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.

Whaling Diplomacy is the only book that addresses all of the substantive issues relating to the conservation of whales through the International Whaling Commission (IWC). It covers the law, policy, science and philosophy at the heart of each element of the debate, discussing how it has developed, the current problems that beset it and what is necessary for the future. Together, all of the issues involved in whaling form a single crucible through which the future of conservation in international environmental law is being debated. The intensity of this debate, despite being at the forefront of international environmental problems for over three decades has not dissipated, as ultimately, the clash of values, science and law within whaling diplomacy is one of the key front lines for international conservation in the 21st century. Studying the contemporary developments in international environmental law and policy, this book therefore is not just about whales, but also how related debates are being reflected in other forums. Students of law, politics, environmental economics and philosophy will find this book of great value for it's cutting-edge relevance over the three disciplines. Policymakers will also find it of interest for the insight into one of the most controversial conservation debates of our time.

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

Peacock Bass: Diversity, Ecology, and Conservation is a unique scientific reference that describes not only the diversity and natural history of the various peacock bass species (fish in the genus Cichla) but also their geographic distributions, evolutionary relationships, ecology, and economic importance. Peacock bass are the most popular sport fish pursued by recreational anglers in tropical freshwaters, and they support important fisheries in rivers and lakes in their native South America as well as other regions of the world where they have been introduced. The book is written in clear prose that allows any reader to appreciate key features of the morphology, population genetics, and reproductive biology of these colorful tropical freshwater fish. Each chapter begins with a vignette introducing an aspect of peacock bass taxonomy, ecology, or conservation based on a personal account from one of the authors. Also included are color photographs of peacock bass, their habitats, other tropical fishes, and the diverse wildlife encountered in rivers and forests of the Neotropics. Photographic guides and detailed descriptions of coloration patterns are provided for species identification, along with distribution maps and essential information related to fisheries management and the economic importance of peacock bass. Biologists interested in zoogeography and the ecological role peacock bass play as major predators in biodiverse rivers and lakes will find summaries of the latest information. Peacock bass have grown in popularity among aquarists, and the book provides basic information about captive care and environmental conditions in their natural habitats. This book is essential reading for biologists, fisheries managers, anglers, naturalists, and aquarists interested in these remarkable fish and the diverse tropical rivers they inhabit.