Environmental Impacts of Modern Agriculture

Environmental Impacts of Modern Agriculture

Author: Ronald E. Hester

Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1849733856

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This volume examines the factors currently affecting agriculture on a global scale. Land use, soil quality, and the inherent production of greenhouse gasses by agriculture each receive their own chapters.


Environmental Impacts of Modern Agriculture

Environmental Impacts of Modern Agriculture

Author: R M Harrison

Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry

Published: 2012-07-05

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1849734976

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Modern agriculture must seek to feed the world's growing population with little or no cost to the Environment. Modern agriculture is capable of producing greater yields than ever before, but intensification of agriculture does come at a price. This comprehensive volume examines the environmental impact made by agriculture in the 21st Century, looking forward to the future with the lessons of the past. Key chapters include impacts of agriculture upon soil quality, greenhouse gas budgets, water-borne pathogens, surface water chemistry, groundwater, agricultural pesticides and the environment, balancing the environmental consequences of agriculture with the needs for food security and positive and negative aspects of agricultural production of biofuels. A fundamental reference for advanced students, researchers, practitioners and policy makers working in the field or related areas.


Principles of Modern Agriculture

Principles of Modern Agriculture

Author: Richard Renneboog

Publisher: Salem Press

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9781642652635

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This new volume explores a wide variety of topics in modern agriculture. From the use of big data and new technologies for monitoring water levels and weather, to the use of biotechnology in seed production and new non-chemical ways to control pests and weeds, this volume provides students and researchers with new and interesting ways to look at agricultural production in modern society. Will our farmers be able to produce enough food to support the growing population? What is the future of our water supply and our soil health? How will climate change affect agricultural production? How do sustainable practices affect prices and growth rates?


Shifting Cultivation and Environmental Change

Shifting Cultivation and Environmental Change

Author: Malcolm F. Cairns

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-01-09

Total Pages: 1405

ISBN-13: 1317750187

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Shifting cultivation is one of the oldest forms of subsistence agriculture and is still practised by millions of poor people in the tropics. Typically it involves clearing land (often forest) for the growing of crops for a few years, and then moving on to new sites, leaving the earlier ground fallow to regain its soil fertility. This book brings together the best of science and farmer experimentation, vividly illustrating the enormous diversity of shifting cultivation systems as well as the power of human ingenuity. Some critics have tended to disparage shifting cultivation (sometimes called 'swidden cultivation' or 'slash-and-burn agriculture') as unsustainable due to its supposed role in deforestation and land degradation. However, the book shows that such indigenous practices, as they have evolved over time, can be highly adaptive to land and ecology. In contrast, 'scientific' agricultural solutions imposed from outside can be far more damaging to the environment and local communities. The book focuses on successful agricultural strategies of upland farmers, particularly in south and south-east Asia, and presents over 50 contributions by scholars from around the world and from various disciplines, including agricultural economics, ecology and anthropology. It is a sequel to the much praised "Voices from the Forest: Integrating Indigenous Knowledge into Sustainable Upland Farming" (RFF Press, 2007), but all chapters are completely new and there is a greater emphasis on the contemporary challenges of climate change and biodiversity conservation.


Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain

Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain

Author: Jon Agar

Publisher: UCL Press

Published: 2018-04-09

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 1911576585

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Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain brings together historians with a wide range of interests to take a uniquely wide-lens view of how technology and the environment have been intimately and irreversibly entangled in Britain over the last 300 years. It combines, for the first time, two perspectives with much to say about Britain since the industrial revolution: the history of technology and environmental history. Technologies are modified environments, just as nature is to varying extents engineered. Furthermore, technologies and our living and non-living environment are both predominant material forms of organisation – and self-organisation – that surround and make us. Both have changed over time, in intersecting ways. Technologies discussed in the collection include bulldozers, submarine cables, automobiles, flood barriers, medical devices, museum displays and biotechnologies. Environments investigated include bogs, cities, farms, places of natural beauty and pollution, land and sea. The book explores this diversity but also offers an integrated framework for understanding these intersections.


Agricultural Nanobiotechnology

Agricultural Nanobiotechnology

Author: Fernando López-Valdez

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-11-09

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 3319967193

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Nanobiotechnology in agriculture is a new knowledge area that offers novel possibilities to achieve high productivity levels at manageable costs during the production and merchandising of crops. This book shows us how we can use the cutting-edge knowledge about agriculture, nanotechnology, and biotechnology to increase the agricultural productivity and shape a sustainable future in order to increase the social welfare in rural areas and preserve the environmental health. Specialists from several countries will provide their feedback on a range of relevant topics such as environment-friendly use of nanofertilisers, nanodevices, nano-food packaging, nanocoating and nanocarriers and their relationship with the modern agriculture.


Modern Agriculture and the Environment

Modern Agriculture and the Environment

Author: David Rosen

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 629

ISBN-13: 940115418X

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This volume comprises the proceedings of the First International Rehovot Conference on Modem Agriculture and the Environment, held at the Rehovot Campus of the Faculty of Agriculture, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, 2-6 October 1994. The conference, first in a series intended to be convened in Rehovot at 4-5 year intervals to address various aspects of the interaction of agriculture and the environment, was initiated, organised and carried out under the auspices of the Faculty of Agriculture, the leading academic institution in agricultural and environmental studies in Israel. It featured four keynote addresses, 39 invited lectures, 40 submitted papers, and 62 posters. Of these, 51 articles, written by 122 contributing authors from 14 countries, were selected by the editors to be presented in this book. All through the twentieth century, and especially ever since the advent of the Green Revolution, modem agriCUlture has been striving to feed and clothe the ever increasing multitudes of the human species through improved technology, relying heavily on tremendous inputs of fertilisers, pesticides, and various other agrochemicals. Undoubtedly, this has been a great blessing to mankind, and enormous strides have indeed been made in the never-ending struggle against starvation, but these have been achieved at a very steep price of increased environmental deterioration. In fact, modem agriculture has become one of the major factors contributing to the degradation of the world's fragile biosphere.


Agroecosystem Diversity

Agroecosystem Diversity

Author: Gilles Lemaire

Publisher: Academic Press

Published: 2018-10-08

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 0128110511

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Agro-Ecosystem Diversity: Impact on Food Security and Environmental Quality presents cutting-edge exploration of developing novel farming systems and introduces landscape ecology to agronomy. It encompasses the broad range of links between agricultural development and ecological impact and how to limit the potential negative results. Presented in seven sections, each focusing on a specific challenge to sustaining diversity, the book provides insights toward the argument that by re-introducing diversity, it should be possible to maintain a high level of productivity of agro-ecosystems while also maintaining and/or restoring a satisfactory level of environment quality and biodiversity. - Demonstrates that diversified agro-ecosystems can be intensified with environmental quality preserved, restored and enhanced - Includes analysis of economic constraints leading to specialization of farms and regions and the social locking forces resisting to diversification of agro-ecosystems - Presents a global vision of world agriculture and the tradeoff between a necessary increase in food production and restoring environment quality


Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Law

Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Law

Author: Mary Jane Angelo

Publisher: Environmental Law Inst

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 9781585761609

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In the groundbreaking Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Law, leading environmental legal scholars Mary Jane Angelo, Jason Czarnezki, and Bill Eubanks, along with five distinguished contributing authors, undertake an exploration of the challenging political and societal issues facing agricultural policy and modern food systems through the lens of environmental protection laws. Through this exploration, the authors seek to answer difficult questions about the need for new approaches to agricultural policy and environmental law to meet 21st Century concerns surrounding climate change, sustainable agriculture, accessibility to healthy foods, and the conservation of natural resources and ecosystem services. This is the first book to examine both the impact of agricultural policy on the environment and the influence of environmental law on food and agriculture. The authors present a brief historical overview of agricultural policy as it has adapted to satisfy shifting demands and new technologies, and its role in shaping not only the current farming system and the rural economy, but also the value which we ascribe to our natural resources relative to agricultural production. The authors then explain in detail the components of the current farm bill; analyze the ecological impacts of the modern farming system encouraged by our nation s agricultural policy; and examine the interplay between agriculture, food production and distribution, and existing environmental and related laws. They conclude with several concrete proposals to reform agricultural policy that serve as models of how to enhance sustainability in our farming and food system. This book supplies a comprehensive, timely, and cohesive guide on the intersection of agriculture and the natural environment. It achieves this goal through an interdisciplinary lens, engaging diverse perspectives to provide both a practical and academic examination of the environmental impacts of current farm policy, the applicability of environmental regulatory mechanisms to agriculture and food, and reform proposals to combat environmental harms while protecting farmers economic interests as well as the rural communities they bolster. As a result, this work serves as the quintessential text for bringing these issues to the classroom in a variety of fields, including law, public policy, agricultural economics, and environmental science.


Managing Soil Quality

Managing Soil Quality

Author: P. Schjønning

Publisher: CABI

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9780851998503

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In-depth treatments of the soil quality concept, its history, and its applicability in research and in developed and developing societiesAll 18 chapters are written by well-established experts from Europe, North America and AustraliaSoil quality is a concept that allows soil functions to be related to specific purposes. Managing soil quality takes a management oriented approach by identifying key issues in soil quality and management options to enhance the sustainability of modern agriculture. Topics covered include major plant nutrients (N, P, K), soil acidity, soil organic matter, soil biodiversity, soil compaction, erosion, pesticides and urban waste.