Land management issues, such as mapping tree species, recognizing invasive plants, and identifying key geologic features, require an understanding of complex technical issues before the best decisions can be made. Hyperspectral remote sensing is one the technologies that can help with reliable detection and identification. Presenting the fundamentals of remote sensing at an introductory level, Hyperspectral Remote Sensing: Principles and Applications explores all major aspects of hyperspectral image acquisition, exploitation, interpretation, and applications. The book begins with several chapters on the basic concepts and underlying principles of remote sensing images. It introduces spectral radiometry concepts, such as radiance, irradiance, flux, and blackbody radiation; covers imaging spectrometers, examining spectral range, full width half maximum (FWHM), resolution, sampling, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and multispectral and hyperspectral sensor systems; and addresses atmospheric interactions. The book then discusses information extraction, with chapters covering the underlying physics principles that lead to the creation of an image and the interpretation of the image's information. The final chapters describe case studies that illustrate the use of hyperspectral remote sensing in agriculture, environmental monitoring, forestry, and geology. After reading this book, you will have a better understanding of how to evaluate different approaches to hyperspectral analyses and to determine which approaches will work for your applications.

As in many other sectors, in agribusiness major changes are taking place. On the demand side, consumers are changing lifestyles, eating and shopping habits, and increasingly are demanding more accommodation of these needs in the supermarket. With regard to the supply: the traditional distribution channel dominators - manufacturers of branded consumer products - are trying hard to defend their positions against retailers, who gather and use information about the consumer to streamline their enterprises and strengthen their ties with the consumer. The agricultural producers, meanwhile, face increased regulations with regard to food additives, pesticides, and herbicides. Pressures rise as their business becomes more specialized and capital-intensive than that of their predecessors. Finally, the larger political climate is not so favorable to agriculture, which now has to compete in the global market without significant government support. This title describes and interprets changes in the domain of agriculture and food. The contributors develop the theme of taking an interdisciplinary approach to coping with these changes, using concepts and methods developed in general marketing, which are adapted so as to apply to the particular characteristics of the food and agriculture sector. This book is published to honor the distinguished career of Professor Mathew T.G. Meulenberg from Wageningen Agricultural University, on the occasion of his retirement in September 1996. As a scientist, teacher, and advisor to the agribusiness and the government, Professor Meulenberg has made an important contribution to the development of marketing, inside and outside the domain of agriculture.

The "Hikayat Banjar," a native court chronicle from Borneo, characterizes the irresistibility of natural resource wealth to outsiders as "the banana tree at the gate." Michael R. Dove employs this phrase as a root metaphor to frame the history of resource relations between the indigenous peoples of Borneo and the world system. In analyzing production and trade in forest products, pepper, and especially natural rubber, Dove shows that the involvement of Borneo's native peoples in commodity production for global markets is ancient and highly successful and that processes of globalization began millennia ago. Dove's analysis replaces the image of the isolated tropical forest community that needs to be helped into the global system with the reality of communities that have been so successful and competitive that they have had to fight political elites to keep from being forced out.

Linking traditional and local products to a specific area is increasingly felt as a necessity in a globalised market, and Geographical Indications (GIs) are emerging as a multifunctional tool capable of performing this and many other functions. This book analyses the evolving nature of EU sui generis GIs by focusing on their key element, the origin link, and concludes that the history of the product in the broad sense has become a major factor to prove the link between a good and a specific place. For the first time, this area of Intellectual Property Law is investigated from three different, although interrelated, perspectives: the history and comparative assessment of the systems of protection of Indications of Geographical Origin adopted in the European jurisdictions from the beginning of the 20th century; the empirical analysis of the trends emerging from the practice of EUGIs; and the policy debates surrounding them and their importance for the fulfilment of the general goals of the EU Common Agricultural Policy. The result is an innovative and rounded analysis of the very nature of the EU Law of GIs that, starting from its past, investigates the present and the likely future of this Intellectual Property Right. This book provides an interesting and innovative contribution to the field and will be of interest to GI scholars and Intellectual Property students, as well as anyone willing to gain a better understanding of this compelling area of law.

Knowledge generation and transfer mechanisms are being transformed in important and controversial ways. Investment in research and development has increased in response to recognition that scientific productivity is tightly connected to economic dynamism. Patent protection has been expanded in order to stimulate higher levels of private investment. Intellectual property rights held by public organizations and researchers are now increasingly transferred to private organizations to accelerate the diffusion and enhance the value of knowledge produced by public agencies and universities. Additionally, new institutions such as university offices of technology transfer, venture capital markets, and a variety of consortia in knowledge-intensive industries are being established throughout the United States and in other parts of the world. These changes have led to a repositioning of the state in systems of innovation and an increase in the proprietary character of technical information. The purpose of this book is to review and analyze i) contemporary transitions in agricultural knowledge generation and extension arrangements from an empirical perspective, and ii) emerging and contradictory perspectives as to how knowledge systems can be assessed effectively. The authors aim to provide the reader with a better understanding of the implications of new biotechnologies and new intellectual property rights regimes on public-private relations in science, the extent to which benefits from scientific knowledge are being appropriated by private sector actors, the diversity and possible outcomes of privatization initiatives in extension, and prospects for public goods production and ecological sustainability given contemporary trends. The book presents contrasting views on the degree of complementarity and substitution between private and public sector investments in research and extension. Recognizing that the labels `public' and `private' are incomplete and at times misleading descriptions of the structure and function of coordinating bodies in social systems, the analyses highlight ways in which public and private spaces and modes of functioning combine. In addition to illustrating a broad range of analytic methodologies useful for studying organizational questions in knowledge systems, the authors identify the implications of a range of past and potential institutional innovations.

Why have food crises seemingly become more frequent in recent years, compared to the last few decades? This book examines an array of different issues and distortions that are causing food supply chain dysfunction in many countries, particularly for staple non-perishable foods such as grains, oilseeds, pulses and sugar. It outlines the underlying changes that are currently occurring, which will have an influence on the direction of future food supply chains, and provides some solutions to current food security problems. Based on an analysis of total regulation in the 1950s-60s through to deregulation during the 1980-90s, as well as post-deregulation, it focuses on liberal trade and deregulation as a more successful solution to creating efficiencies in food supply chains and distribution. The author highlights a common thread of either farmers using government for vested-interest intervention, or autocratic governments seeking market and supply-chain power.

The book examines the role of government after 70 years of food supply chain intervention. It discusses the role of commercial trade markets and cluster industries and how these can quickly disintegrate when price distortions occur. The author studies both food importing and exporting countries and concludes that comingled commoditization of food has led to increased hoarding, corruption, and dependence on food aid. He argues that a competitive food supply chain that has minimum intervention is more likely to provide future food security. In conclusion the book emphasizes that adequate rewards, competition, and striving for supply chain efficiencies are the essences of sustainable food security.

This book presents state-of-the-art perspectives on the Blue Economy. It applies important geographical and sustainability transitions perspectives and underscores how Blue Economy dynamics are situated in regional contexts and shaped by the people who live there. The book highlights the Blue Economy concept as a potential driver of regionally sensitive, ecologically embedded, and community-focused sustainability. The scope for Blue Economy to form a core "cog" in our low-carbon future is obvious, from the potential for renewable energy production and coastal resilience building to possibilities for sustainable food production and the delivery of economic opportunities for peripheral communities. However, fundamental questions remain on how to meaningfully deliver these promises, such as how to avoid embedding a model of damaging extractivism, as per the terrestrial economy, and how to deliver on the key social sustainability principles of human well-being, equity, and justice when planning and developing blue economies. As the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development opens, this book provides a timely reminder of the richness, diversity, and potential of coastal and marine spaces. It advances geographical and transdisciplinary understandings of the Blue Economy and sets a baseline for continued scholarly engagement with the Blue Economy from a variety of perspectives. This timely contribution will be of interest to policy makers, academics, industry leaders, decision makers, and stakeholders working in or connected to the Blue Economy Sphere and working in the fields of Economic Geography, Regional Development, Public Policy and Planning, Environmental Studies, and Coastal Zone Management.

- draws on the expertise of marine researchers from across the natural and social sciences - examines how the tools of transdisciplinarity can be used to return us to a sustainable co-existence with the ocean - draws on case studies from the nexus of the research and practices of engagement with a variety of stakeholder groups around the globe - will be of great interest to students and scholars studying marine science and ocean research across the natural and social sciences - will also be of interest to those looking to build a greater understanding of transdisciplinary research and knowledge co-production

Understanding of the dynamics of plant nutrients in the soil provides scientific basis for efficient nutrient management. Soil organic matter not only provides the nutrients required by the crop but also improve the biological and physical properties of the soil. This book collects and discusses information on production and management of organic manures, biofertilizers, integrated nutrient management in cropping systems and nutrient management in problematic soils. Print and electronic editions not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bhutan).

Debate about how best to ensure the preservation of agricultural biodiversity is caught in a counter-productive polemic between proponents and critics of market-based instruments and agricultural modernisation. This book argues that neither position does justice to the range of strategies that farmers use to manage agrobiodiversity and other livelihood assets as they adapt to changing social, economic, and environmental circumstances. Chapters explore relationships between the exploitation and conservation of agricultural biodiversity and the livelihoods of agricultural communities, and evaluate the capacity of national and multilateral institutions and policy settings to support the protection and capture by communities of agrobiodiversity values. The place of ecosystem services in valuing biodiversity in the marketplace is emphasized. A number of authors assess the potential for market-based instruments and initiatives to encourage the protection of biodiversity, while others compare agrobiodiversity/community relationships, and the effectiveness of instruments designed to enhance these, across international boundaries. The book takes a comparative approach, drawing on empirical case studies from across the developed and developing worlds. In doing so, the book does not simply point to similarities and differences in the experience of rural communities. It also shows how global trade and multilateral institutions bring these otherwise disparate communities together in networks that exploit and/or preserve agrobiodiversity and other resources.

This book chronicles the most essential causes and implications of these trends, which have expanded international food assistance well beyond the simple shipment of donated food aid commodities. We pay particular attention to how these trends shape and are shaped by European Union (EU) and United States (U.S.) food assistance policy and practice, and highlight the principles to which donors can adhere to move international food assistance forward.

Freer Trade, Sustainability, and the Primary Production Sector in the Southern European Union is the first full-scale academic work to cap ture the primary production sector policy aspects of trade liberaliza tion and sustainability with a detailed focus on a typical southern EU country, Greece. Many efforts were pooled together in making this book. In May 1996 the Department of Economics of the University of Crete organ ized an international conference on European Agriculture in the light of the recent WTO agreement and the need for sustainable develop ment. The conference was sponsored by the European Commission (DG XII, contract no ENV4-CT-96-6514), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC, contract no L320263049), the Hellenic Ministries for Agriculture and for the Environment, and the University of Crete. While summarizing the conclusions of the conference, sev eral speakers felt that the issues relating to the Southern EU would de serve separate coverage. The conference directors judged that cover age of the issues for a single Southern EU country might have an ad vantage, regarding detail, over a cross country analysis which would certainly be welcome at a later stage. Responding to this call, the University of Crete generously reallo cated all of its infra-structural costs covered by DG XII, ESRC, and the other sponsors above, in the form of a new grant to host a follow-up conference aiming to explore the issues for Greece."

- Provides an up to date and comprehensive introduction to forest policy and governance in the US - Written in an accessible and engaging tone, with a strong emphasis on real-world case studies - Appropriate for undergraduate and postgraduate students on forestry, natural resources and environmental governance courses, as well as professionals working in the forestry industry

This book examines the effects of high and volatile food prices during 2007-08 on low-income farmers and consumers in developing, transition, and industrialized countries. Previous studies of this crisis have mostly used models to estimate the likely impacts. This volume includes actual evidence from the field as to how higher prices affected access to food and farm income among poor people. In addition to country and regional case studies, the book presents discussions of cross-cutting themes, including gender, risk management, violence, the importance of subsistence farming as a coping strategy, and the role of governments and markets in addressing higher prices.

With 2011 witnessing an unprecedentedly high level of food prices, the findings and policy recommendations presented here should prove useful to both scholars and policy makers in understanding the causes and consequences, as well as the policies needed to ensure food security in light of the skyrocketing cost of food.

This book was published as a special double issue of Development in Practice.

The papers in this book study economic development from the perspective of social justice and economic efficiency; exploring the role of land tenure and productivity in Indian agriculture. Junankar discusses the efficiency of small farms versus large farms, and the role of share-cropping tenancy.

In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in grain-based fuel ethanol production in North America and around the world. Whether such production will result in a net energy gain or whether this is sustainable in the long term is under debate, but undoubtedly millions of tons of non-fermented residues are now produced annually for global trade in the form of distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS). Consequently, in a short period of time a tremendous amount of research has been conducted to determine the suitability of ethanol coproducts for various end uses. Distillers Grains: Production, Properties and Utilization is the first book of its kind to provide in-depth, and up-to-date coverage of Historical and current status of the fuel ethanol industry in the U.S. Processing methods, scientific principles, and innovations for making fuel ethanol using grains as feedstock Physical and chemical properties of DDGS, assay methodologies for compositional analyses, and mycotoxin occurrence in DDGS Changes during processing (from grains to DDGS) and analysis of factors causing variations in compositional, nutritional, and physical values Various traditional, new, and emerging uses for DDGS (including feed for cattle, swine, poultry, fish, and other animals, feedstocks for cellulosic ethanol, biodiesel, and other bioenergy production, and substrates for food and industrial uses) Appealing to all who have an interest in fuel ethanol production, distillers grains, and their uses, this comprehensive reference sharpens the readers' understanding of distillers grains and will promote better utilization of ethanol coproducts. Animal and food scientists, feed and food technologists, ethanol plant managers and technicians, nutritionists, academic and governmental professionals, and college students will find the book most useful.

Animal agriculture is a major industry in the United States and around the world. Like all major industries, animal operations generate a significant amount of waste by-products, by-products which represent serious potential environmental pollutants. This work is an attempt to help those concerned with animal waste management--agricultural economists and policy-makers, environmental and public health officers, farmers, and so on--deal with this critical issue by addressing the problems generated by animal waste within a comprehensive management approach. As animal production worldwide has taken on the characteristics of an industrial operation, the implications of large quantities of waste--disposal and/or refuse--must be analyzed in environmental, economic, and public health terms. This work provides such an analysis.

There is widespread concern amongst consumers about the safety and acceptability of food, and there are clearly communication gaps between consumers, many food professionals and food industry. This book offers accounts of the two-way nature of this difficult communication process and steps that can be made to bridge these communication gaps in a variety of social and cultural environments. Individual chapters of the book analyze the roles of science, culture, and risk perception, and of mass media and attitudes towards eating. An additional section describes the interface between scientists and lay people with regard to policy-making and agricultural practice.

As in many developing countries, the prospects for land reform in Iran seemed promising. It was expected to improve rural poverty and stimulate agricultural development by replacing the traditional landlord-peasant system with more peasant-biased, modern farming. This book assesses the economic consequences of land reform, focusing particularly on its effect on the living standards of the rural poor. Amid describes a ?biomodal? system of large and small farms that emerged after the reform. Large farms, with government support, modernized and grew more profitable cash crops, whereas small farms found difficulty in obtaining credit and continued to rely on traditional techniques and staple food crops. Land reform was not, the author argues a success for the majority of the Iranian rural population who experienced virtually no improvement in living standards and a growth of rural inequality as a result.

This book addresses key questions on biofuels within agrarian political economy, political sociology and political ecology. Contributions are based on fresh empirical materials from different parts of the world. The book starts with four key questions in agrarian political economy: Who owns what? Who does what? Who gets what? And what do they do with the surplus wealth? It also addresses the emergent social and political relations in the biofuel complex and, given the impacts on natural resources and sustainability, engages with questions about people-environment interactions. At the same time, the book is concerned with the politics of representation, that is, what are the discursive frames through which biofuels are promoted and/or opposed?

The book analyses the institutional structures, and cultures of energy consumption on which a biofuels complex depends, and the alternative political and ecological visions emerging that call the biofuels complex into question. Across sixteen chapters presenting material from five regions across the North-South divide and focusing on fourteen countries including Brazil, Indonesia, India, USA and Germany, these topics are addressed within the following themes: global (re)configurations; agro-ecological visions; conflicts, resistances and diverse outcomes; state, capital and society relations; mobilising opposition, creating alternatives; and change and continuity.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Peasant Studies.

Salinization of soils is a major threat to irrigated agriculture and counteracts the targets of costly public infrastructure investments. In this study, salinization is regarded as the outcome of an institutional arrangement which impedes the effective implementation of well-known and well-established control measures be they technical, managerial or economic. In public irrigation systems neither the management units nor the farmers are offered any incentives towards the control of high groundwater levels and salinization if the management units are embedded in a highly centralized non-market institutional setting. The author answers the question under which conditions management units and irrigators are active in halting and reversing the process of salinization.