Presenting the first book to focus on the importance of silicon for plant health and soil productivity and on our current understanding of this element as it relates to agriculture.

Long considered by plant physiologists as a non-essential element, or plant nutrient, silicon was the center of attention at the first international conference on Silicon in Agriculture, held in Florida in 1999.

Ninety scientists, growers, and producers of silicon fertilizer from 19 countries pondered a paradox in plant biology and crop science. They considered the element Si, second only to oxygen in quantity in soils, and absorbed by many plants in amounts roughly equivalent to those of such nutrients as sulfur or magnesium. Some species, including such staples as rice, may contain this element in amounts as great as or even greater than any other inorganic constituent. Compilations of the mineral composition of plants, however, and much of the plant physiological literature largely ignore this element. The participants in Silicon in Agriculture explored that extraordinary discrepancy between the silicon content of plants and that of the plant research enterprise.

The participants, all of whom are active in agricultural science, with an emphasis on crop production, presented, and were presented with, a wealth of evidence that silicon plays a multitude of functions in the real world of plant life. Many soils in the humid tropics are low in plant available silicon, and the same condition holds in warm to hot humid areas elsewhere. Field experience, and experimentation even with nutrient solutions, reveals a multitude of functions of silicon in plant life. Resistance to disease is one, toleration of toxic metals such as aluminum, another. Silicon applications often minimize lodging of cereals (leaning over or even becoming prostrate), and often cause leaves to assume orientations more favorable for light interception. For some crops, rice and sugarcane in particular, spectacular yield responses to silicon application have been obtained. More recently, other crop species including orchids, daisies and yucca were reported to respond to silicon accumulation and plant growth/disease control. The culture solutions used for the hydroponic production of high-priced crops such as cucumbers and roses in many areas (The Netherlands for example) routinely included silicon, mainly for disease control. The biochemistry of silicon in plant cell walls, where most of it is located, is coming increasingly under scrutiny; the element may act as a crosslinking element between carbohydrate polymers.

There is an increased conviction among scientists that the time is at hand to stop treating silicon as a plant biological nonentity. The element exists, and it matters.

Herbs and spices are among the most versatile and widely used ingredients in food processing. As well as their traditional role in flavouring and colouring foods, they have been increasingly used as natural preservatives and for their potential health-promoting properties, for example as antioxidants. Edited by a leading authority in the field, and with a distinguished international team of contributors, the Handbook of herbs and spices provides an essential reference for manufacturers wishing to make the most of these important ingredients.
The first group of chapters looks at general issues including quality indices for conventional and organically produced herbs, spices and their essential oils.
The main body of the handbook consists of over twenty chapters covering key spices and herbs from aniseed, bay leaves and black pepper to saffron, tamarind and turmeric. Each chapter covers key issues from definition and classification including: chemical structurecultivationpost-harvest processinguses in food processingfunctional propertiesquality indicesmethods of analysisThe Handbook of herbs and spices is a standard reference for all manufacturers using herbs and spices in their products.

This book will be a valuable source of information for those concerned with rural and farm tourism, sustainable tourism and the marketing of "Calibri">local gastronomy. It presents cases with an international and interdisciplinary approach in order to provideideas for strategic perspectives in tourism studies. Furthermore, for the first time the complex fields of rural and food tourism are examined from an international (Italy and Germany) viewpoint. This book explores ways in which gastronomical heritage (i.e., regional food, organic food) can be incorporated in rural tourism (above all farm tourism) and development policies as well as in new avenues of research e.g., sensory marketing, online marketing) in order to enhance sustainable practices both in the tourism and in the agri-food sector. Overall, the book presents an overview of benchmark practices for professionals (associations of rural tourism, farmers, etc.), while offering scholars a well-founded source to refer to in order to gain up-to-date insights into the state of the art of studies on rural and food tourism.

The global spread of transnational mining investment, which has been taking place since the 1990s, has led to often volatile conflicts with local communities. This book examines the regulation of these conflicts through national, transnational and local legal processes. In doing so, it examines how legal authority is being redistributed among public and private actors, as well as national and transnational actors, as a result of globalizing forces. The book presents a case study concerning the negotiation of land transfer and resettlement between a transnational mining enterprise and indigenous peasants in the Andes of Peru. The case study is used to explore the intensely local dynamics involved in negotiations between corporate and community representatives and the role played by legal ordering in these relations. In particular, the book examines the operation of a transnational legal regime managed by the World Bank to remedy the social and environmental impacts of projects which receive Bank assistance. The book explores the nature and character of the World Bank regime and the multiple consequences of this projection of transnational law into a local dispute.

In recent years, development policy has responded to an increasing concern about natural resource degradation by setting up innovative payment for environmental services (PES) programs in developing countries. PES programs use market and institutional incentives in order to meet both environmental and poverty alleviation objectives. However, their optimal design, implications for the rural poor, and how these initiatives integrate into international treaties on global warming and biodiversity loss are still being discussed. This book addresses these issues by scrutinizing analytical tools, providing policy insights and stimulating debate on linkages between poverty alleviation and environmental protection. In particular, it turns attention towards the role of environmental services in agricultural landscapes as they provide a living for many poor in developing countries. It serves as a valuable reference for academics and students in various disciplines, as well as for policy makers and advisors. This book is a co-publication between Springer and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Learn to heal your cattle by treating the cause and not the symptoms. Holistic veterinarian Richard "Doc" Holiday shares the secrets he's learned from more than fifty years of experience in animal nutrition and health.

The global wine industry is a continually modifying market impacted by financing, culture, and politics. Economics, Governance, and Politics in the Wine Market follows developments in European agriculture policies on wine legislation and market trend orientation between political power and market structure, from their inception through recent reforms. This political economic analysis seeks to explain the implementation of wine policies applied to production management in Europe. Gaeta and Corsinovi use The Public Choice model to describe bargaining and trade-off in agriculture wine policy by governments, producers, and critical industrial organizations. They argue that market problems cannot be analysed without an understanding of the motives and processes behind upstream policy decisions. With the book's theoretical approaches and famous case studies, readers become agricultural wine experts capable of navigating the current complex wine market of the European Union.

Lagoons are characterized by an essential quality of uncertainty for use in resource management: these are physically vulnerable to various influences from not only the environment but also the adjacent marine and terrestrial areas. In the areas which are shallower and where less water is exchanges, therefore, fishers are required to develop their capacity of knowledge and skills for how to live with change and uncertainty. The wider realization of complex and dynamic lagoon ecosystem and its fisheries management requires multifaceted aspects to be addressed. Fisheries serve as a basis for people's livelihood and food protein especially in Asian countries. Total amounts of fish landing have maintained an upward trend, but existing fisheries management poses various challenges for ensuring wise use of fishery resources which are becoming fully exploited or over-exploited in the world. Out of variant geographical types of fishery domain, lagoon fisheries need to pay more attention to achieve fisheries management. With these recognitions, the book presents a wide variety of lessons learned from case studies from Asian countries (India, Japan and Thailand). Greater emphasis is placed on understanding the status of lagoon fisheries and its management, and assessing people's adaptive capacities to respond to changes in the ecological-social-economic system. Throughout all case study experience, the book will provide policy makers and practitioners with guidance to build enabling conditions for integrated lagoon fisheries management and related sustainable livelihood which involve a concern with issues of power, institutions, worldviews and values among relevant stakeholders.

In Agriculture, Price Stabilisation and Trade Rules, Irene Musselli offers a comprehensive doctrinal and historical analysis of stabilisation tools and approaches in agriculture. Using her extensive practical experience in the field, she takes up the interface of the tools discussed with trade rules and offers the first comprehensive analysis of WTO rules from the perspective of stabilisation policies. This volume offers a fresh look at the tool box of managed trade in agricultural commodities and develops new and refined solutions that take into account the legal role of equity and of graduation. Musselli offers new insights and is able to invigorate a debate caught in overly ideological entanglements between market oriented and interventionist schools.

Emerging from decades of intensive research into alpine timberlines, Trees at their Upper Limit presents a complete modern synthesis of current knowledge on the ecophysiology of tree growth and survival on high mountains in Europe. Including chapters on soil properties and the role of mycorrhiza, carbon assimilation and allocation, phytopathogens, and the impact of global change on photooxidative stress, the book builds on Tranquillini's landmark 1979 publication, Physiological Ecology of the Alpine Timberline. By combining new techniques and insights with existing core knowledge, the authors explore a range of current hypotheses on tree life limitation to promote a greater understanding of the underlying mechanisms determining the upper timberline. A mid growing realization that high elevation forests have a crucial role to play in protection against natural hazards, this book represents a timely contribution to the current literature on timberline research. Drawing together more than 25 years of work, it sets a new standard on the ecophysiology of trees growing at the alpine timberline.

'Wolfe has combined a detailed examination of international regimes and agricultural trade, an interesting application of the concept of embedded liberalism as developed by Ruggie on the basis of Polanyi, and a thorough analysis of the Uruguay Round negotiations. In doing so, he has made a notable contribution to the IPE literature generally and the work on multilateral negotiations in the context of the GATT/WTO in particular' - Andrew F. Cooper, University of Waterloo, Canada The Farm War of the early 1980s was rooted in the political economy of agriculture, but it was a crisis for the international trading system. The war was evident in disruptions on the farm and in world markets, in conflicts among major governments, and in disagreements in international organizations. Wolfe shows how and why battles over agricultural protectionism were largely resolved through the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations, demonstrating that the global economy is not self-regulating: it needs institutions if it is to be stable.

This set of previously out-of-print works is an essential reference collection encompassing a huge array of agricultural topics. These classic texts analyses agricultural change and economics; land use and development; Soviet farming; Indian farming; American farming; and much more besides.

This book investigates the Upper Silesian Coal Basin (USCB), one of the oldest and largest mining areas not only in Poland but also in Europe. Using uniform research methods for the whole study area, it also provides a summary of the landscape transformations. Intensive extraction of hard coal, zinc and lead ores, stowing sands and rock resources have caused such extensive transformations of landscape that it can be considered a model anthropogenic relief. The book has three main focuses: 1) Identifying anthropogenic forms of relief related to mining activity and presenting them from a spatial, genetic and age perspective; 2) Determining the changes in the morphometric characteristics of relief and the conditions for matter circulation in open systems (drainage basins) and closed systems (land-locked basins) caused by the extraction of mineral resources; and 3) Estimating the extent of anthropogenic denudation using two different methods based on raw-material output and morphometric analysis. In Poland, no other mining area has undergone such intensive mining activity as the Upper Silesian Coal Basin during the last half century. Its share in the total extraction of mineral resources was as high as 32%. The total extraction of hard coal in the Upper Silesian Coal Basin from the mid-18th century until 2009 was the sixth largest in the world, and the permanent, regional effects of mining anthropopressure on the relief are among the most severe in the world. The anthropogenic denudation rate in the Upper Silesian Coal Basin, as well as the Ruhr Coal Basin (Ruhr District) and the Ostrava-Karvina Coal Basin, ranges from several dozen up to several hundred times higher than the rate of natural denudation, irrespective of the calculation method used. It would take the natural denudation processes tens of thousands of years to remove the same amount of material from the substratum as that removed through human mining activity.

Providing useful insights on the use of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) in natural resource management, this book examines a number of empirical applications for several countries and a variety of natural resources. It is shown that using MCDA in the management of water, forestry, wetland and other natural resources can substantially improve the design and implementation of natural resource and environmental policies. Stakeholder involvement is also an important determinant of successful resource management and MCDA provides a useful and effective framework for getting stakeholders involved in resource management decisions. Using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis in Natural Resource Management gives in-depth analysis of the potential problems in applying these techniques, including difficulties eliciting required information, lack of suitable measures for environmental variables and the need to develop innovative methods to simplify the use of MCDA.

The countries of West Asia and North Africa (WANA) have long had the challenge of providing sustainable livelihoods for their populations in the fragile ecosystems of semi-arid and arid areas. Climate change is already a reality in WANA and it places additional constraints on the already fragile ecosystems of dry areas and limited natural resources in WANA. A comprehensive and integrated approach to planning and implementing the climate change adaptation strategies across the wide range of agro-ecosystems in different countries in WANA could help both the planners and the local communities to deal effectively with the projected impacts and also contribute to overall sustainability of agricultural production systems. This book addresses the important issue of climate change and food security in West Asia and North Africa and presents the appropriate strategies which could help in the development of new policies to better adapt agriculture production systems and enhance food security in WANA.

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.

Comparative Evaluations of Innovative Fisheries Management begins with a look at four places outside the European Union known for innovative management: New Zealand, Nova Scotia, Alaska and Iceland. Then the focus shifts to the success criteria related to specific disciplines including biological and social robustness, economic efficiency and impacts on management costs. Hypotheses are tested using data capable of generating useful results. The main conclusions include a retrospective of how key concepts defined and represented the various perspectives, skills and backgrounds that made up the multidisciplinary CEVIS project.

"Genetically modified (GM) (or transgenic) crops are produced using plant biotechnology to select desirable characteristics in plants and transfer genes from one organism to another. As a result, crops can survive under harsher conditions, costs are lowered, chemical application is reduced, and yields are improved. Scientists are introducing genes into plants that will give them resistance to herbicides, insects, disease, drought and salt in the soil. The application of modern biotechnology to crop and food production is one of the most significant technological advances to impact modern agriculture. The future of GM technology holds further promises of continued benefits. But the potential of GM product innovations has been overshadowed by significant controversy over this technology. The regulatory activism that has accompanied the diffusion of GM technology has given rise to a complex situation that is replete with obstacles for current and future GM innovations. This is particularly true for the European Union (EU), which has implemented restrictive policies that undoubtedly constrain the current status and the future potential of biotechnology. The discourse on biotechnology applied to food and agriculture is at a crossroads due to rising food prices and concerns about adequate food supplies. Over the last decade a large body of applied economics work has addressed the key questions surrounding the application of this technology to food production. It is now time to take stock of the results of these efforts, and consolidate the methodological, analytical and empirical findings. The challenge is to strengthen the consensus of what economics have to offer in the analysis of the complex issues surrounding the ongoing development of GM products for the agricultural and food sector. The task is, to provide a new perspective on the most pressing policy questions and to help foster an intellectual climate conducive to achieving meaningful progress and lasting solutions. That is the motivation for this volume. It brings together fresh insights from top agricultural economists in the areas of consumer attitudes, environmental impacts, policy and regulation, trade, investment, food security, and development."