitation in a time of massive human destruction.

By investigating one of the world's most sought-after fungi, The Mushroom at the End of the World presents an original examination into the relation between capitalist destruction and collaborative survival within multispecies landscapes, the prerequisite for continuing life on earth.

Food security can be defined as the perceived availability of a high-quality, domestically-produced staple food supply which will maintain the existing standard of living. This book provides a forum for a panel of distinguished authors to debate such issues as whether or not many developed countries in Asia - such as Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong and Singapore - have legitimate concerns about their food security. They find, controversially, that this issue is of importance to all countries, not just to developing countries lacking the income to acquire an adequate food supply. The authors analyse the forces affecting the demand for, and supply of, staples such as rice, vegetable oils and protein meals. Rice is the most important staple in Asia and so the authors pay particular attention to the effects of rice production strategies and trade policies on food security. They examine the implications of trade liberalisation in the ASEAN free trade area and in East Asia on agricultural trade and food security. They also discuss the implications of China's ongoing economic transition on its intra-provincial and international agricultural trade, and its policy on self-sufficiency. Food Security in Asia provides a timely evaluation of the food security issue which will be of interest to scholars of Asian studies, agricultural economics and international economics.

Nature is all around us, in the beautiful but also in the unappealing and functional, and from the awe-inspiring to the mundane. It is vital that we learn to see the agency of the natural world in all things that make our lives possible, comfortable and profitable. The Ecology of Everyday Things pulls back the veil of our familiarity on a range of 'everyday things' that surround us, and which we perhaps take too much for granted. This key into the magic world of the everyday can enable us to take better account of our common natural inheritance. Professor James Longhurst, Assistant Vice Chancellor, University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) For many people, ecosystems may be a remote concept, yet we eat, drink, breathe and interface with them in every moment of our lives. In this engaging textbook, ecosystems scientist Dr. Mark Everard considers a diversity of 'everyday things', including fascinating facts about their ecological origins: from the tea we drink, to the things we wear, read and enjoy, to the ecology of communities and space flight, and the important roles played by germs and 'unappealing creatures' such as slugs and wasps. In today's society, we are so umbilically connected to ecosystems that we fail to notice them, and this oversight blinds us to the unsustainability of everyday life and the industries and policy environment that supports it. The Ecology of Everyday Things takes the reader on an enlightening, fascinating voyage of discovery, all the while soundly rooted in robust science. It will stimulate awareness about how connected we all are to the natural world and its processes, and how important it is to learn to better treat our environment. Ideal for use in undergraduate- and school-level teaching, it will also interest, educate, engage and enthuse a wide range of less technical audiences.

Global interest in the exploration of the Arctic has been growing rapidly. As the Arctic becomes a global resource base and trade corridor between the continents, it is crucial to identify the dangers that such a boom of extractive industries and transport routes may bring on the people and the environment. International Collaboration, Economic Development, and Sustainability in the Arctic discusses the perspectives and major challenges of the investment collaboration and development and commercial use of trade routes in the Arctic. Featuring research on topics such as agricultural production, environmental resources, and investment collaboration, this book is ideally designed for policymakers, business leaders, and environmental researchers seeking coverage on new practices and solutions in the sphere of achieving sustainability in economic exploration of the Artic region.

This book comprehensively examines the performance of Bangladeshi agriculture in light of the most recent thinking on economic development and the environment. It both analyses the experience during the last five decades and discusses the major issues and challenges with special emphasis on the prospects for sustainable agricultural development in the future. The authors emphasise the importance of distributional aspects of environmental change and development in relation to employment and poverty and also focus on gender issues - often ignored in traditional theory. Many of the issues that arise in Bangladesh in connection with the agricultural-development nexus are not unique to the country. Parallels exist elsewhere in the developing world and as such Bangladesh is useful as an example from which to draw conclusions about much of the developing world. Environment and Agriculture in a Developing Economy will therefore be of particular interest to developmental and environmental economists as well as international organisations and NGOs committed to environment and development issues.