All civilisations, ancient and modern, are founded on agriculture. In this fascinating account of one of the most fundamental aspects of humankind's march from prehistory to the present day, the author considers the evidence for the origins and evolution of agriculture in various parts of the world; a balanced view is presented based on the archaeology, botany, genetics, ecology and anthropology of domesticates and their wild relatives. The basic agricultural systems which emerged from areas yielding traces of the earliest plant and animal domestication are described, and their drastic modification in recent times is considered. In a concluding chapter the present situation is reviewed, and the possible risks of a system which now relies on a relatively small number of species to supply the majority of our food are discussed.

This book addresses one of the key features of contemporary government policy: how to integrate the economic role of agriculture with the societal role of the rural environment. Historical agricultural policy has focussed on encouraging production while protecting farmers from market risk. However production surpluses combined with growing concern over the environmental impacts of intensive agriculture has led to policy changes, which have exposed farmers to more market risk and required them to take account of their impact on the environment. For the first time this book brings these developing policy issues together with a comprehensive consideration of both theoretical and empirical aspects.

The first part of the book contains a set of six theoretical contributions to the economics of the agri-environment, including consideration of the associated policy implications. Building on this theoretical base, the second part contains four international case studies of agri-environmental policy.

All the authors are well-known experts in their field, and the original material contained in this book should be of interest to academic agricultural and environmental economists, postgraduate students, and policymakers.

Onshore unconventional gas operations, in most jurisdictions, operate on the legal principle that all activities during exploration and extraction are 'temporary' in nature. The concept that the onshore unconventional gas industry has a temporary effect on the land on which it operates creates a regulatory paradox. On one hand, unconventional gas activities create energy security, national wealth and a bourgeoning export industry. On the other, agricultural land and agriculturalists may be significantly disadvantaged by unconventional gas activities potentially producing permanent damage to non-renewable fertile soils and spoiling the underground water tables. Thus, threatening future food security and food sovereignty. This book explores the socio-regulatory dimensions of coexistence between agricultural and onshore unconventional gas land uses in the jurisdictions with the highest concentration of proven unconventional gas reserves - Australia, Canada, the USA, the UK, France, Poland and China. In exploring the differing regulatory standpoints of unconventional gas land uses on productive farming land in the chosen jurisdictions, this book provides an original three-part categorisation of regulatory approaches addressing the coexistence of agricultural land and unconventional gas namely: adaptive management, precautionary and, finally, statism. It offers a timely and topical approach to socio-legal natural resource governance theory based on the participation, transparency and empowerment for agricultural landholders, examining how differing frameworks such as the collective bargaining framework can create equitable and sustainable contractual arrangements with unconventional gas companies.

Agricultural geography changed dramatically during the last decades of the 20th century, reflecting the transformation of the farming industry itself. This text embraces these changes, applying ideas and methods from contemporary social science, as it moves beyond farm-based production to address current issues affecting the production and consumption of food and fibre throughout the world. processes, integration of agriculture into the wider agri-food system, concern with attaining sustainable production systems, and the importance of both government and supra-government policies. Examples are drawn from North America, Western Europe and the developing world. Key issues addressed include: the globalisation of agricultural production; the growing importance of supermarkets and fast-food outlets; the changing nature of government regulation; the persistence of hunger and famine in parts of the developing world; and attempts to develop sustainable agricultural systems using biotechnology. The book should appeal especially to Geography students, but should also be of interest to a broader range of students in sociology, economics and development studies, and anyone interested in agriculture, food production and consumption, and rural development.

Black and white farm women as consumers, producers, and agents of change; Farm women of the twentieth-century South have been portrayed as oppressed, worn out, and isolated. Lu Ann Jones tells quite a different story in Mama Learned Us to Work. Building upon evocative oral histories, she encourages us to understand these women as consumers, producers, and agents of economic and cultural change. As consumers, farm women bargained with peddlers at their backdoors. A key business for many farm women was the ""butter and egg trade"" - small-scale dairying and raising chickens. Their earnings provided a crucial margin of economic safety for many families during the 1920s and 1930s and offered women some independence from their men folks. These innovative women showed that poultry production paid off and laid the foundation for the agribusiness poultry industry that emerged after World War II. Jones also examines the relationships between farm women and home demonstration agents and the effect of government-sponsored rural reform. She discusses the professional culture that developed among white agents as they reconciled new and old ideas about women's roles and shows that black agents, despite prejudice, linked their clients to valuable government resources and gave new meanings to traditions of self-help, mutual aid, and racial uplift.

This book contains a selection of the papers presented at the Joint Conference on Food, Agriculture, and the Environment, which was held in Bologna, Italy, on June 12-14, 2001. This was the seventh gathering of a biennal meeting born from a cooperation agreement between US and Italian academic and research institutions. This round of the Conference was organized in the Faculty of Agriculture in Bologna by the Dept. of Agricultural Economics and Engineering (DEIAgra) and the CNR Land and Agri-System Management Research Centre (GeST A-CNR) of Bologna. There were two main reasons for the choice of this location: fIrst, the Conference was dedicated to Maurizio Grillenzoni and Franco Alvisi, two colleagues and friends who passed away in recent years, and who committed themselves and played an important role in developing the collaboration agreement and promoting the past Conferences; second, in the year 2000 the Faculty of Agriculture in Bologna celebrated its fIrst centennial, and this Con ference was part of a wide set of events organized to highlight the relevant role of the Faculty in the research activity, both at an Italian and international level. The Conference papers were articulated both in plenary and concurrent sessions, dealing with key topics for agricultural economists. A structure similar to the Conference was adopted for grouping the papers into the four sections contained in this book: * food, nutrition, and quality, focusing i. e.

Agricultural Productivity: Measurement and Sources of Growth addresses measurement issues and techniques in agricultural productivity analysis, applying those techniques to recently published data sets for American agriculture. The data sets are used to estimate and explain state level productivity and efficiency differences, and to test different approaches to productivity measurement. The rise in agricultural productivity is the single most important source of economic growth in the U.S. farm sector, and the rate of productivity growth is estimated to be higher in agriculture than in the non-farm sector. It is important to understand productivity sources and to measure its growth properly, including the effects of environmental externalities.

Both the methods and the data can be accessed by economists at the state level to conduct analyses for their own states. In a sense, although not explicitly, the book provides a guide to using the productivity data available on the website of the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Economic Research Service. It should be of interest to a broad spectrum of professionals in academia, the government, and the private sector.

This volume highlights achievements in cryopreservation, chronicles method development, and describes relevant literature. The provided detailed information helps practitioners develop and improve methods for desired species. The volume is divided into four parts:I. Cryopreservation of Germplasm;II. Herbaceous Plants: Barley, celery, chamomile, chicory, garlic, ginseng, hop, horseradish, mint, taro, wasabi;III. Woody Species: Coffee, Eucalyptus, guazuma, horse-chestnut, neem, olive, poplar, oak, Prunus, Ribes, rose.IV. Australian Species.Initially, cryopreservation was driven by the concern for loss of diversity of crops essential for continued improvement of the many plants used for food, health, and shelter. The interest has been expanded by conservationists and their concerns for retaining the diversity of natural populations.

Consumers have always been concerned about the quality, and particularly the safety, of the foods they eat. In recent years this concern has taken on additional prominence. Consumer focus on food safety has been sharpened by reports about new risks, such as that posed by "mad cow" disease, and about more familiar sources of risk, such as food borne pathogens, pesticides, and hormones. At the same time, some consumers are in creasingly interested in knowing more about how their food is produced and in selecting products based on production practices. Some of the questions consumers are asking in clude whether food is produced with the use of modern biotechnology, whether it is or ganically produced, how animals are treated in meat and egg production systems, and whether food is produced using traditional methods. Recent trends also show increased consumer demand for a variety of food products that are fresh, tasty, and available on a year-round basis. This has fostered increased global trade in food. For example, consumers in temperate climates such as North America are able to buy raspberries throughout the year, and Europeans can enjoy South American coffee. Trade in processed food products is actually increasing more rapidly than trade in agricultural commodities, further addressing the demand for variety among consumers."

Evolutionary Algorithms and Agricultural Systems deals with the practical application of evolutionary algorithms to the study and management of agricultural systems. The rationale of systems research methodology is introduced, and examples listed of real-world applications. It is the integration of these agricultural systems models with optimization techniques, primarily genetic algorithms, which forms the focus of this book. The advantages are outlined, with examples of agricultural models ranging from national and industry-wide studies down to the within-farm scale. The potential problems of this approach are also discussed, along with practical methods of resolving these problems. Agricultural applications using alternate optimization techniques (gradient and direct-search methods, simulated annealing and quenching, and the tabu search strategy) are also listed and discussed. The particular problems and methodologies of these algorithms, including advantageous features that may benefit a hybrid approach or be usefully incorporated into evolutionary algorithms, are outlined. From consideration of this and the published examples, it is concluded that evolutionary algorithms are the superior method for the practical optimization of models of agricultural and natural systems. General recommendations on robust options and parameter settings for evolutionary algorithms are given for use in future studies. Evolutionary Algorithms and Agricultural Systems will prove useful to practitioners and researchers applying these methods to the optimization of agricultural or natural systems, and would also be suited as a text for systems management, applied modeling, or operations research.

The chapters collected here explore a number of different issues, including the operation of the tariff-rate quotas established under the Uruguay Round Agreement, the implications of sanitary and phytosanitary restrictions on trade, and the growing controversy over genetically modified organisms. In addition, several chapters analyze the interaction between agricultural trade and environmental concerns. The relative prosperity in U.S. agriculture that attended the passage of the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996 was followed by a general decline in U.S. agricultural prices from 1998 to 2000. This trend in declining prices continues through the year 2001, despite the movement toward more liberalized agricultural trade. Trade liberalization has been the result of a variety of factors, including the implementation of the Uruguay Round Agreement, and the establishment of a variety of regional trade agreements, such as the North America Free Trade Agreement. Needless to say, in the face of falling agricultural prices and increasingly liberalized agricultural trade, the agricultural policy scene is an extremely complex one, both locally and globally. This volume does not pretend to offer a single, systematic prescription for what the next agricultural policy should be. Rather, the arguments and analyses contained herein are intended to highlight several issues that must be considered in the continuing debates on agricultural policy.

Alberta farmers and ranchers know that, in the frustrating business of agriculture, years of bounty inexplicably turn into years of despair. Looking back over the past half century, Jaques recounts the tumultuous history of the Alberta farm organization Unifarm. Unifarm: A Story of Conflict and Change documents Alberta farmers' quest to increase control over the forces that have had such an impact on their lives and describes how it led them to form organizations that have afforded them measures of stability and security throughout the past century. Unifarm, one of the most enduring of these organizations, is chronicled from its development in the 1970s to its reorganization as the Wild Rose Agricultural Producers in 1995. In discussing the relationship of Unifarm to the business of agriculture, Jaques addresses issues of co-operative philosophy, marketing boards, surface rights, commodity groups, and the importance of education and training for members of the rural community. Unifarm is an important book that sheds new light on the many facets of Alberta's rich agricultural history.

This Fourth Edition of Principles of Seed Science and Technology, like the fIrst three editions, is written for the advanced undergraduate student or lay person who desires an introduction to the science and technology of seeds. The fIrst nine chapters present the seed as a biological system and cover its origin, development, composition, function (and sometimes nonfunction), performance and ultimate deterioration. The last nine chapters present the fundamentals of how seeds are produced, conditioned, evaluated and distributed in our modern agricultural society. Two new chapters have been added in this fourth edition, one on seed ecology and the second on seed drying. Finally, revisions have been made throughout to reflect changes that have occurred in the seed industry since publication of the Third Edition. Because of the fundamental importance of seeds to both agriculture and to all of society, we have taken great care to present the science and technology of seeds with the respect and feeling this study deserves. We hope that this feeling will be communicated to our readers. Furthermore, we have attempted to present information in a straight-forward, easy-ta-read manner that will be easily understood by students and lay persons alike. Special care has been taken to address both current state-of-the-art as well as future trends in seed technology.

To some, the fields and farms of the Upper Midwest all look the same, but to the people who have struggled to raise families and make a living from the soil, each farm is a 'small kingdom' with a rich and often troubled history. This book focuses on the O'Neills, the family of his wife Sharon, and their 240 acres near Rochester, Minnesota. When William O'Neill began raising dairy cows in Minnesota in 1880, America was a nation of farmers. A little over a hundred years later, William's grandson Ed is too old and ill to continue farming. The farm is being chopped into subdivisions, an interstate has cut off access to the river, and changing technology and the tightening market have made small farms a thing of the past. Ed's children and grandchildren gather to try to find a way to keep the farm in the family. In this absorbing and hauntingly beautiful book, Hildebrand tells the story of four generations of farming O'Neills and, in doing so, tells a quintessentially American story of land and labour, memory and loss -- and one family's struggle to keep their dream alive. From boom times to bust, the bloody farm strikes of the Great Depression to the bittersweet optimism of a county fair, Hildebrand weaves a narrative that is at once an elegy for a vanishing way of life and a celebration of the tenacious and deeply held American values that have made today's way of life possible.

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.

The third edition of this popular introductory text maintains the character that won worldwide respect for its predecessors but features a number of enhancements that broaden its scope, increase its utility, and bring the treatment thoroughly up to date. It provides complete coverage of the statistical ideas and methods essential to students in agriculture or experimental biology. In addition to covering fundamental methodology, this treatment also includes more advanced topics that the authors believe help develop an appreciation of the breadth of statistical methodology now available. The emphasis is not on mathematical detail, but on ensuring students understand why and when various methods should be used.


New in the Third Edition:

· A chapter on the two simplest yet most important methods of multivariate analysis
· Increased emphasis on modern computer applications
· Discussions on a wider range of data types and the graphical display of data
· Analysis of mixed cropping experiments and on-farm experiments

Groundwater is endangered and polluted in several ways. Conservation and better management of this invisible resource should be a key ingredient of sustainable water policies. This is especially true in areas, such as many Mediterranean regions, which are already exposed to scarcity problems and which are likely to experience increasing competition between freshwater uses and users. Agriculture is an important user of groundwater not only in terms of abstractions, but also in terms of generation and release of pollutants. Agricultural policies, traditionally directed towards other objectives, are beginning to pay more attention to environmental considerations. However more effective initiatives are required to reduce the pressure upon groundwater resources and to achieve a better integration between agricultural and environmental policies. This book has been developed from three workshops held as part of the EU Concerted Action SAGA, "Sustainable Agricultural Use of Aquifers in Southern Europe: Integration between Agricultural and Water Management Policies" (FAIR5-CT97-3673). The Concerted Action and the workshops brought together researchers working in different but complementary fields, in order to get a picture of the state-of-the art about interlinkages between agriculture and groundwater, as well a critical review of alternative regulatory approaches and policy instruments aimed at improving groundwater management.

Biotechnology offers great potential to contribute to sustainable agricultural growth, food security and poverty alleviation in developing countries. Yet there are economic and institutional constraints at national and international levels that inhibit the poor people's access to appropriate biotechnological innovations. Agricultural Biotechnology in Developing Countries: Towards Optimizing the Benefits for the Poor addresses the major constraints. Twenty-three chapters, written by a wide range of scholars and stake-holders, provide an up-to-date analysis of agricultural biotechnology developments in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Besides the expected economic and social impacts, the challenges for an adjustment of the international research structure are discussed, with a special focus on intellectual property rights and the roles of the main research organizations. Harnessing the comparative advantages of the public and private sectors through innovative partnerships is the only way forward to optimize the benefits of biotechnology for the poor. The book will be an invaluable resource for both academics and policy-makers concerned with agricultural biotechnology in context of developing-countries.

Environmental stresses represent the most limiting factors for agricultural productivity worldwide. These stresses impact not only current crop species, they are also significant barriers to the introduction of crop plants into areas that are not currently being used for agriculture. Stresses associated with temperature, salinity and drought, singly or in combination, are likely to enhance the severity of problems to which plants will be exposed in the coming decades. The present book brings together contributions from many laboratories around the world to discuss and compare our current knowledge of the role stress genes play in plant stress tolerance. In addition, strategies are discussed to introduce these genes and the processes that they encode into economically important crops, and the effect this will have on plant productivity.

Accelerated degradation of soils and surface waters produce increasing problems in many parts of the world. Within this context, the book addresses the topic Application of Physically Based Soil Erosion Models in order to present some essential tools for improving land-use strategies and conservation measures. Over the last 20 years, the need for more accurate assessments of soil losses and sediment yields has led to the development of some highly complex, process-based soil erosion models. In 14 papers, specialists from 5 European countries, the USA and Brazil report on practical applications of these models and give insight into the latest developments. This book will help to implement state-of-the-art soil erosion prediction technologies within soil and water conservation planning and assessment. Hence, the book should be of special interest to agricultural and environmental engineers, hydrologists, soil scientists and geoscientists.

This book traces the decline of landed power in England between 1815 and 1939, primarily in political, but also in economic and social terms. The essays, by leading authors in the field, examine different aspects of the decline of landed power. New light is shed on the Corn Laws, the allotment movement, and the relationship between the landed classes and the state in the earlier twentieth century, all parts of this dramatic and significant saga.

Agricultural markets have entered a long-term process of liberalization, with the aim of reducing imposed market imperfections such as monopolistic public trade, entry barriers and subsidies. The experience of more than a decade of agriculture liberalization offers a good opportunity to review and analyze the outcome of this process and to draw lessons for the future. The central topic in Agricultural Markets Beyond Liberalization is the relationship between market structure and how markets perform in a dynamic context during a liberalization process. The topic is studied from both a micro and macro viewpoint and refers to different types of agricultural markets. This volume brings together the dynamics of agricultural markets in several parts of the world, with a special focus on transition economics and Africa. The different studies cover geographical areas as wide as a district as well as a group of countries, and institutions from individual contracts to multi-national organizations. The analysis of liberalization under different circumstances, and the different methods of analysis used by the authors provide a valuable foundation for the assessment of liberalization.

Five years of research carried out by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Services' Northern Global Change Program, contributing to our understanding of the effects of multiples stresses on forest ecosystems over multiple spatial and temporal scales. At the physiological level, reports explore changes in growth and biomass, species composition, and wildlife habitat; at the landscape scale, the abundance distribution, and dynamics of species, populations, and communities are addressed. Chapters include studies of nutrient depletion, climate and atmospheric deposition, carbon and nitrogen cycling, insect and disease outbreaks, biotic feedbacks with the atmosphere, interacting effects of multiple stresses, and modeling the regional effects of global change. The book provides sound ecological information for policymakers and land-use planners as well as for researchers in ecology, forestry, atmospheric science, soil science and biogeochemistry.

BENEFICIAL CHEMICAL ELEMENTS OF PLANTS Understand beneficial elements and their role in the future of botany and agriculture Beneficial elements are those which, while not essential to plant life, can provide stimulation and enhance plant growth. Properly harnessed, these elements can bolster plant growth in the face of environmental conditions—including drought, nutrient deficiency, and excessive soil salinity—and biotic stresses like pathogens and animal activity. As climate change and population growth pose increasingly serious challenges to agriculture and essential plant production, it has never been more important to unleash the potential of beneficial elements. Beneficial Chemical Elements of Plants is an essential resource for researchers and industry specialists looking to enhance their understanding of these elements and the range and variety of their enhancements to plant growth. Written by leading scholars in the field of plant stress tolerance and nutrient enrichment, it discusses not only the rich possibilities of beneficial elements but their mechanisms of action at both biochemical and molecular levels. It details the precise potential roles played by each major beneficial element and surveys a range of elemental responses to specific environmental conditions and plant stresses. Beneficial Chemical Elements of Plants readers will also find: Chapters covering beneficial elements including aluminum, cobalt, sodium, selenium, and silicon Discussion of application methods and typical plant responses Treatment of beneficial elements in a wider environmental context Beneficial element applications to the field of sustainable agriculture Beneficial Chemical Elements of Plants is a fundamental starting point for researchers and students in the fields of plant physiology, crop science, agriculture, and botany, as well as for professionals in the biotechnology and agricultural industries.

This book critically examines the idea that the sustainability of agriculture could be improved by mimicking the structure and processes occurring in natural ecosystems. Researchers from around the world present comparative studies of multi-species farming systems, natural ecosystems and conventional agriculture. Case studies from Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and North and South America examine the implications of increasing the complexity of farming systems on water and nutrient cycling, productivity and resilience. Theoretical issues discussed include the role of biodiversity in agriculture, the trade-off between perenniality and productivity, the choice to integrate or segregate production and conservation in an agricultural landscape, and the social and economic challenges to adopting complex farming systems. One section is devoted to the application of this concept in southern Australia, where 15 million hectares of land are expected to be affected by salinity by the middle of the next century unless there is a significant change in agricultural practice.