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Global agriculture is now at the crossroads. The Green Revolution of the last century is losing momentum. Rates of growth in food production are now declining, with land and water resources becoming scarcer, while world population continues to grow. We need to continue to identify and share the knowledge that will support successful and sustainable
Learn the fundamentals as well as in-depth details of agricultural cropping systems from around the globe! Cropping Systems: Trends and Advances is a comprehensive review of past and present research efforts in North America and other parts of the world. It brings together biological, economic, sociological, and technical aspects of cropping systems in a single source to provide a reference unlike any other on the subject that is available today. This valuable book also points to future directions that cropping systems research needs to take in order to increase sustainable agriculture and feed the growing world population. Charts, tables, and illustrations make the information easy to acces...
Ecological Aspects of Nitrogen Acquisition covers how plants compete for nitrogen in complex ecological communities and the associations plants recruit with other organisms, ranging from soil microbes to arthropods. The book is divided into four sections, each addressing an important set of relationships of plants with the environment and how this impacts the plant’s ability to compete successfully for nitrogen, often the most growth-limiting nutrient. Ecological Aspects of Nitrogen Acquisition provides thorough coverage of this important topic, and is a vitally important resource for plant scientists, agronomists, and ecologists.
Industrial agriculture is generally characterized as either the salvation of a growing, hungry, global population or as socially and environmentally irresponsible. Despite elements of truth in this polarization, it fails to focus on the particular vulnerabilities and potentials of industrial agriculture. Both representations obscure individual farmers, their families, their communities, and the risks they face from unpredictable local, national, and global conditions: fluctuating and often volatile production costs and crop prices; extreme weather exacerbated by climate change; complicated and changing farm policies; new production technologies and practices; water availability; inflation an...
The cropping system is one of the important components of sustainable agriculture, since it provides more efficient nutrient cycling. As such, balanced fertilization must be based on the concept of sustainable crop production. Feeding the rapidly growing world population using environmentally sustainable production systems is a major challenge, especially in developing countries. A number of studies have highlighted the fact that degradation of the world's cultivated soils is largely responsible for low and plateauing yields. Soil is lost rapidly but only formed over millennia, and this represents the greatest global threat to nutrient dynamics in agriculture. This means that nutrient manage...
The petroleum age began about 150 years ago. Easily available energy has s- ported major advances in agriculture, industry, transportation, and indeed many diverse activities valued by humans. Now world petroleum and natural gas s- plies have peaked and their supplies will slowly decline over the next 40–50 years until depleted. Although small amounts of petroleum and natural gas will remain underground, it will be energetically and economically impossible to extract. In the United States, coal supplies could be available for as long as 40–50 years, depending on how rapidly coal is utilized as a replacement for petroleum and natural gas. Having been comfortable with the security provided...
Parched landscapes, biodiversity loss, encroaching deserts and deforestation are some of the environmental crises taking place in tropical savannas and dry forests throughout the world. To date, much research into these regions has treated humans as 'outside' or as an 'impact' only. However, over and over again, examples show that, in fact, humans are not external factors, but integral components of these systems. Humans are key determinants of savannas and dry forests, affecting patterns and processes, as well as impacts on natural resources. Unless we understand the human-environment relationship in these regions, we will never truly identify the causes or be able to provide solutions. Thi...
This book presents the science, application, and politics of the use of nitrogen-fixing crop plants across the globe in various environments. Nitrogen fixation can help provide a growing population with a nutritious, environmentally friendly, sustainable food supply. From new "omics" approaches to the role of nitrogen fixation in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, from farming strategies in nonindustrialized nations to nitrogen fixation in the global economy, scientists will find the key issues and expanding research areas, and how they contribute to the next wave of advancements related to agriculture and the environment
The 15th Latin American Symposium ''laS held in Brasilia (FD) on J1UY 18-22, 1977, on a topic of great interest for agriculture, especially in the tropics. Many new developments have taken place in the field of research in N2 fixation during the last few years. They "Tere made possible by the improved methods of measuring of nitrogenase activity, progress in genetic engineering fields and the increased interest in taking advantage of natural sources for biological nitrogen fixation. The approach used in this Symposium together with the one held four months earlier in Brookhaven on ;'Genetic Engineering for Nitrogen Fixation" gives an interesting picture of the present status of nitrogen fixa...
The dramatic increases in food prices experienced over the last four years, and their effects of hunger and food insecurity, as well as human-induced climate change and its implications for agriculture, food production and food security, are key topics within the field of agronomy and agricultural research. Contested Agronomy addresses these issues by exploring key developments since the mid-1970s, focusing in particular on the emergence of the neoliberal project and the rise of the participation and environmental agendas, taking into consideration how these have had profound impacts on the practice of agronomic research in the developing world especially over the last four decades. This boo...