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Books > Professional & Technical > Agriculture & farming > General
Developing countries as the nations of Indian subcontinent are
experiencing big-bangs regarding their economic, agricultural and
industrial development. The sole aim of present mechanized and
advanced agricultural practices is to produce enhanced grain yield
to satiate the hunger of burgeoning population. Thus the present
scenario demands the use of chemical fertilizers and other
agrochemicals. However the production cost of these chemical
products is to high as it increases pressure on the fossils fuel
reserves of the country. Bioinoculants are the culture
concoctions/live microbial isolates that are presently the most
ecologically feasible and economically sound example of practical
reproduction of lab experimentation for the help of modern day
farmeBroadly, bioinoculants include biofertilzers, biopesticides
and organic decomposers. Biofertilizers are live cells of
beneficial microbial isolates that provide necessary nutrients
nitrogen, phosphorous etc, excrete growth promoting compounds and
provide resistance to a variety of diseases that culminates to
enhanced yield and production. While biopesticides are live
microbial isolates or their metabolic products that eradicate/kill
known insects/pests of crops. Among commercialized biopesticides Bt
cotton emerged as the first brand ambassador of modern day
pesticides. The third component of bioinoculants are the organic
decomposers that include certain fungal species, bacterial genera
and actinomycetes that hasten decomposition of organic compounds
and make available nutrients held as organic matter.
Earth functions as a complex system and existing infrastructure and
methodologies are inadequate for the community to address many
problems of this system. It requires an integrated and innovative
approach to analyse, model and develop extensive and diverse data
sets for the solution of these problems. Geoinformatics, which is
the synergy of multiple disciplines, namely, earth sciences, GIS,
remote sensing, GPS, photogrammetry and cartography, is developing
fast in the areas where the data are identified by their locations.
Currently, there is a chaotic distribution of available data sets,
lack of documentation about them and the methodologies, lack of
easy-to-access, tolls, computer modeling etc. which pose the major
obstacles for the earth scientist in trying to work out solutions.
The authors have tried to remove these hurdles by bringing together
relevant informations and techniques as well as the recent advances
in these fields. This book presents a comprehensive account of
various topics related to the applications of geoinformatics which
are highly diversified and include space and environmental
monitoring, watershed management, water resources and management,
productivity enhancement in agro-ecosystems, resource information
systems, precision farming, monitoring of glaciers and lakes,
geospatial techniques and livelihood improvement using GIS.
Fresh from receiving a doctorate from Cornell University in 1933,
but unable to find work, Charles M. Wiltse joined his parents on
the small farm they had recently purchased in southern Ohio. There,
the Wiltses scratched out a living selling eggs, corn, and other
farm goods at prices that were barely enough to keep the farm
intact.
In wry and often affecting prose, Wiltse recorded a year in the
life of this quintessentially American place during the Great
Depression. He describes the family's daily routine, occasional
light moments, and their ongoing frustrations, small and
large--from a neighbor's hog that continually broke into the
cornfields to the ongoing struggle with their finances. Franklin
Roosevelt's New Deal had little to offer small farmers, and despite
repeated requests, the family could not secure loans from local
banks to help them through the hard economic times. Wiltse spoke
the bitter truth when he told his diary, "We are not a lucky
family." In this he represented millions of others caught in the
maw of a national disaster.
The diary is introduced and edited by Michael J. Birkner, Wiltse's
former colleague at the Papers of Daniel Webster Project at
Dartmouth College, and coeditor, with Wiltse, of the final volume
of Webster's correspondence.
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.
This book describes the alarming condition of agriculture in the
Anthropocene, when the ethical conception of agriculture as a
service of common utility for both society and environment has
progressively been marginalized. The ethical utility of agriculture
has been sidetracked with the increasing industrialisation of
society, the involvement of agriculture in the business-as-usual
economy, and the consequential environmental and societal impacts
it has had. Thus, re-establishing a meaningful bridge between
ethics and agriculture is necessary. A relatively new science
(ecology) with both a new epistemological tool (that of the
ecosystem concept), and a unique narrative of sustainable
development, can help bridge this gap. This book focuses on ethics
as a lever for raising scientific, technical, social, economic and
political solutions to adopt in agriculture as a model of symbiotic
relationships between man and nature. It provides a detailed
discussion of the ecological intensification practices in order to
maximize ecological and ethical services, wherein agroecosystems
will follow.
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