Agricultural Economists in Early Twentieth-Century Italy describes how Italian agricultural economists collected information about the economy of Italy, between the Giolittian and the Fascist era. The book carefully describes three main forms of economic observation: enquiries, statistics, and farm surveys. For each of these forms of observation, the main participants to the investigation are discussed with their respective agendas, alongside the purposes of the investigation, and its practical constraints. This work introduces the concept of "stakeholder statistics", and stresses the two-way relation between the observer and the observed in the co-production of observational knowledge. Practices of observation developed together with agricultural economics as a discipline and a profession. The study of forms of investigation therefore shed light on the constitution of a coherent and self-conscious group of agricultural economists in Italy, and the scientific and methodological alliances they forged with agricultural economists elsewhere in Europe. Thanks to ambitious research projects, Ghino Valenti in the Giolittian period, and Arrigo Serpieri, after the First World War, led the transformation of Italian agricultural economists from agents of estate owners, to social and economic experts in the service of the Italian state. The group of agricultural economists who gathered around Serpieri played an important role in supplying the ideology of the agricultural elites with economic content, especially after the First World War, along lines that resemble the development of agrarian ideologies in other countries of Central Europe. This work discusses how observation entered the political debate on agricultural policies of the Fascist regime, namely the so-called Ruralismo.

From the early colonial period to the close of World War II, life in North America was predominantly agrarian and rural. Archaeological exploration of farmsteads unveils a surprising quantity of data about rural life, consumption patterns, and migrations across the continent. Mark Groover offers both case studies and an overview of current trends in farmstead archaeology in this exciting new work. He also proposes a research design and makes numerous suggestions for evaluating (and re-evaluating) the significance of farmsteads as an archaeological resource. His chronological survey of farmstead sites throughout numerous regions of North America provides fascinating insights to students, cultural resource management professionals, or general readers interested in learning more about what material culture remains can teach us about the American past. Farmstead archaeology is a rapidly expanding component of historical archaeology. This book offers important lessons and information as more sites become victims of ever-accelerating development and urbanization.

China's agriculture and rural society has undergone rapid changes in recent years. Many poorer farmers and younger people have moved to cities, and yet China has an immense challenge to feed a growing and more affluent population. This book provides a 'bottom-up view' of China's agriculture, showing how the many millions of Chinese peasants make a living. It presents a vivid description of the mechanisms used by rural households to defend and sustain their livelihoods, increase their agricultural production and improve the quality of their lives. The authors examine the newly emerging trajectories of entrepreneurial and capitalist farming and assess whether such alternatives will be able to meet the enormous social, economic and environmental challenges that China faces. The book also explores the paradigm that has underpinned the organisation and development of China's agriculture from ancient times to the present day. This shows the importance of balancing in the Chinese model as compared to the one-sided imposition of continual modernization in the western model. It is argued that such balancing is at the core of the current Sannong policy, referring to the three ruralities of food sovereignty, wellbeing for peasant households and an attractive countryside.

Gain state-of-the-art knowledge of new research and developments in transgenic technology! Genetically Modified Crops: Their Development, Uses, and Risks provides groundbreaking information on the integration of foreign DNA into the nucleus of a plant cell to produce a positive transformation. This volume details methods of gene delivery, laboratory tools and techniques to increase success rates, and the benefits, risks, and limitations of these methods. Authors at the forefront of this developing technology provide a comprehensive overview of transgenic crops and vital research on specific plant genera that have undergone transgenic transformation. Agricultural biotechnology has become a national and necessary mainstay of farming and food production, and this book is an important scientific tool to keep you informed of the latest protocols of genetic transformation. This book also outlines the goals that scientists are striving to reach, such as targeted gene expression where the gene only expresses itself at a certain time in the plant's life cycle, but disappears before human consumption. One of the greatest concerns is maintaining the welfare of the consumer, and in this volume the authors repeatedly discuss their findings in terms of safety for human consumption. With Genetically Modified Crops: Their Development, Uses, and Risks, you'll explore: the history of crop transformation and the techniques most commonly used for gene delivery, including biolistic bombardment and Agrobacterium-mediated transformation various methods of determining successful gene transfer in putative transgenic plants, such as blotting, functional assaying, and progeny testing the utilization of recombinase-directed plant transformation to improve faithful and consistent gene delivery and transference the successful reproduction of an insecticidal protein from chicken eggs in transgenic cornand its benefits to society the current status of risk assessment and examples of incidents that have raised the level of concern about genetically modified plants outside the lab This book also contains several chapters about current methods of transformation involving specific crops such as: cotton wheat alfalfa sorghum rice and more! Genetically Modified Crops: Their Development, Uses, and Risks is an indispensable guidebook for agronomists, plant and molecular geneticists, and students in agronomy, genetics, entomology, horticulture, and plant pathology. This manual is also useful to concerned consumers who wish to know the latest scientific findings on genetically modified crops. Complete with references, figures, and photographs, this book is a must-read to keep up to date with science and technology.

What can you do to improve your health and at the same time improve the health of our home planet? Do you want to be a healthier and more sustainable consumer? In this straightforward, easy-to-understand and entertaining book, dietitian and environmentalist Dr. Dana Ellis Hunnes outlines the actions we can all take. Many people feel overwhelmed by the scope of climate change and believe that only large, sweeping changes will make any difference. Yet the choices we make every day can have effects on climate change, the oceans, the land, and other species. This book outlines the problems we are facing, and then presents ideas or 'recipes' to empower us, to help us all make a difference. Recipe For Survival provides the guidance that you can use right now to improve your health, your family's health, and the health of the environment simultaneously.

This compelling book explores the intimate connections between people and plants, agriculture and cooking, and the practical work of building local food networks and transnational social movements. Lauren E. Baker uses corn and maize to consider central debates about food security and food sovereignty, biodiversity and biotechnology, culture and nature, as well as globalization and local responses, in Mexico and beyond. For the author, corn symbolizes the commoditization of agriculture and the cultural, spiritual, ecological and economic separation of people from growing, cooking, and sharing food. Conversely, maize represents emerging food movements that address contemporary health, environmental, and economic imperatives while rooted in agricultural and culinary traditions. The meeting of corn and maize reveals the challenge of, and possibilities for, reclaiming food from its commodity status in the global context of financial turmoil, food crises, and climate change.

In 1985, the U.S. Congress confronted the difficult and complex task of developing a 5-year omnibus legislation allowing for lower commodity prices. But, policies predicated on the concept of agriculture as a unique sector of the economy became less and less appropriate to the highly interdependent, open agricultural economy throughout the 1980s. First published in 1985, this collection of 16 papers and related discussions contained in these proceedings is an important contribution toward understanding the issues, options, and dilemmas in U.S. agricultural policy. This is an ideal title for students interested in environmental studies, agriculture, and national policy.

This book, first published in 1988, provides a comprehensive, integrated body of knowledge concerning agricultural productivity research, highlighting both its strengths and limitations. This book will be of value to scholars and research leaders for the knowledge it conveys of future productivity research, and will also be of interest to students of environmental studies.

Community seed banks first appeared towards the end of the 1980s, established with the support of international and national non-governmental organizations. This book is the first to provide a global review of their development and includes a wide range of case studies. Countries that pioneered various types of community seed banks include Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Nepal, Nicaragua, the Philippines and Zimbabwe. In the North, a particular type of community seed bank emerged known as a seed-savers network. Such networks were first established in Australia, Canada, the UK and the USA before spreading to other countries. Over time, the number and diversity of seed banks has grown. In Nepal, for example, there are now more than 100 self-described community seed banks whose functions range from pure conservation to commercial seed production. In Brazil, community seed banks operate in various regions of the country. Surprisingly, despite 25 years of history and the rapid growth in number, organizational diversity and geographical coverage of community seed banks, recognition of their roles and contributions has remained scanty. The book reviews their history, evolution, experiences, successes and failures (and reasons why), challenges and prospects. It fills a significant gap in the literature on agricultural biodiversity and conservation, and their contribution to food sovereignty and security.

First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The field of medicinal/aromatic plant breeding is growing and changing?this resource will help you stay up to date!
In this essential book, researchers from large and small laboratories and institutions throughout Europe and the Mediterranean region explore recent developments in the selection and breeding of aromatic and medicinal plants. They take varied approaches?from traditional breeding to the use of molecular markers?and complement them with up-to-date information on biodiversity and resource conservation.
"From the editors: ?It is widely recognized that a strategy of conservation through use, ? by which plant collection via wild harvesting is replaced by controlled cultivation, is the best way forward if we are to balance human demands with the necessary conservation of the biodiversity represented by these species. That provides one major driving force for research in this field. Another concerns the very real need for improving the quality control of products on the market, both to satisfy consumer demand and to conform with the (justifiably) increasing requirements for standardization and precise identification of the composition of the plant materials being sold for human use. We hope that this volume will give readers a taste of the exciting developments in the field.?"
Breeding Research on Aromatic and Medicinal Plants examines: breeding for resistance and abiotic factors manipulating natural product accumulation through genetic engineering biochemical and molecular regulation of essential oil accumulation economic and legal considerations that breeders will encounter the ethical aspects of breeding these plants

The offer of free farmland after World War II may not have sparked the same stampede that it did in frontier days, but, as Brian Cannon shows in this path-breaking study, postwar homesteading continued to shape the modern West in important ways.

Between 1946 and 1966, the Bureau of Reclamation opened up over 3,000 farms on irrigated public lands in the West to returning servicemen. Although involving fewer people than those flocking to western cities, this mini-land rush represents an important continuity in western tradition through the cultivation of values-hard work, security, independence, family stability-long associated with frontier life. Cannon examines these new agricultural settlements and the values they reflected and reinforced, following them through the end of the twentieth century and exploring specific key homesteading and federal reclamation projects.

Cannon describes how the Bureau of Reclamation used lotteries to make available free land that had previously been part of Indian reservations, used for Japanese internment, or abandoned by unsuccessful settlers. He then traces the new homesteaders' experiences in establishing a farm, "proving up," and gaining title to the land, contrasting the realities of modern homesteading with iconic views of the frontier.

Combining archival research with oral history, Cannon opens up genuinely human vistas in the homesteading process. He chronicles the hard life that many of the settlers faced and details wrangling over water policy-which both influenced and was influenced by westerners' shifting perception of the frontier-as well as the impact of shifting values and priorities on agricultural communities. Examining a number of homesteading efforts, he focuses particularly on the failed Riverton Project in central Wyoming, where after fifteen years a group of settlers petitioned Congress for restitution; and the Klamath Project in northern California, where attempts to open new homesteads aroused nationwide opposition from wildlife and sportsmen's organizations.

Cannon concludes by examining the continued appeal of homesteading even in the twenty-first century, as individuals seeking to reorient their lives--and local governments seeking to repopulate their districts--have reinvented homesteading. "Reopening the Frontier" opens up a little-studied aspect of modern western history to show that the pioneer spirit lives on.

This comprehensive text provides a concise overview of environmental problems caused by agriculture, (such as pesticide pollution and increased nitrate levels) and offers practical solutions to them. It is well illustrated and contains a fully-referenced introduction to the main contemporary agricultural pollution issues in the UK. It will help provide clear, scientific and technical understanding of the most important sources of agricultural pollution.

The nine essays presented by John R. Wunder collectively expose the domestic and technological details of American pioneer life on the High Plains. The essays, each written by a leading authority in the field, examine such topics as early ranching and farming in the Rio Grande Valley and the Staked Plains; the impact on Native American and settler women of life on the agricultural frontier; the response to perceived threats by agriculturalists after the Civil War; and the agriculturalists' entry into the twentieth century via their response to cultural change. The final chapter, a speech made in 1890 by a Scottish traveller, contains a contemporary observation of the real and mythical qualities of life on the frontier.

By 2050, the world's population is estimated to grow to 10 billion. To feed everyone, we will have to double our food production, to produce more food in the next 40 years than in the whole of the last 6,000. Changing the Food Game shows how our unsustainable food production system cannot support this growth. In this prescient book, Lucas Simons argues that the biggest challenge for our generation can only be solved by effective market transformation to achieve sustainable agriculture and food production. Lucas Simons explains clearly how we have created a production and trading system that is inherently unsustainable. But he also demonstrates that we have reason to be hopeful - from a sustainability race in the cocoa industry to examples of market transformation taking place in palm oil, timber, and sugarcane production. He also poses the question: where next? Provocative and eye-opening, Changing the Food Game uncovers the real story of how our food makes it on to our plates and presents a game-changing solution to revolutionize the industry.

The revised edition of the bestselling textbook, covering both classical and molecular plant breeding Principles of Plant Genetics and Breeding integrates theory and practice to provide an insightful examination of the fundamental principles and advanced techniques of modern plant breeding. Combining both classical and molecular tools, this comprehensive textbook describes the multidisciplinary strategies used to produce new varieties of crops and plants, particularly in response to the increasing demands to of growing populations. Illustrated chapters cover a wide range of topics, including plant reproductive systems, germplasm for breeding, molecular breeding, the common objectives of plant breeders, marketing and societal issues, and more. Now in its third edition, this essential textbook contains extensively revised content that reflects recent advances and current practices. Substantial updates have been made to its molecular genetics and breeding sections, including discussions of new breeding techniques such as zinc finger nuclease, oligonucleotide directed mutagenesis, RNA-dependent DNA methylation, reverse breeding, genome editing, and others. A new table enables efficient comparison of an expanded list of molecular markers, including Allozyme, RFLPs, RAPD, SSR, ISSR, DAMD, AFLP, SNPs and ESTs. Also, new and updated "Industry Highlights" sections provide examples of the practical application of plant breeding methods to real-world problems. This new edition: Organizes topics to reflect the stages of an actual breeding project Incorporates the most recent technologies in the field, such as CRSPR genome edition and grafting on GM stock Includes numerous illustrations and end-of-chapter self-assessment questions, key references, suggested readings, and links to relevant websites Features a companion website containing additional artwork and instructor resources Principles of Plant Genetics and Breeding offers researchers and professionals an invaluable resource and remains the ideal textbook for advanced undergraduates and graduates in plant science, particularly those studying plant breeding, biotechnology, and genetics.

This book is one of a series of more than 20 volumes resulting from the World Archaeological Congress, September 1986, attempting to bring together not only archaeologists and anthropologists from many parts of the world, as well as academics from contingent disciplines, but also non-academics from a wide range of cultural backgrounds. This volume develops a new approach to plant exploitation and early agriculture in a worldwide comparative context. It modifies the conceptual dichotomy between "hunter-gatherers" and "farmers," viewing human exploitation of plant resources as a global evolutionary process which incorporated the beginnings of cultivation and crop domestication. The studies throughout the book come from a worldwide range of geographical contexts, from the Andes to China and from Australia to the Upper Mid-West of North America. This work is of interest to anthropologists, archaeologists, botanists and geographers. Originally published 1989.

Farming for Health describes the use of farms, farm animals, plants and landscapes as a base for promoting human mental and physical health and social well-being. The book offers an overview of the development of Farming for Health initiatives across Europe, resulting from changing paradigms in health care and the demand for new social and financial activities in agriculture and rural areas. The contributors are drawn from a range of countries and disciplines.

This book contains fuller versions of the papers and posters presented in the Knowledge and Technology Transfer and Teaching Plant Pathology sessions at the 9th International Congress of Plant Pathology held in Turin, Italy in 2008. Communication is an essential area for plant pathologists and it is not just the publication of results in the scientific press that is important. In a world where there is a major shortage of food and where a significant amount of it is destroyed by pests and diseases before it ever reaches the consumer, it is important to provide support to those who produce the food in order to reduce the losses. Reducing crop losses not only has an impact on health, but also wealth and, therefore, the ability to survive. With an ever-increasing demand on food supplies due to increases in population, and changes in life-style associated with rising incomes in certain parts of the world, plant pathologists have a pivotal role to play in contributing to global food security. Aspects of crop protection have lost favour with the general public because of concerns about environmental pollution and genetic modification of crops. This has had a 'knock on' effect in the recruitment and training of crop protectionist in g- eral and a concomitant impact on courses available at universities. However, it has never been more important to train people with good communication skills and an ability to solve problems to tackle the complexities of pathogen and plant interactions.

Centuries of colonization and other factors have disrupted indigenous communities' ability to control their own food systems. This volume explores the meaning and importance of food sovereignty for Native peoples in the United States, and asks whether and how it might be achieved and sustained. Unprecedented in its focus and scope, this collection addresses nearly every aspect of indigenous food sovereignty, from revitalizing ancestral gardens and traditional ways of hunting, gathering, and seed saving to the difficult realities of racism, treaty abrogation, tribal sociopolitical factionalism, and the entrenched beliefs that processed foods are superior to traditional tribal fare. The contributors include scholar-activists in the fields of ethnobotany, history, anthropology, nutrition, insect ecology, biology, marine environmentalism, and federal Indian law, as well as indigenous seed savers and keepers, cooks, farmers, spearfishers, and community activists. After identifying the challenges involved in revitalizing and maintaining traditional food systems, these writers offer advice and encouragement to those concerned about tribal health, environmental destruction, loss of species habitat, and governmental food control.

Philosophy of Science: A Unified Approach combines a general introduction to philosophy of science with an integrated survey of all its important subfields. As the book's subtitle suggests, this excellent overview is guided methodologically by "a unified approach" to philosophy of science: behind the diversity of scientific fields one can recognize a methodological unity of the sciences. This unity is worked out in this book, revealing all the while important differences between subject areas. Structurally, this comprehensive book offers a two-part approach, which makes it an excellent introduction for students new to the field and a useful resource for more advanced students. Each chapter is divided into two sections. The first section assumes no foreknowledge of the subject introduced, and the second section builds upon the first by bringing into the conversation more advanced, complementary topics. Definitions, key propositions, examples and figures overview all of the core material. At the end of every chapter there are selected readings and exercises (with solutions at the end of the book). The book also includes a comprehensive bibliography and an index.

Farmers held a pivotal role in the capitalist agriculture that emerged in England in the eighteenth century, yet they have attracted little attention from rural historians. Farmers made agriculture happen. They brought together the capital and the technical and management skills which allowed food to be produced. It was they - and not landowners - who employed and supervised labour. They accepted the risk inherent in agriculture, paying largely fixed rents out of fluctuating and uncertain incomes. They are the rural equivalent of the small businessman with his own firm, employing people and producing for markets, sometimes distant ones. Our ignorance of the farmer might be justified by the claim that they are ill-documented, but in fact farmers were normally literate and kept records - day books, journals, accounts. This volume goes some way to counter the claim that a history of the farmer cannot be written by showing the range of materials available and the diversity of approaches which can be employed to study the activities and actions of individual farmers from the sixteenth century onwards. Farm records offer invaluable insights into the farming economy which are available nowhere else. In this volume accounts are used in a variety of ways - as the means to access single farms, but also in gross, as a national sample of accounts, to reveal regional variation over time. For the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries the range of sources available increases enormously and farmers - indeed farmer's wives too - emerge as articulate commentators on their own position, using correspondence to outline their difficulties in the First World War. Some even developed second careers as newspaper columnists and journalists. This book focuses attention back on the farmer and, it is hoped, will help to restore farmers to their rightful position in history as rural entrepreneurs.

The book centres around an analysis of the options for the agronomic development of semiarid regions with winter rains (i.e. Mediterranean regions). Data obtained in the northern Negev desert in Israel served as a starting point. On the basis of these data crop and sheep husbandry systems were designed and integrated into agro-pastoral systems in which small-grain crops act as a buffer for feed production. These systems serves as a basis for rational planning of regional agricultural development under alternative development objectives. In analyzing the possibilities a three-step approach was developed: first the feasibility and robustness of selected innovative techniques at the farm level were investigated in relation to variability in weather and prices, then a matrix of production techniques for a region was formulated in terms of their physical imputs and outputs, and finally this matrix was embedded into a dynamic multiple-goal linear programming model. In comparing results for different goals, the consequencess for goal achievement and desired production techniques can be made explicit, and in this way the book can be a guide for actual development planning in semiarid regions.