Book Description
This digital document is an article from American Journal of Agricultural Economics, published by American Agricultural Economics Association on February 1, 2002. The length of the article is 1015 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Sustainable Agriculture and Environment: Globalisation and the Impact of Trade Liberalisation. (Books Reviewed).
Author: Ian Hodge
Publication: American Journal of Agricultural Economics (Refereed)
Date: February 1, 2002
Publisher: American Agricultural Economics Association
Volume: 84Issue: 1Page: 251(2)

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Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Agroforestry systems are often mentioned as a type of sustainable agriculture that is appropriate for the edapho-climatic conditions of Amazonia. However, long-term studies on the sustainability of this land use do not exist. This study evaluates the soil fertility in smallholder agroforestry systems in Western Amazonia, and compares the fertility of land under agroforestry with the fertility of neighboring land under pasture and native forest. Smallholdings located in Nova California, Rondonia, Brazil, were selected, with two different soil types. Soil pH, organic C, P, K, Ca, Mg and Al were determined. The soils of the agroforestry system maintained their improved chemical characteristics that originated in the burn, especially with respect to increased levels of exchangeable Ca and Mg and reduction of exchangeable Al, while maintaining stable levels of organic C, even when compared to adjacent primary forest soils. However, in the agroforestry system K and P fell to extremely low levels, below those considered to be critical for Amazonian soils. This reduction can reasonably be attributed to nutrient exports by consecutive harvests of cupuassu (Theobroma grandiflorum, Sterculiaceae) and pejibaye (Bactris gasipaes, Palmae) fruits. These nutrients can limit sustainable fruit yields in the agroforestry systems. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Agricultural intensification presents a major threat to European biodiversity. This generalisation is largely based on studies from western and northern Europe. Here it is shown that the development of agriculture in a post-socialist country (Hungary) was marked by sudden changes, e.g., a 10-fold increase of fertiliser consumption in the late 1960s as a result of decision-making in the socialist command economic structures, and similar decreases after the collapse of socialism in the 1990s. Hungarian populations of two characteristic farmland species, the brown hare (Lepus europaeus) and grey partridge (Perdix perdix) are analysed and their collapse over the past four decades is related to agricultural data on production from FAO statistics. This decline was found to be negatively correlated with most measures of agricultural intensification (cereal and milk yields, number of machinery), and positively with cattle density. Multiple regression analyses of intensification measures indicated a similar pattern, although cattle density was not included into the models. Interestingly, farmland diversity in the models was negative predictor of population sizes. The sudden changes in agriculture were not indicated in the population trends of the two species. Probably, the relationship between agricultural intensification and small game species decline may not be as simple as correlation analyses indicated. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Lowland development efforts in West Africa have a mixed record. The paper argues that this is due to the neglect of market opportunity as a driving force for lowland use and the agro-ecological gradient as an important modifier. The gradient is linked to three modifiers of lowland use: the relative value of lowland cropping with respect to other livelihood strategies; the biophysical productivity of lowland cropping; and the access rights to lowlands. The paper applies a regression-based decomposition framework to analyze the factors affecting lowland use in West Africa. It uses community-level data from 1014 geo-referenced lowland units around four urban centers along an agro-ecological gradient in Cote d'Ivoire and Mali. Tobit models are used to explain the extent of lowland non-use in terms of seasonal fallow, its diversity in terms of rice and other crop cultivation and its land use intensity in terms of double cropping. A multinomial logit model is used to explain lowland cropping systems. Results highlight a positive link between closeness to urban markets and the extent, diversity and intensity of lowland use. The agro-ecological gradient in West Africa has a pronounced influence on agricultural lowland use, which tends to be more widespread, diverse and intensive proceeding towards the drier ecologies. Lowland development did increase the extent and intensity of lowland use, but by favoring the cultivation of rice, had a negative impact on the diversity of lowland use. Lowland use is also associated with migrants, particularly in the more humid ecologies. Research, policy and development implications are explored. An important lesson for scaling out is that it is not proximity to urban markets per se, but the associated market access which is the key driver for more significant lowland use. ... Read more

Book Description
This two volume work analyses the restructuring of rural areas in developed economies, focusing on the UK, USA and Canada. Volume 1 addresses agriculture and the environment, concentrating on five themes: developing organizational structures in the agribusiness system, diversification of the farm business, the environmental impact on modern agriculture emerging policy issues, and sustainable agriculture as a policy option. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Finance & Development, published by International Monetary Fund on June 1, 1992. The length of the article is 1908 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: The World Bank recently completed a study of the interrelationships that exist between Sub-Saharan Africa's population, agriculture and environment. The study found critical links in traditional crop and livestock production methods, land tenure systems, women's responsibilities, and methods of forest resource utilization. It was suggested that the problems of rapid population growth, poor agricultural performance and environmental degradation result from the evolution of traditional systems and practices brought about by the accelaration of population growth. Likewise, the study suggested that efforts to find new approaches to address the triple problems of population, agriculture and environment should put more emphasis on promoting effective demand for environmentally benign intensive farming, family planning and resource conservation.

Citation Details
Title: Population, agriculture, and the environment in Africa. (The Global Environment)
Author: Kevin Cleaver
Publication: Finance & Development (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 1, 1992
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Volume: v29Issue: n2Page: p34(2)

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Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Sustainable development and the definition of indicators to assess progress towards sustainability have become a high priority in scientific research and on policy agendas. In this paper, we propose a consistent and comprehensive framework of principles, criteria and indicators (PC&I) for sustainability assessment of agricultural systems, referred to as the Sustainability Assessment of Farming and the Environment (SAFE) framework. In addition we formulate consistent and objective approaches for indicator identification and selection. The framework is designed for three spatial levels: the parcel level, the farm level and a higher spatial level that can be the landscape, the region or the state. The SAFE framework is hierarchical as it is composed of principles, criteria, indicators and reference values in a structured way. Principles are related to the multiple functions of the agro-ecosystem, which go clearly beyond the production function alone. The multifunctional character of the agro-ecosystem encompasses the three pillars of sustainability: the environmental, economic and social pillars. Indicators and reference values are the end-products of the framework. They are the operational tools that are used for evaluating the sustainability of the agro-ecosystems. The proposed analytical framework is not intended to find a common solution for sustainability in agriculture as a whole, but to serve as an assessment tool for the identification, the development and the evaluation of agricultural production systems, techniques and policies. ... Read more