Many countries in Western Europe have introduced voluntary programmes to encourage farmers to adopt environmentally more benign practices such as integrated pest management, but more policy action appears to be needed to meet the environmental quality levels now demanded. Input taxes could assist in meeting policy objectives. The issue considered here is the identification of the most appropria...

the paper determined optimum farm plan for food security among smallholder farmers in imo state, nigeria. data were collected with structured and validated questionnaire from 180 smallholder crops farmers in imo state. data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (mean, frequency distribution and percentages), budgetary analysis and linear programming model. results show that the mean age of...

Improving nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) in the major cereals is critical for more sustainable nitrogen use in high-input agriculture, but our understanding of the potential for NUE improvement is limited by a paucity of reliable on-farm measurements. Limited on-farm data suggest that agronomic NUE (AE(N)) is lower and more variable than data from trials conducted at research stations, on which ...

state in the country with more than 1.5 million This study evaluates the economic suracres (USDA, Crop Production). vivability of rice farms in the Delta area of Since 1981, rice acreage in the Mississippi Mississippi. A general whole-farm simulation River Delta region, as in other rice-producing model, FLIPSIM V, is used to simulate the regions of the country, has generally declined. operation...

From conception to construction, the process by which tidal turbine farms are scoped and designed (and even optimised – which is the focus here) is multi-layered. The industrial designer requires tools of varying fidelities working on multiple scales, depending on the task at hand. In this paper a hierarchy of modelling approaches is proposed and some examples demonstrated. For site-scoping and...

The consideration of several conditions e.g. weather conditions, wind power forecasts, electricity tariff, stock keeping etc. are crucial for wind farm operators to make optimal maintenance decisions. However, due to this enormous amount of information sophisticated tools are needed. The contribution will present the possible application of high-performance computing methodologies, which may he...

The Extension Service, United States Department of Agriculture, funded a special project to approach development of extension materials for dairy farmers by systems analysis. Agricultural engineers created video tapes and publications on manure, feed handling, calf housing, and milking subsystems. Dairy scientists created slide-tapes and publications on controlling feed losses during harvest, s...

Agricultural beneficial management practices (BMPs) are popular strategies for mitigating non-point sources of pollution. There are economic costs for BMP placement on agricultural lands mainly because it affects profit margins of farm operations. Given the cost implication and biophysical heterogeneity of farm lands, 8 the spatial targeting of BMP placement is consequential to their cost-effec...

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) is often controlled through culling of poultry. Compensating farmers for culled chickens or ducks facilitates effective culling and control of HPAI. However, ensuing price shifts can create incentives that alter the disease dynamics of HPAI. Farmers control certain aspects of the dynamics by setting a farm size, implementing infection control measures, a...