The creation of large new tracts of forest, together with the development of a modern wood processing sector, was the single biggest transformation to occur in the Scottish countryside during the twentieth century. While the environmental and landscape impacts of this change have been much commented upon, its impact on Scottish culture and society has attracted comparatively little attention. This book tells the fascinating story of the human side of forestry, drawing heavily on the thoughts, experiences and reflections of a wide range of individuals from all levels and all sectors of the industry as it has developed in Scotland over the last 100 years. The book also analyses the evolution of forestry policy and the changing roles of both the state-run Forestry Commission and the private sector. However, at its core are the stories of the men, women and children who have lived and worked in the many communities where old and new forests have loomed large - communities where, especially in the middle decades of the twentieth century, forestry was often the largest source of employment and income, and without which many of these places would have struggled to survive.

The Coal Handbook: Towards Cleaner Coal Supply Chains, Volume One, Second Edition presents a comprehensive analysis of the latest technology and practices. The book provides authoritative insights into a variety of case studies to help readers identify the most appropriate technologies to take coal, and its associated by-products, into an essential cleaner environment that includes integrated energy systems. The book's expertise highlights the future direction of coal use towards more efficient and clean usage. Key emerging topics such as hybrid technologies, integrated power and chemical processes, and advanced CO2 abatement strategies are explored, with a focus on economic and sustainable values. In addition, the book includes two brand new chapters on the optimization of mine development and the impacts of tailings treatment. With its distinguished editor and international team of expert contributors, the book is a comprehensive and invaluable resource for professionals in the coal mining, preparation and utilization industry, those in the power sector, including plant operators and engineers, and researchers and academics interested in this field.

Advances in Marine Biology, Volume 92 highlights new advances in the field, with this new volume presenting interesting chapters on topics including A Review of Coral Reef Rehabilitation Efforts in the Coral Triangle. Each chapter in this series is written by an international board of authors.

By setting industrialization against the background of wider processes of economic growth, recent trends in economic history have once again placed agriculture at the center of debate on the formation of modern economies. The nine essays in this volume examine the broader terms and implications of this new emphasis, and reassess the contribution of agriculture to economic growth in contexts that range from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries and from Europe to Russia and Asia.
The essays are tightly focused around a set of central themes. Emphasizing how contexts of time and place have determined the relationship between agricultural change and economic growth, they explore comparatively such issues as the problems of interpretation and methodology posed by the close inter-dependence between agriculture and social organization, the critical role of political intervention in agricultural change, as well as the technical difficulties involved in measuring changes in productivity and their wider impact on economic growth. As a result the volume offers a uniquely broad but coherent and critical assessment of current trends in the interpretation of agriculture's major but complex historical role in modern economic growth.

The food market is changing from a producer-controlled to a consumer-directed market. A main driving force is consumer concern about agricultural production methods and food safety. More than before, the consumer demands transparency of the production and processing chain.
A food chain can be quite complex and the use of models has become indispensable to handle this complexity. Modelling tools are becoming increasingly important to guide the decisions for production of high-quality and safe agricultural foods. With the aid of models it becomes possible to control and predict quality attributes, so that product innovation can be done more efficiently. However, quality is an elusive concept, and there is always an aspect of subjectivity and uncertainty.
A novel approach in the agro-food chain would be to tackle subjective elements and uncertainty in modelling by using Bayesian statistics and Bayesian Belief Networks. Bayesian approaches use prior probabilities (partly accounting for subjectivity) to estimate posterior probabilities, resulting in higher accuracy than is possible with classical statistical techniques. Thus, the variability and uncertainty in data and decisions, inherent in a complex food chain, can be dealt with.

The collectivization of Soviet agriculture in the late 1920s and 1930s forever altered the country's social and economic landscape. It became the first of a series of bloody landmarks that would come to define Stalinism. This revelatory book presents--with analysis and commentary--the most important primary Soviet documents dealing with the brutal economic and cultural subjugation of the Russian peasantry. Drawn from previously unavailable and in many cases unknown archives, these harrowing documents provide the first unimpeded view of the experience of the peasantry during the years 1927-1930.
The book, the first of four in the series, covers the background of collectivization, its violent implementation, and the mass peasant revolt that ensued. For its insights into the horrific fate of the Russian peasantry and into Stalin's dictatorship, "The War Against the Peasantry "takes""its place an as unparalleled resource."

Agricultural Bioeconomy: Innovation and Foresight in the Post-COVID Era presents recent advancements in biotechnology, exploring the optimal utilization of technologies to provide rapid and impactful economic recovery and sustainable resources in a future that will bear the mark of COVID-19. Understanding that there is a necessary balance between risk and reward, this book provides a foundational hypothesis as well as operational direction for addressing the commercialization and regulatory issues in a bio-based economy where agricultural output is at the core. By presenting adaptable practices to successfully establish and progress agri-based global bioeconomies, the book features a new paradigm focused on technological foresight and response to future risks and disasters. Key considerations include assessing and managing the urban bioeconomy, climate change mitigation, biofuels and bioenergy, GMOs, and employment generation. This book provides the solid next step toward future-proofing global economies using a combination of agricultural technologies and economic goals. Professionals and advanced students focused on the production of renewable biological resources and their conversion into value-added products including food, feed, bio-based products, and bioenergy will find this book useful.

Food security is defined as the ability of countries, regions, or households to meet their required levels of food consumption at all times. Food security is an important component of human welfare, and it can act as an indicator of a region's development. This book addresses the roles of trade, policy development, and economic cooperation in creating sustainable food security in the West African region. The largely micro-level analysis is conducted on empirical data from the household where decisions on production and consumption take place. Food security is discussed in terms of its component parts, namely: availability of food (production and trade), its accessibility (incomes and poverty status), and its utilisation (health and nutrition).

Petroleum engineers search through endless sources to understand oil and gas chemicals, identify root cause of the problems, and discover solutions while operations are becoming more unconventional and driving toward more sustainable practice. Oil and Gas Chemistry Management Series brings an all-inclusive suite of tools to cover all the sectors of oil and gas chemistry-related issues and chemical solutions from drilling and completion, to production, surface processing, and storage. The fourth reference in the series, Surface Process, Transportation, and Storage delivers the critical basics while also covering latest research developments and practical solutions. Organized by the type of challenges, this volume facilitates engineers to fully understand underlying theories, practical solutions, and keys for successful applications. Basics include produced fluids treating, foam control, pipeline drag reduction, and crude oil and natural gas storage, while more advanced topics cover CO2 recovery, shipment, storage, and utilization. Supported by a list of contributing experts from both academia and industry, this volume brings a necessary reference to bridge petroleum chemistry operations from theory into more cost-effective and sustainable practical applications.

This book, written by global experts, provides a comprehensive and topical analysis on the economics of chocolate. While the main approach is economic analysis, there are important contributions from other disciplines, including psychology, history, government, nutrition, and geography. The chapters are organized around several themes, including the history of cocoa and chocolate - from cocoa drinks in the Maya empire to the growing sales of Belgian chocolates in China; how governments have used cocoa and chocolate as a source of tax revenue and have regulated chocolate (and defined it by law) to protect consumers' health from fraud and industries from competition; how the poor cocoa producers in developing countries are linked through trade and multinational companies with rich consumers in industrialized countries; and how the rise of consumption in emerging markets (China, India, and Africa) is causing a major boom in global demand and prices, and a potential shortage of the world's chocolate.

Modern web-based applications are pertinent for businesses, as they often encourage their core competencies and capabilities. As such, the agribusiness sector must begin to take advantage of the open networks and advances in communication and information technologies in order to grow their businesses exponentially. Driving Agribusiness With Technology Innovations highlights innovative business models and theories that encourage the use of emerging technological advances to produce thriving enterprises. Featuring extensive coverage on relevant topics including digital environments, mobile agriculture, supply chain platforms, and internet marketing models, this publication is an important reference source for business managers, practitioners, professionals, and engineers who are interested in discovering emerging technology trends for agribusiness.

Potato is a crop grown on all inhabited continents of the globe. It is included in the top five crops of the world, used as staple food in several countries, and the number of people daily consuming the potato may surpass one billion. Despite the high quantities of seed potato produced worldwide, there are yield gaps due to challenges such as abiotic stresses, pests, climate change and poor production practices. A region-wide critical analysis of yield declining factors can help formulate management strategies that can improve potato yields. Bridging yield gaps in potato will ultimately ensure the role of this crop in securing current and future food security. Potato Production Worldwide presents information on this global crop from its history, morphology, and taxonomy to the growth and development of the potato crop, including the latest strategies in addressing today's biotic and abiotic challenges. This book identifies the reasons for yield gaps in various potato production regions of the world, as well as presenting the best production practices, pest management strategies and approaches to deal with climate change from the perspective of potato production. Chapters provide important insights into potato production cultures and approaches in the major potato production countries. Potato Production Worldwide will be a valuable resource for researchers, scientists and students seeking a comprehensive view of successful potato production.

'Fertility Farming' explores an approach to farming that makes minimal use of plowing, eschews chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and encourages cover cropping and manure application. Turner holds that the foundation of the effectiveness of a fertile soil - and the measure of a fertile soil - is its content of organic matter, ultimately, its humus. Upon a basis of humus, nature builds a complete structure of healthy life - without need for disease control of any kind. In fact, disease treatment is unnecessary in nature, as disease is the outcome of the unbalancing or perversion of the natural order - and serves as a warning that something is wrong. The avoidance of disease is therefore the simple practice of natural law. Much more than theory, this book was written to serve as a practical guide for farmers. Turner's advice for building a productive, profitable organic farming system rings as true today as it did sixty years ago when it was written. Featuring a new foreword by Allan Nation.

Women on the Land tells the remarkable story of women's contribution to agriculture and forestry during the two World Wars. It traces the formation and history of the Women's Land Army, and shows how women, mostly untrained and from non-farming backgrounds, helped maintain food production for a beleaguered nation, by filling the places of men away at the war. At the height of the First World War the Land Army had a full-time membership of 23,000 members, a number that was to exceed 80,000 during the Second World War. The book pays tribute to women like Lady Denman, who administered the Land Army during the Second World War and who was its chief inspiration and driving force, and also outlines the part played by other women's groups in wartime. Containing many first-hand reminiscences by the women who served, and a number of evocative illustrations, Women on the Land highlights the years when women were effectively to challenge long-established preconceptions as to what properly constituted 'women's work'.

This book addresses the important issue of food prices across EU Member States. Although recent attention has focused on events in world commodity markets following the spikes in world prices in 2007-2008 and 2011, there has been comparatively little attention addressing food price dynamics at the retail level. This volume addresses the characteristics of retail food price behaviour and the nature and drivers of price transmission across the EU. There are several inter-related features of the research reported here. First, the volume reports the characteristics of retail food inflation across the EU and the extent to which it differs from non-food inflation. Second, given the different experience of food inflation across EU Member States, it details the process of price transmission as shocks from upstream and world markets are passed through the food sector to the retail stage. Third, it addresses how the extent and nature of price transmission is determined by various aspects of competition throughout the domestic food sector and how the nature of vertical contracting between stages can determine the price transmission process. Finally, it outlines the potential of high-frequency, product-specific scanner data to address price dynamics and adjustment issues and how scanner data can also be used to measure food price inflation. The book will be of interest to researchers on price transmission and competition issues in the EU and, given the wider interest on these issues coupled with the novel use of scanner data, to researchers further afield. The contributions will also be of interest to policymakers and stakeholders as they seek to make sense of, and to address, regulation issues as they relate to the food sector.

Trade in temperate zone farm products between the developed countries has been beset with problems since the GATT's inception in 1947. The basic problem was always that the conditions in world agricultural markets were distorted by the national agricultural policies followed by all developed countries - policies which national authorities were reluctant to adapt to conform with the requirements of a liberal international trading system for agricultural products. This book describes and analyses the attempts that were made to make trade in agriculture less distorted, more stable and predictable, and less of a dangerous source of political friction between nations, in successive rounds of negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in the 45-year period from GATT's inception in 1947 to the end of the Uruguay Round in 1993. While the book analyses the development of international trade policy throughut the post-war period, particular attention is given to the Kennedy, Tokyo and Uruguay Rounds of GATT negotiations in which the problems of trade in agricultural products were confronted.

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.

Reservoir Characterization of Tight Gas Sandstones: Exploration and Development is essential reading for those working in oil and gas exploration (both in industry and academia) as it contains chapters that help them further understand all aspects of tight gas reservoirs. In this book, experts in industry and academia update readers on new methods of tight gas reservoir modeling and evaluation. As there are very limited published books in the field of tight sandstones, this book will benefit readers by making them familiar with state-of-art methods of tight gas sandstones characterization and evaluation.

investigates the relationship between mining, mine closure and housing policy in post-apartheid South Africa argues that the dependencies created by the mining industry and mine housing policies while a mine is operational causes serious societal problems when it closes applies the concepts of place attachment, asset-based development and social disruption will be of interest to students and scholars researching the social impacts of mining and the extractive industries, social geography and sustainable development, as well as policymakers and practitioners working with mine closure or social impact assessments.

Since 1925, import substitution programs have diverted South Africa's mineral revenues away from efficient investments and into the creation of an uncompetitive manufacturing sector. Protection has recently been augmented by a General Export Incentive Scheme that was designed to increase manufacturing exports. A multisector general equilibrium analysis shows the export scheme is highly complex with unusual and undesirable structural effects, seeming little more than a continuation of social engineering of the past. This work provides a definitive analysis of past and present South African trade policy, using a methodology of interest to other trade and development researchers operating in similarly spare informational environments.

Application of Machine Learning in Smart Agriculture is the first book to present a multidisciplinary look at how technology can not only improve agricultural output, but the economic efficiency of that output as well. Through a global lens, the book approaches the subject from a technical perspective, providing important knowledge and insights for effective and efficient implementation and utilization of machine learning. As artificial intelligence techniques are being used to increase yield through optimal planting, fertilizing, irrigation, and harvesting, these are only part of the complex picture which must also take into account the economic investment and its optimized return. The performance of machine learning models improves over time as the various mathematical and statistical models are proven. Presented in three parts, Application of Machine Learning in Smart Agriculture looks at the fundamentals of smart agriculture; the economics of the technology in the agricultural marketplace; and a diverse representation of the tools and techniques currently available, and in development. This book is an important resource for advanced level students and professionals working with artificial intelligence, internet of things, technology and agricultural economics.

Agricultural Nanobiotechnology: Biogenic Nanoparticles, Nanofertilizers and Nanoscale Biocontrol Agents presents the most up-to-date advances in nanotechnology to improve the agriculture and food industry with novel nanotools for the controlling of rapid disease diagnostic and enhancement of the capacity of plants to absorb nutrients and resist environmental challenges. Highlighting the emerging nanofertilizers, nanopesticides and nanoherbicides that are being widely explored in order to overcome the limitations of conventional agricultural supplements, the book provides important insights to enable smart, knowledge-driven selection of nanoscale agricultural biomaterials, coupled with suitable delivery approaches and formulations will lead to promising agricultural innovation using nanotechnology. Agricultural Nanobiotechnology: Biogenic Nanoparticles, Nanofertilizers and Nanoscale Biocontrol Agents explores emerging innovations in nanobiotechnology for agriculture, food, and natural resources to address the challenges of food security, sustainability, susceptibility, human health, and healthy life. The book is ideal for the multidisciplinary scientists whose goal is to see the use of nanomaterials in agriculture to reduce the amount of spread chemicals, minimize nutrient losses in fertilization and to generate increased yield through pest and nutrient management.

Dramatically revised and greatly expanded, the second edition of Forensic Botany features triple the amount of images, including a 16-page color insert to aid with macro and micro identification. This edition also features new high profile cases involving the use of botanical evidence, analysis and updating of plant databases, and database sampling. New chapters provide coverage of plant poisons and toxicology, plant bioinformatics, use of plants for death investigation and clandestine grave identification, and the applications of botany to archeology. The book discusses plant biology from a forensic point of view and offers practical guidelines for how to use botanical evidence in a case.