With the growing popularity and availability of precision equipment, farmers and producers have access to more data than ever before. With proper implementation, precision agriculture management can improve profitability and sustainability of production. Precision Agriculture Basics is geared at students, crop consultants, farmers, extension workers, and practitioners that are interested in practical applications of site-specific agricultural management. Using a multidisciplinary approach, readers are taught to make data-driven on-farm decisions using the most current knowledge and tools in crop science, agricultural engineering, and geostatistics. Precision Agriculture Basics also features a stunning video glossary including interviews with agronomists on the job and in the field.
A comprehensive resource for understanding the complexities of agricultural finance Agricultural Finance: From Crops to Land, Water, and Infrastructure is a pioneering book that offers a comprehensive resource for understanding the worldwide agriculture markets, from spikes in agricultural commodity prices to trading strategies, and the agribusiness industry generally to the challenges of feeding the planet in particular. The book also goes in-depth on the topics of land, water, fertilizers, biofuels, and ethanol. Written by Helyette Geman—an industry expert in commodity derivatives—this book explores the agricultural marketplace and the cycles in agricultural commodity prices that can be the key to investor success. This resource addresses a wide range of other important topics as well, including agricultural insurance, energy, shipping and bunker prices, sustainability, investments in land, subsidies, agricultural derivatives, and farming risk-management. Other topics covered include structured products and agricultural commodities ETFs; trade finance in an era of credit shortage; securitization and commodity-linked notes; grains: wheat, corn, soybeans; softs: coffee, cocoa, cotton; shipping as a key component of agricultural trade; and the major agricultural shipping routes and the costs. The book: Offers the first comprehensive resource that deals with the all aspects of agricultural finance Includes information that is crucial for pension funds, asset managers, hedge funds, agribusiness corporates, CTAs and regulators Covers a range of topics from agricultural bunker prices, futures, options to major shipping routes and the costs This text is a must-have resource for accessing the information required to trade successfully in the agricultural marketplace.
The Art of Agriculture is the first English edition of Obra de Agricultura by Gabriel Alonso de Herrera, an agriculture instruction manual originally written in Granada, Spain, in 1513 and published there in 1539. Herrera, widely considered the Father of Modern Spanish Agriculture, wrote this treatise nearly five centuries ago, thoughtfully recounting traditional farming techniques of the Moors before their expulsion from Spain, the Spanish colonizers in the early 1600s, and the rural Indo-Hispano bioregion spanning northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Today, farmers, gardeners, and ecological horticulturists are striving to work in harmony with nature, using traditional irrigation methods (involving acequias, sangras, and arroyos) to transform barren high-desert landscapes into fields supporting crop growth. This book speaks to today's farmers, no matter their size or output, in drought-ridden areas with land patterns characterized by natural ditches (acequias) and community water distribution systems (suertes). This type of agriculture exists not only in the American Southwest but from the Philippines to India to the Middle East. With global warming, water usage, and increased populations today, this book is more pertinent now than ever. Practical as well as philosophical, The Art of Agriculture will fascinate anyone interested in organic farming, sustainable agriculture, and permaculture worldwide.
Subsistence production: a sign of market failure. Commercialization cannot be left to the market. Household effects of commercialization. Nutrition effects of commercialization. Policy action needed.
The Encyclopedia of Food Security and Sustainability, Three Volume Set covers the hottest topics in the science of food sustainability, providing a synopsis of the path society is on to secure food for a growing population. It investigates the focal issue of sustainable food production in relation to the effects of global change on food resources, biodiversity and global food security. This collection of methodological approaches and knowledge derived from expert authors around the world offers the research community, food industry, scientists and students with the knowledge to relate to, and report on, the novel challenges of food production and sustainability. This comprehensive encyclopedia will act as a platform to show how an interdisciplinary approach and closer collaboration between the scientific and industrial communities is necessary to strengthen our existing capacity to generate and share research data. Offers readers a ‘one-stop’ resource on the topic of food security and sustainability Contains articles split into sections based on the various dimensions of Food Security and Food Sustainability Written by academics and practitioners from various fields and regions with a “farm to fork understanding Includes concise and accessible chapters, providing an authoritative introduction for non-specialists and readers from undergraduate level upwards, as well as up-to-date foundational content for those familiar with the field
Looks at partnerships between local small farms and nearby consumers, who become members or subscribers in support of the farm, offering advice on acquiring land, organizing, handling the harvest, and money and legal matters.
Encyclopedia of Plant and Crop Science is the first-ever single-source reference work to inclusively cover classic and modern studies in plant biology in conjunction with research, applications, and innovations in crop science and agriculture. From the fundamentals of plant growth and reproduction to developments in agronomy and agricultural science, the encyclopedia's authoritative content nurtures communication between these academically distinct yet intrinsically related fields-offering a spread of clear, descriptive, and concise entries to optimally serve scientists, agriculturalists, policy makers, students, and the general public. ALSO AVAILABLE ONLINE This Taylor & Francis encyclopedia is also available through online subscription, offering a variety of extra benefits for both researchers, students, and librarians, including: Citation tracking and alerts Active reference linking Saved searches and marked lists HTML and PDF format options For more information, visit Taylor and Francis Online or contact us to inquire about subscription options and print/online combination packages. US: (Tel) 1.888.318.2367 / (E-mail) [email protected] International: (Tel) +44 (0) 20 7017 6062 / (E-mail) [email protected]
The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Agriculture covers major theoretical issues as well as critical empirical shifts in gender and agriculture. Gender relations in agriculture are shifting in most regions of the world with changes in the structure of agriculture, the organization of production, international restructuring of value chains, climate change, the global pandemic, and national and multinational policy changes. This book provides a cutting-edge assessment of the field of gender and agriculture, with contributions from both leading scholars and up-and-coming academics as well as policymakers and practitioners. The handbook is organized into four parts: part 1, institutions, markets, and policies; part 2, land, labor, and agrarian transformations; part 3, knowledge, methods, and access to information; and part 4, farming people and identities. The last chapter is an epilogue from many of the contributors focusing on gender, agriculture, and shifting food systems during the coronavirus pandemic. The chapters address both historical subjects as well as ground-breaking work on gender and agriculture, which will help to chart the future of the field. The handbook has an international focus with contributions examining issues at both the global and local levels with contributors from across the world. With contributions from leading academics, policymakers, and practitioners, and with a global outlook, the Routledge Handbook of Gender and Agriculture is an essential reference volume for scholars, students, and practitioners interested in gender and agriculture. Chapter 13 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Agricultural Internet of Things and Decision Support for Smart Farming reveals how a set of key enabling technologies (KET) related to agronomic management, remote and proximal sensing, data mining, decision-making and automation can be efficiently integrated in one system. Chapters cover how KETs enable real-time monitoring of soil conditions, determine real-time, site-specific requirements of crop systems, help develop a decision support system (DSS) aimed at maximizing the efficient use of resources, and provide planning for agronomic inputs differentiated in time and space. This book is ideal for researchers, academics, post-graduate students and practitioners who want to embrace new agricultural technologies. - Presents the science behind smart technologies for agricultural management - Reveals the power of data science and how to extract meaningful insights from big data on what is most suitable based on individual time and space - Proves how advanced technologies used in agriculture practices can become site-specific, locally adaptive, operationally feasible and economically affordable
"The challenges facing agriculture are plenty. Along with the world's growing population and diminishing amounts of water and arable land, the gradual increase in severe weather presents new challenges and imperatives for producing new, more resilient crops to feed a more crowded planet in the twenty-first century. Innovation has historically helped agriculture keep pace with earth's social, population, and ecological changes. In the last 50 years, mechanical, biological, and chemical innovations have more than doubled agricultural output while barely changing input quantities. The ample investment behind these innovations was available because of a high rate of return: a 2007 paper found that the median ROI in agriculture was 45 percent between 1965 and 2005. This landscape has changed. Today many of the world's wealthier countries have scaled back their share of GDP devoted to agricultural R&D amid evidence of diminishing returns. Universities, which have historically been a major source of agricultural innovation, increasingly depend on funding from industry rather than government to fund their research. As Upton Sinclair wrote of the effects industry influences, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." In this volume of the NBER Conference Report series, editor Petra Moser offers an empirical, applied-economic framework to the different elements of agricultural R&D, particularly as they relate to the shift from public to private funding. Individual chapters examine the sources of agricultural knowledge and investigate challenges for measuring the returns to the adoption of new agricultural technologies, examine knowledge spillovers from universities to agricultural innovation, and explore interactions between university engagement and scientific productivity. Additional analysis of agricultural venture capital point to it as an emerging and future source of resource in this essential domain"--
