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Author: Tapan Kumar Nath
Publisher: Nova Publishers
ISBN: 9781634852128
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 196
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Book Description
Monoculture farming is nowadays a widespread practice throughout the world. In order to meet the food demand of rapidly increasing populations, the diverse agroecosystems have been converted mostly into single cropping sectors. Even though food productivity with high input has been boosted to some extent, it is at the cost of local biodiversity loss. This book, drawing examples from several tropical and sub-tropical countries, documents some of the most prevailing monoculture practices and their socio-economic and environmental influences. It describes widespread commercial monoculture of rubber and oil palm, as well as the invasion of exotic mono-plantations in the forestry sector. Both rubber and oil palm are highly lucrative businesses, and these industries have brought positive impacts on rural development, regional economies, including lifting small farmers out of poverty. The rapid expansion of oil palm and rubber in the last few decades has resulted in widespread deforestation, biodiversity loss, and carbon emissions in the tropics, and has also negatively affected the livelihoods of many local communities. Similar effects have also been observed in the case of the conversion of heterogenous forests into monocuture plantations. An integrated land use planning approach is suggested in order to minimize the negative impacts and maximize the positive benefits of monoculture farming. Further, enhancing plant-soil microbial interactions through innoculation of arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi for soil fertility management is also suggested. With up-to-date information on this subject matter, this book will benefit researchers, academics, students, policymakers and practitioners.
Author: Tapan Kumar Nath
Publisher: Nova Publishers
ISBN: 9781634852128
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Get Book Here
Book Description
Monoculture farming is nowadays a widespread practice throughout the world. In order to meet the food demand of rapidly increasing populations, the diverse agroecosystems have been converted mostly into single cropping sectors. Even though food productivity with high input has been boosted to some extent, it is at the cost of local biodiversity loss. This book, drawing examples from several tropical and sub-tropical countries, documents some of the most prevailing monoculture practices and their socio-economic and environmental influences. It describes widespread commercial monoculture of rubber and oil palm, as well as the invasion of exotic mono-plantations in the forestry sector. Both rubber and oil palm are highly lucrative businesses, and these industries have brought positive impacts on rural development, regional economies, including lifting small farmers out of poverty. The rapid expansion of oil palm and rubber in the last few decades has resulted in widespread deforestation, biodiversity loss, and carbon emissions in the tropics, and has also negatively affected the livelihoods of many local communities. Similar effects have also been observed in the case of the conversion of heterogenous forests into monocuture plantations. An integrated land use planning approach is suggested in order to minimize the negative impacts and maximize the positive benefits of monoculture farming. Further, enhancing plant-soil microbial interactions through innoculation of arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi for soil fertility management is also suggested. With up-to-date information on this subject matter, this book will benefit researchers, academics, students, policymakers and practitioners.
Author: Vandana Shiva
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9781856492188
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 190
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Book Description
Vandana Shiva has established herself as a leading independent thinker and voice for the South in that critically important nexus where questions of development strategy, the environment and the posititon of women in society coincide. In this new volume, she brings together her thinking on the protection of biodiversity, the implications of biotechnology, and the consequences for agriculture of the global pre-eminence of Western-style scientific knowledge. In lucid and accessible fashion, she examines the current threats to the planet's biodiversity and the environmental and human consequences of its erosion and replacement by monocultural production. She shows how the new Biodiversity Convention has been gravely undermined by a mixture of diplomatic dilution during the process of negotiation and Northern hi-tech interests making money out of the new biotechnologies. She explains what these technologies involve and gives examples of their impact in practice. She questions their claims to improving natural species for the good of all and highlights the ethical and environmental problems posed. Underlying her arguments is the view that the North's particular approach to scientific understanding has led to a system of monoculture in agriculture - a model that is not being foisted on the South, displacing its societies' ecologically sounder, indigenous and age-old experiences of truly sustainable food cultivation, forest management and animal husbandry. This rapidly accelerating process of technology and system transfer is impoverishing huge numbers of people, disrupting the social systems that provide them with security and dignity, and will ultimately result in a sterile planet in both North and South, In a policy intervention of potentially great significance, she calls instead for a halt, at international as well as local level, to the aid and market incentives to both large-scale destruction of habitats where biodiversity thrives and the introduction of centralised, homogenous systems of cultivation.
Author: Ted R Schultz
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262543206
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 339
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Book Description
Contributors explore common elements in the evolutionary histories of both human and insect agriculture resulting from convergent evolution. During the past 12,000 years, agriculture originated in humans as many as twenty-three times, and during the past 65 million years, agriculture also originated in nonhuman animals at least twenty times and in insects at least fifteen times. It is much more likely that these independent origins represent similar solutions to the challenge of growing food than that they are due purely to chance. This volume seeks to identify common elements in the evolutionary histories of both human and insect agriculture that are the results of convergent evolution. The goal is to create a new, synthetic field that characterizes, quantifies, and empirically documents the evolutionary and ecological mechanisms that drive both human and nonhuman agriculture. The contributors report on the results of quantitative analyses comparing human and nonhuman agriculture; discuss evolutionary conflicts of interest between and among farmers and cultivars and how they interfere with efficiencies of agricultural symbiosis; describe in detail agriculture in termites, ambrosia beetles, and ants; and consider patterns of evolutionary convergence in different aspects of agriculture, comparing fungal parasites of ant agriculture with fungal parasites of human agriculture, analyzing the effects of agriculture on human anatomy, and tracing the similarities and differences between the evolution of agriculture in humans and in a single, relatively well-studied insect group, fungus-farming ants.
Author: United States. Department of Agriculture
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 72
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Book Description
Author: Tom Philpott
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635573149
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice An unsettling journey into the disaster-bound American food system, and an exploration of possible solutions, from leading food politics commentator and former farmer Tom Philpott. More than a decade after Michael Pollan's game-changing The Omnivore's Dilemma transformed the conversation about what we eat, a combination of global diet trends and corporate interests have put American agriculture into a state of "quiet emergency," from dangerous drought in California--which grows more than 50 percent of the fruits and vegetables we eat--to catastrophic topsoil loss in the "breadbasket" heartland of the United States. Whether or not we take heed, these urgent crises of industrial agriculture will define our future. In Perilous Bounty, veteran journalist and former farmer Tom Philpott explores and exposes the small handful of seed and pesticide corporations, investment funds, and magnates who benefit from the trends that imperil us, with on-the-ground dispatches featuring the scientists documenting the damage and the farmers and activists who are valiantly and inventively pushing back. Resource scarcity looms on the horizon, but rather than pointing us toward an inevitable doomsday, Philpott shows how the entire wayward ship of American agriculture could be routed away from its path to disaster. He profiles the farmers and communities in the nation's two key growing regions developing resilient, soil-building, water-smart farming practices, and readying for the climate shocks that are already upon us; and he explains how we can help move these methods from the margins to the mainstream.
Author: Jules N. Pretty
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136529276
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
Continued population growth, rapidly changing consumption patterns and the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation are driving limited resources of food, energy, water and materials towards critical thresholds worldwide. These pressures are likely to be substantial across Africa, where countries will have to find innovative ways to boost crop and livestock production to avoid becoming more reliant on imports and food aid. Sustainable agricultural intensification - producing more output from the same area of land while reducing the negative environmental impacts - represents a solution for millions of African farmers. This volume presents the lessons learned from 40 sustainable agricultural intensification programmes in 20 countries across Africa, commissioned as part of the UK Government's Foresight project. Through detailed case studies, the authors of each chapter examine how to develop productive and sustainable agricultural systems and how to scale up these systems to reach many more millions of people in the future. Themes covered include crop improvements, agroforestry and soil conservation, conservation agriculture, integrated pest management, horticulture, livestock and fodder crops, aquaculture, and novel policies and partnerships.
Author: Yash P. Abrol
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0128119047
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 570
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Book Description
The Indian Nitrogen Assessment: Sources of Reactive Nitrogen, Environmental and Climate Effects, and Management Options and Policies provides a reference for anyone interested in Reactive N, from researchers and students, to environmental managers. Although the main processes that affect the N cycle are well known, this book is focused on the causes and effects of disruption in the N cycle, specifically in India. The book helps readers gain a precise understanding of the scale of nitrogen use, misuse, and release through various agricultural, industrial, vehicular, and other activities, also including discussions on its contribution to the pollution of water and air. Drawing upon the collective work of the Indian Nitrogen Group, this reference book helps solve the challenges associated with providing reliable estimates of nitrogen transfers within different ecosystems, also presenting the next steps that should be taken in the development of balanced, cost-effective, and feasible strategies to reduce the amount of reactive nitrogen. - Identifies all significant sources of reactive nitrogen flows and their contribution to the nitrogen-cycle on a national, regional, and global level - Covers nitrogen management across sectors, including the environment, food security, energy, and health - Provides a single reference on reactive nitrogen in India to help in a number of activities, including the evaluation, analysis, synthesis, documentation, and communications on reactive nitrogen
Author: R. Ford Denison
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691173761
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
Harnessing evolution for more sustainable agriculture As human populations grow and resources are depleted, agriculture will need to use land, water, and other resources more efficiently and without sacrificing long-term sustainability. Darwinian Agriculture presents an entirely new approach to these challenges, one that draws on the principles of evolution and natural selection. R. Ford Denison shows how both biotechnology and traditional plant breeding can use Darwinian insights to identify promising routes for crop genetic improvement and avoid costly dead ends. Denison explains why plant traits that have been genetically optimized by individual selection—such as photosynthesis and drought tolerance—are bad candidates for genetic improvement. Traits like plant height and leaf angle, which determine the collective performance of plant communities, offer more room for improvement. Agriculturalists can also benefit from more sophisticated comparisons among natural communities and from the study of wild species in the landscapes where they evolved. Darwinian Agriculture reveals why it is sometimes better to slow or even reverse evolutionary trends when they are inconsistent with our present goals, and how we can glean new ideas from natural selection's marvelous innovations in wild species.
Author: Pia Katila
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108486991
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 653
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Book Description
A global assessment of potential and anticipated impacts of efforts to achieve the SDGs on forests and related socio-economic systems. This title is available as Open Access via Cambridge Core.
Author: Debabrata Biswas
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0128120614
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 420
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Book Description
Safety and Practice for Organic Food covers current food safety issues and trends. It provides detailed information on all organic and pasture practices including produce-only, farm-animal-only or integrated crop-livestock farming, as well as the impact of these practices on food safety and foodborne infections. The book explores food products that organic, integrated and traditional farming systems are contributing to consumers. As the demand for organic food products grows faster than ever, this book discusses current and improved practices for safer products. Moreover, the book explores progressive directions, such as the application of next-generation sequencing and genomics to aid in the understanding of the microbial ecology of the agro-environment and how farmer education can contribute to sustainable and safe food. Safety and Practice for Organic Food is a unique source of organic agricultural practices and food production for researchers, academics and professionals at agriculture-based universities and colleges who are involved in food science, animal sciences including poultry science, food safety, food microbiology, plant science and agricultural extension. This book is also an excellent source of information for regulators and federal government officials (USDA, FDA, EPA) and the food processing industry. - Discusses limitations in pre-harvest and post-harvest level practices with specific information on risk and bio-security of existing organic production systems - Explores policies and guidelines for organic food production and future directions for safer and more sustainable management - Presents microbial and other biological hazards at pre-harvest and post-harvest levels
